The ‘Roseanne’ Premiere Has a Serious Trump Problem

Of course Roseanne Conner would vote for Donald Trump. You could also imagine her voting for Hillary Clinton or not voting at all. Being a fictional character, it’s really up to the writers to justify what this sitcom character did in her Illinois voting booth in November 2016. ABC’s Roseannerevival, which picks up 20+ years after the show concluded, reveals that the feminist TV icon did not vote for the first major-party female candidate for president. She’s a Trump voter, and it’s really not much of a stretch.

The reason so many Roseanne fans are up-in-arms about this character twist is because they remember the way the character was during the original run, when she was in her 30s and early 40s (and she existed in the political landscape of the late ’80s and ’90s). That Roseanne was pro-choice, pro-gay, anti-racism, and unabashedly feminist with a firm grasp on the world’s patriarchal biases. And then Roseanne went off the air in 1997 (or 1996, because Season 9 doubly doesn’t count). Then Bill Clinton was impeached, tragedy struck on 9/11, Fox News ascended, wars broke out, and 2016 happened. There’s definitely an alternative narrative for Roseanne Conner post-lotto-fantasy wherein she called BS on Bill O’Reilly, rolled her eyes at conspiracy theories, and protested those in Washington calling for wars that ultimately left America’s working-class mourning thousands. But that’s not the narrative the revival went with, opting for one that is honestly more realistic.

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