A Brief Note in Response to Aaron Sorkin's Opinion Piece

I am reacting to this essay, which appeared in yesterday's New York Times.  Let me say first what I liked about it.  There is no doubt that now the Democrats need to make an appeal to lifelong Republicans who have been Never Trump as well as to those who are now No Longer Trump supporters.  They need to vote for the Democratic candidate in the coming election rather than sit this one out.  Sorkin's suggestion of making Mitt Romney the Democratic candidate would likely achieve this end.

But there are two things I didn't like about this essay.  First, Sorkin doesn't address at all whether the whole thing is really a zero-sum game in that attracting lifelong Republicans to vote for the Democratic candidate will repel lifelong Democrats, who then won't vote at all.  Is it possible to make this a positive-sum game, getting both groups of voters to participate in the upcoming election?  If so, what would do that?  I will discuss a possible answer to that question below.

Second, Sorkin seems to believe that a singular act, nominating Mitt Romney, will be like flipping a switch and then achieve the desired result.  However, what if each voter, instead, hems and haws about whether to vote in the coming election, because they are unsure of whether they can rank in a lexicographical manner beating Trump over all other issues and are more comfortable having a candidate who on the other issues has views that parallel their own?  In this election it would be desirable for voters to have this lexicographical ranking, but wishing doesn't make it so.  What might be done to achieve the desired end?

My view is that we should treat voters as learners and truly educate them (I don't mean indoctrinate them) on these matters.  Learning of this sort needs to accommodate the learner's prior disposition.  Further, negotiation through to a newly held point of view can only happen with an instructor whom the learner trusts.  This sort of learning will be labor intensive and time consuming.  I have articulated these ideas in my recent novelette, Adventures of the Minute Women, though the story there is applied to related matters rather than to the Presidential election. 

If begun immediately could such an educational program produce results at scale by election day?  I don't know, but that is what I wish that Sorkin had argued in his essay.