纪思道Damon Winter/The New York TimesSome of the best advice Democrats have received recently came from Bill Clinton in his speech at the Democratic National Convention.民主党人最近收到的建议中，最好的一条出自比尔·克林顿在民主党全国代表大会上的演讲。First, he warned against hubris: “We’ve seen more than one election slip away from us when we thought it couldn’t happen, when people got distracted by phony issues or overconfident.” That’s something that any Clinton understands in his — or her — gut.首先，他告诫不要傲慢：“我们不止一次见过，在我们认为十拿九稳的时候，我们被虚假问题分散注意力或过度自信，丢掉了选举。”两位克林顿对此都有切肤感受。Second, related and even more important, he cautioned against demeaning voters who don’t share liberal values.其次，与此相关而且更为重要的是，他告诫不要贬低那些不认同自由主义价值观的选民。“I urge you to meet people where they are,” said Clinton, who knows something about winning votes outside of solid blue states. “I urge you not to demean them, but not to pretend you don’t disagree with them if you do. Treat them with respect — just the way you’d like them to treat you.”“我敦促你们从他们的角度去了解他们，”对争取非蓝州选民有些心得的克林顿说。“我敦促你们不要贬低他们，当你们和他们有分歧时，不要装作不存在分歧。尊重他们，你希望他们怎么对待你，你就怎么对待他们。”That’s critical counsel because too often since 2016, the liberal impulse has been to demonize anyone at all sympathetic to Donald Trump as a racist and bigot. This has been politically foolish, for it’s difficult to win votes from people you’re disparaging.这是一个非常重要的忠告，因为自2016年以来，自由派往往冲动行事，妖魔化任何同情特朗普的人，将他们视为种族主义者和偏执狂。这在政治上也是非常不明智的，因为很难从你贬低的人那里赢得选票。It has also seemed to me morally offensive, particularly when well-educated and successful elites are scorning disadvantaged, working-class Americans who have been left behind economically and socially and in many cases are dying young. They deserve empathy, not insults.在我看来，这在道德上也是令人反感的，尤其如果是受过良好教育的、成功的精英，去嘲笑那些处于弱势的劳动阶层美国人，这些人在经济和社会上被抛在后面，其中许多年纪轻轻就死去了。他们应该获得同情，而非侮辱。By all means denounce Trump, but don’t stereotype and belittle the nearly half of Americans who have sided with him.特朗普当然是要谴责的，但不要用刻板和贬低的方式去看待近一半支持他的美国人。Since I live in a rural area, many of my old friends are Trump supporters. One, a good and generous woman, backs Trump because she feels betrayed by the Democratic and Republican political establishments, and she has a point. When factories closed and good union jobs left the area, she ended up homeless and addicted; four members of her extended family killed themselves and she once put a gun to her own head. So when a demagogue like Trump speaks to her pain and promises to bring factories back, of course her heart leaps.由于我生活在乡村地区，许多老朋友都是特朗普的支持者。其中有一位善良宽厚的女士，她之所以支持特朗普是因为觉得自己遭到了民主党和共和党建制派的背叛，而她的确有道理。当这个地区的工厂关闭、有工会保证的优质工作撤走后，她沦为了无家可归者并染上毒瘾；在她的家族中，有四个人自杀，她也曾一度将枪口对准自己的头。因此，当像特朗普这样的人说出她的痛苦并承诺要让工厂回归时，她当然会雀跃不已。Then her resolve strengthens when she hears liberals mock her faith — it was an evangelical church that helped her overcome homelessness — or deride her as “deplorable.”然后，当她听到自由派嘲笑她的信仰——帮助她克服无家可归问题的是一个福音派教会——或嘲笑她“可悲”时，她的立场更坚定了。Then there’s the woman who cut my hair: She had a daughter who was overcome with addiction, so she quit the shop to care for a grandson. Her successor cutting my hair lost her husband to an overdose and is struggling to help a son who is addicted. She isn’t much interested in politics and didn’t watch any of the Democratic convention; she said she distrusts Trump and sees him as a bully, but she is mad at Democrats because food prices are too high.还有一位为我理发的女士：她有一个女儿被毒品毁了，所以她辞去了工作来照顾孙子。接替她为我剪头发的那位女士，丈夫死于吸毒过量，她还正在艰难地帮助一个有毒瘾的儿子。她对政治没有太大兴趣，也没有关注过民主党大会；她说她不信任特朗普，认为他是个混蛋，但她对民主党人也很生气，因为食品价格高到离谱。“I’m not sure how I’ll vote,” she told me, “or if I’ll vote.” She’s a good, hardworking person who would benefit from a Democratic victory, and Democrats should fight for her — not savage her for political thought crimes.“我不确定我会把票投给谁，”她告诉我，“也许我根本就不会去投票。”她是一个善良、勤奋的人，如果民主党获胜，她将受益，民主党人应该为她而战，而不应该攻击她，扯什么政治思想罪。