Here is Donald Trump's support in the Republican primary since the beginning of 2022:
Trump's level of support is bafflingly steady. He routinely blurts out absurdities and nothing happens. He gets indicted twice and nothing happens. Ron DeSantis enters the race and nothing happens. His mental acuity shows obvious signs of decline and nothing happens.
If none of this stuff affects him even slightly, his support must depend on something else. But what? His policy positions are unremarkable. His anti-wokeness is moderate by modern Republican standards. His applause lines are old and kind of stale.
So what precisely is it that motivates so many Republicans to support him through thick and thin? These aren't just MAGA Republicans, after all. There are too many of them. They span the gamut from MAGA to moderate. And their support never wavers.
So what is it? Why do so many ordinary Republicans stick to Trump like glue? What's the attraction? I know it seems kind of late in the day to be asking this, but there really is an enigma here that's never quite been fully answered. Maybe we'll never know.
Time for some diner-in-Ohio fieldwork, then, eh?
Srsly, 3 words-- attitude, label, nostalgia.
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For the same reason so many believe Grandma is smiling down on them from heaven. Once you have been trained to “believe,” it is not hard to get you to believe other even more irrational things, especially if you are lazy. Stupid helps, too.
Given the sample of diehard Republicans I know, I would say it is because Trump’s vague generalizations and random gripes about the deep state being out to get him/them resonate with these supporters. None of the diehards I know could coherently articulate exactly what they’re up-happy about, or which conspiracy they currently believe in, but they hear their thoughts echoed in Trump’s nonsense. I think this gives him a broad appeal to a wide range of disgruntled folks.
He hates all the right people.
that's hardly unique among republicans. for shear hatred and cruelty, i don't think you can top desantis.
Trump is different because he has the flair of a showman. Show biz is the only field where Trump was actually successful.
DeSantis has the flair of a wet noodle. He's boring.
Agreed, a lot of these people don’t know how government works and can’t explain coherently why they want Trump to be president. They see him as their guy and that’s that. Kind of like if you are a fan of The Rolling Stones it doesn’t diminish your support if Keith Richards gets arrested for drugs or if Mick gets caught with a girl somewhere. In a confusing world he is their anchor.
More indictments, even better convictions, won’t phase them, but it will solidify the opposition.
Conservatives universally think they're all 'leaders'.
Because liberals hate him. "Cleek's Law", which reads "Today’s conservatism is the opposite of what liberals want today, updated daily."
i don't think there's much love for desantis on the left.
Well, exactly. There’s not much of anything for DeSantis anywhere on the political spectrum. He’s completely uninteresting.
They are a basket of deplorables with whom he resonates.
Why is this a mystery at all?
If you've been paying any attention for the last 25+ years, if not 40+ years, it wouldn't be a mystery in the slightest.
A lot of it is showbiz. The fact that he's transparently fake is a big part of his appeal; people take his pandering as a compliment, a sign that they're important, that he wants their approval. They love his hugging of flags.
They think John Wayne was a true American hero.
The rest of it is that he makes open racism and sexism acceptable.
Correct. Trump learned a lot from his forays into the world of professional wrestling. He learned the power of kayfabe and the allure of performative cruelty. He noted that just as many people root for the heel as the face.
I know why. It's because the Democratic party repels them. Some of that is progressives holding the whip hand. Some of it is the Squad being noisome. Some of it is general Democratic unwillingness to go after homeless and shoplifters. Some if it is opposition to efforts to rezone detached home neighborhoods to R4. A lot of it is discomfort with the rapid and large demographic change over the last 50 years.
Trump addresses those issue rhetorically but it's not so much that they like him or his policies all that much. It's that the Democrats aren't the party it was 30 years ago.
Welcome to the future.
(Kevin's post is interesting in that he never considers distaste for the (Dem) opposition. Uses the word "support" four times. That's some of it but a lot is "rejection" of the alternative, a word he doesn't use.)
What an interesting list of Faux News straw-men. What "whip" would that be? What crime have homeless people committed that warrants "going after" them? So far as the efforts to rezone, don't worry, we're not coming for your neighborhood in Lower Mudflats.
Regarding the homeless, of course there's not much crime when cities don't enforce any laws. You think the situation in San Francisco is acceptable? Homeless doing drugs out in the open, mentally ill harassing people, defecating on the sidewalks, shoplifting to the point that stores are closing or putting all their inventory under lock and key? These things don't show up on the crime statistics because the city leaders are choosing to ignore them. That once great city has turned into an unlivable hell hole. That's what she meant by "going after the homeless and shoplifters".
You really are watching too much Fox “news”.
I moved to San Francisco in 1980 and lived there for 17 years. I would much prefer living in today’s SF to the SF of then.
Are you saying all those issues don't exist? Or that they are just confined to a small area so that they are irrelevant to most people? Surely all the news reports of businesses shutting down or locking their inventory are not completely fabricated? Surely the videos of homeless and drug addicts are not Hollywood studio productions?
I’m not saying problems don’t exist. I’m saying they are better than in the past, at least as far as crime is concerned. There are more homeless but there was certainly a lot of that in the past. I don’t think San Francisco’s problems are any worse than most other major cities. San Francisco is famously liberal so the right wing press likes to accentuate its problems and gloss over the good things it offers. San Francisco is a city/county that cares about its people. Note that if the USA had San Francisco’s COVID death rate about 700,00 Americans would still be alive.
I just googled "homeless problem in San Francisco". None of the 24 articles on the first page of results are from Fox News. All of them (at least from glancing at the few lines of description below the link) discuss the types of things I mentioned.
Another story that was just published in the last few hours. (And not from Fox News.)
