Julia Ioffe is contributing writer at Politico Magazine.

MOBILE, ALA.—“Stop! They said you’re out of time!” A very nervous Margaret Martin, a retired elementary school teacher, chopped her hand into her palm. “Careful! Don’t laugh! Don’t sarcasm!” As she sat watching the second debate in a wings bar here, she fidgeted, argued with the television, pulled up quick fact checks on her phone, and buried her head in her friend’s friend’s shoulder. Martin was terrified that her candidate would do something else to put victory out of reach, and thus Martin was worried about the clock and her candidate running over the allotted time. “She doesn’t look professional when she goes over time,” Martin said of her candidate, Hillary Clinton. “I don’t want to give Trump any more things to use against her because he’s already said that if he loses, it’s rigged and I bet he’ll try to use this against her.”

It’s generally nerve-racking to be a Clinton supporter here, one of the reddest parts of the reddest state in the country. Mobile was the location of Trump’s first mass rally, in August 2015, which was attended by Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions sporting a Make America Great Again cap, along with some 30,000 other Alabamans. Trump ended up winning the state handily, with 43 percent of the vote. He left Ted Cruz in second place, more than 20 points behind. Mitt Romney won Mobile County by nine points in 2012, as did McCain in 2008. The state itself hasn’t voted for a Democratic president since 1976. And, though Clinton picked up the state handily in the state’s March Democratic primary, her supporters here are still scattered blue (and mostly urban) islands in a red, red river.


Last night, they gathered at Island Wing Company, about 15 people, most of them middle-aged or older, watching the debate mostly in silence, alternately nodding along and shaking their heads. (There were, however, whoops of laughter when Trump said that “Gulf states” had all the money, and this Gulf Coast community exploded in laughter. “Did you hear that? We have all the money!” Martin shouted, clapping in delight. “Call the mayor! Someone call the mayor!”) They were the only ones around here who seemed to care enough to organize a debate party. The debate was on a Sunday, which meant people were either at home or watching one of the many games—football, baseball—on TV.

Afterward, the knot of Mobile Democrats signed the Hillary banner and quickly dispersed, relieved that their candidate had held her own against Trump. But a few stuck around to talk, and the loneliness they described was strikingly similar to the sense of isolation one hears when Trump voters describe what’s behind their politics. In a country cleft by bitter political divisions, people on both sides, it seems, feel like they, and perhaps a few people around them, have unique access to the truth, a truth everyone else seems to willingly, infuriatingly ignore. And trying to get through to others, even to just have a discussion, is an exercise in futility.

“It’s baffling,” says Martin. “I’m a schoolteacher and I can’t talk about this. There’s a lot of teachers for Trump, and I truly can’t say who I’m voting for. One of them came out and said, ‘I just can’t trust her.’ And I said, ‘Well, sweetheart, if you’re worried, I got some information.’ She shook her head. ‘Would you like to read it?’ ‘No.’”

“They don’t want to know,” agreed LaKeisha Chestnut, a fellow local Clinton supporter.

“I can’t talk about it at school because it would be seen as combative,” Martin said. “When I was a teacher, I didn’t put any bumper stickers on my car. Now I do, because I’m retired.”

“Then you haven’t had the joy of having it stolen!” laughed Vivian Beckerle, chairman of the Mobile County Democratic Executive Committee. “I’ve had my bumper sticker snatched and a yard sign pulled out of my lawn.” She’s still a practicing attorney, and though her clients have politely avoided sparring with her on politics, she gets teased by the UPS man.

Scott Lacey, a hoarse, giant hulk of a man and a self-declared Yellow Dog Democrat (he was even wearing a pin), declared that he was proud to be a Democrat and “I don’t care who knows it.”

Martin doesn’t know many other Clinton supporters. There’s her husband, and the couple they know that lives across the bay. Otherwise, it’s a daily, delicate battle to educate people, trying to present them with resources and facts—just as avid Trump supporters will hand you densely printed fliers and suggest reading materials. “All he has to do is say something three times, and people believe it,” she said. There are kids who come into school claiming “Hillary murdered four people in Libya,” or that “Michelle Obama took our cinnamon buns away.” “One person said to me, I don’t want that Obamacare, but I do want that Affordable Care,” Martin said, reliving her disbelief. “I had someone today tell me they don’t think we’re ready for a woman president. I said, what about Indira Gandhi, what about Margaret Thatcher? They said, ‘Oh, I didn’t think of that.’”



There are kids who come into school claiming “Hillary murdered four people in Libya,” or that “Michelle Obama took our cinnamon buns away.”



“They don’t want to think about it,” Beckerle said. “If you’re going to understand the issues, you have to understand the issues. It’s easier not to think about it.”

“And they don’t want to feel stupid,” Martin said. “They think I’m being arrogant.”

Chestnut agreed with all this, and she doesn’t understand why people don’t remember how good times were under Bill Clinton’s presidency. She’s black, and to her, the main thing she can’t seem to get across to people: that what Trump says about her community is deeply insulting, and just wrong. “For him to say, what do African-Americans have to lose with him? Everything!” she said. “Because he cares nothing about the inner city. If I took him around the ‘hood here in Mobile, he’d be gone in five minutes because he couldn’t survive even one minute in the hood. He wouldn’t know what to do with himself. I have family that live in the neighborhood, I have family that live in the projects. I’m not walking down the street worrying about how I’m gonna get shot, you understand?”

Her voice started to break with emotion as she went on. “As a black woman in America, let me tell you what I’m worried about. I’m more worried about the people in the blue uniforms with the red and blue lights on the top of his car, than I am about Tyrone sitting on the porch. I’m a mother. I have six kids, five daughters, one boy. My son is a scholar”—he’s at Williams, studying physics—“I worry more about him getting shot and killed by the police, than I do about him walking in the neighborhood. That’s what I’m worried about.”

By this point, her eyes were wet and she was shouting over Jake Tapper and Kayleigh McEnany and Van Jones offering their hot takes on giant screens behind her. Martin, Berckerle, and Lacey nodded sympathetically. “He don’t know,” Chestnut yelled. “And what he needs to do is shut up about being African-American and knowing anything about the African-American community.”

And another thing. “If he tried to grab my pussy, he woulda been back-handed by me, I don’t give a damn who he is!” she said. “You understand? Whoop! Who is you?” Her friends laughed.

“I’m 52 years old, and for over 40 of those years, I’ve lived in Pritchard which is a mostly black community,” said Lacey, who is white. “It’s really not the bad city that people makes it out to be. It’s really not that a bad city. And if people like Donald Trump would actually go visit a city like that from time to time, not just when he wants votes, he would actually learn that there’s a lot of good things that goes on in inner city communities all the time.”

But again, no one will listen. And at some point, they agreed, no matter how strongly you believe something, sometimes you just don’t want to alienate everyone around you. You just don’t want to feel totally alone.

“You just have to smile, and back off,” Martin said.

Outside the closed, dark restaurant, Lacey, who had earlier said he was so unabashedly proud of being a Democrat in a deep-red state – “and I don’t care who knows it” -- admitted that when he heard people telling him Trump won the first debate, “I just make that face and try not to say anything because they take it personal,” he said, showing me how he raises his eyebrows and looks down at one foot, drawing an invisible scribble on the pavement. "I have an aunt in Louisiana, and I don't talk politics with her because she take it personal.”