Working-class Americans have a right to feel betrayed. After almost 3,000 people died in the Sept. 11 attacks, we started two wars and allocated trillions of dollars to the response. But every three or four days we lose as many Americans to drugs, alcohol and suicide as died in the Sept. 11 attacks, yet the national response has been pathetically weak. The social fabric in many blue-collar communities has unraveled, and people are angry and frustrated.美国劳动阶层有权感到自己遭到了背叛。在“9·11”事件导致近3000人丧生后，我们发动了两场战争，并拨款数万亿美元用于应对行动。但是，死于毒品、酒精和自杀的美国人，每三四天就能达到在“9·11”中丧生的人数，国家却不为所动。在许多蓝领社区，社会结构已经瓦解，人们对此感到愤怒和沮丧。Since the Obama presidency, Democrats have increasingly become the party of the educated, and the upshot has often been a whiff of condescension toward working-class voters, especially toward voters of faith. And in a country where 74 percent of Americans report a belief in God, according to Gallup, and only 38 percent over the age of 25 have a four-year college degree, condescension is a losing strategy.自奥巴马担任总统以来，民主党日益成为受过教育者的政党，其结果往往是对工薪阶层选民，尤其是对有宗教信仰的选民，有一种居高临下的态度。根据盖洛普的调查，74%的美国人自称信仰上帝，25岁以上的美国人当中只有38%的人拥有四年制大学学位，在这样的现实中，高高在上的姿态是赢不了选举的。Michael Sandel, the eminent Harvard philosopher, condemns the scorn for people with less education as “the last acceptable prejudice” in America. He’s right: Elites sometimes indulge in open disdain for working-class voters that they would never acknowledge about other groups.著名哲学家、哈佛大学的迈克尔·桑德尔谴责对受教育程度较低的人的蔑视，认为这在美国是“最后一个仍得到容许的偏见”。他是对的：精英们有时会无所顾忌地公然表现出对工人阶级选民的轻蔑，这种态度如果是针对其他群体，他们绝不会承认。I worry about Democrats neglecting their proud heritage since at least the time of Franklin Roosevelt of standing up for working-class Americans. Maybe it’s time for more educated liberals to reread F.D.R.’s famous “Forgotten Man” speech of 1932, hailing “the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid.”我担心民主党忽视了至少从罗斯福时代以来的光荣传统，即站出来捍卫美国的劳动阶层。或许，是时候让更多受过教育的自由派重温罗斯福总统1932年那篇著名的演讲《被遗忘的人》了，他在其中赞美了“经济金字塔底端的被遗忘者”。We liberals today are attuned to identity and thus to racial and gender disadvantages, while often seemingly oblivious to class disadvantage — even though recent research by the Harvard economist Raj Chetty underscores that race is playing a smaller role in opportunity gaps while class gaps are yawning wider.哈佛大学经济学家拉杰·切蒂最近的一项研究强调，种族在机会差距中的作用越来越小，而阶级差距的作用却越来越大，但我们今天的自由派人士往往关注的是身份认同，因此还有种族和性别上的劣势，却似乎往往对阶级劣势视而不见。You can’t have a serious conversation about inequality today without discussing race. But you also can’t have a serious conversation about poverty or opportunity without considering class (and for many people of color, race and class disadvantages overlap).今天，如果不讨论种族问题，就不可能严肃地讨论不平等问题。但是，如果不考虑阶级问题（对于许多有色人种来说，种族和阶级劣势往往是重叠的），你也不能就贫困或机会进行严肃的对话。Kamala Harris seems to get this. She chose as her running mate a man who can reach working-class voters with his words as well as his policies. And she can present herself as the candidate who worked at McDonald’s while her opponent was exploiting his inheritance — and renters.贺锦丽似乎明白这一点。她选择了一位能够用言辞和政策打动工人阶级选民的人作为她的的竞选伙伴。她还可以说自己曾在麦当劳打工，她的竞选对手却有遗产可以挥霍，可以剥削租户。I wasn’t planning to write this column, but then I approvingly tweeted Clinton’s comment about not demeaning those we disagree with. Plenty of readers replied hotly: But they deserve to be demeaned!我本来没有打算写这篇专栏，当我发推赞同克林顿的说法，不要贬低那些我们不同意的人时，许多读者的回复很激烈：但他们活该！Sure, it’s satisfying to hurl invective. But calling people “Nazis” probably won’t win over undecided voters any more than when Trump supporters deride “libtards” or the “Biden crime family.”当然，骂人是很痛快的。但骂人“纳粹”可能不会比特朗普的支持者揶揄“自由派傻瓜”或“拜登犯罪家族”更能赢得未决选民的支持。Whatever our politics, Trump brings out the worst in all of us. He nurtures hate on his side that we mirror.无论我们的政治立场如何，特朗普都会在我们每个人身上激发出最糟糕的一面。他在他的支持者中培养仇恨，而我们则表现出类似的反应。So let’s take a deep breath, summon F.D.R.’s empathy for the forgotten man, follow Clinton’s advice — and, for the sake of winning elections as well as of civility, remember that the best way to get others to listen to us is to first listen to them.