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12314229/San-Francisco-Safeway-stores-install-security-gates-self-checkout-kiosks-bid-thwart-thieves-city-crime-rates-soar-forcing-retailers-shutter.html
So your proof is... that the story is mostly manufactured outrage?
Gosh, it's almost like you're telling on yourself.
Homelessness is invisible to 90% of the US population, so how is it a problem for people that live outside SFO,, unless Foxnews...
When in reality this is a problem of housing affordability.
To Republicans like you, when, exactly was SF ever a great city? I grew up in SC in the 1970's-1980's, and I can assure you that those salt of earth real Americans thought SF was a den of iniquity full of faggots and hippies way back then. Oh, and those salt of the earth real Americans were overtly and proudly racist homophobes (to name just 2 of their wonderful traits) which is why I moved to this unlivable hell hole 25 years ago.
Oh, and kindly do, with the utmost of respect, go f*ck yourself.
WTF?? Anyone you don’t agree with you tell them to “go f*ck yourself”? What is wrong with you?
When they're liars, sure.
"The situation"
What situation?
Pray tell, what are these laws, and what's your evidence they're being enforced at a lower rate? C'mon, graph it.
It’s been like 5 years since “the Squad” were last culturally or politically relevant lol
I think you're right. To Republicans, Trump is the liberal-slayer.
"I think you're right. To Republicans, Trump is the liberal-slayer."
Which is weird, because he has lost every single time (and generally lost pretty hard) in every significant contest with "liberals" except for that one time in 2016. Lost to Biden, loses in court left and right, caused the loss of the Senate and ennervated support for republicans in what should have been a pro-Republican midterm election. The guy is a big fat loser.
You have to use a very slidy sliding scale to give him some wins: He wasn't removed from office by impeachment. He hasn't been sent to jail (yet). Avoided war with North Korea.
Well, 2016 was a big win, and 2024 would be bigger. Meanwhile, Trump Republicans now control the House of Representatives, and Trump appointees have swung the Supreme Court to a strong conservative majority.
So you're saying that they're cheaters, and that's all that matters?
I'm not sure that he's that outdated or past his prime like the blog post implies, though I can only guess in the broadest strokes as I'm not his audience.
but he still seems way more real and way more entertaining than any of the other candidates, and he's still a serious republican Canidates in that he will support Republican priorities, nominate judges, etc. while being more entertaining and blunt.
It is astounding that they keep supporting him in spite of his ”incandescent stupidity”. I feel for The Onion. How do they compete?
This just published:
Miles Taylor, the former chief of staff in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, recounts the alleged conversation in Blowback: A Warning To Save Democracy From the Next Trump, published Tuesday by Atria. A critic for Kirkus called the book “another rousing plea to all Americans to stand against authoritarianism.”
Taylor writes that during a meeting in March 2019, Trump expressed his displeasure with ranchers in south Texas using border wall doors to graze their cattle near the Rio Grande.
“No doors. I don’t want doors," Trump said, according to Taylor. “How crazy is this? There are doors in the border wall? It’s stupid. They can just walk up, open the door, and thousands of [migrants] rush in.”
DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen pushed back on Trump’s assertion, but the former president ignored her, saying, “Give the ranchers ladders. They can use ladders to get to the other side, but not doors. You could use small fire trucks. Call the local fire stations, and use the ladders on their trucks to help them get over.”
Trump apparently did not explain how cows—quadrupedal mammals that lack human dexterity—might make use of the ladders.
OH wait--you meant that was published as an actual article, not on the satirical Onion?
I know Mr. Taylor is a fixture on MSNBC now, but that book details some insane behavior on his part.
"To manage anxiety attacks, Taylor abused alcohol and prescription drugs. He was hospitalised after overdosing on caffeine, alcohol, marijuana and Xanax, at levels that had killed other patients. After revealing his identity, he received death threats, took on a bodyguard and was forced to shuttle between safe houses. Taylor now writes: “The public fight against Donald Trump cost me my home, my job and savings, friendships, a relationship, and my family’s security, temporarily putting me on the run. Late one evening in a Virginia high-rise, it also nearly cost me my life.” This last point is a reference to how, alone with a gun on election night in 2020, Taylor contemplated shooting himself."
Yikes!
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/jul/18/miles-taylor-whistleblower-trump-biden-interview
Of course you think that someone who was hounded by abuse shouldn't be trusted.
Poor guy.
People really don't like the Left. I'm not talking about a dislike for Liberals or Democrats (though there is undoubtedly a lot of that out there as well); rather,
I'm talking about a dislike for the far Left's obsession with various issues relating to identity. The words racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia have been so overused and abused as to almost lose all meaning. Rather than actually getting anyone to focus on legitimate instances of these problems, the overuse of these terms forces people to tune them out.
And Trump doesn't just defy the Leftist scolds in a rhetorical or political manner (like DeSantis); he actively embodies all that the far Left despises. He's a rich, white, old, entitled, male who brags about abusing women, cheating on his taxes, and disliking Mexicans (among others).
But here's the most important point of all: he gets away with it. After the infamous Access Hollywood tape came out, Trump won the Presidency! His pearl-clutching enemies declared him and his followers to be deplorables, and Trump responded by putting them all in their place. People love to see a clown successfully mock the self-appointed and self-righteous elites. Trump's fans almost literally worship him for it. And no one else - and it may not even be close - has gotten away with so much against so many for so long.
I suspect that a Democrat politician could do a lot to deflate some of Trump's mysterious hold on his followers by simply admitting that the far Left really is a problem. There are a few Liberal commentators and high profile personalities who point out the problem of the censorious and illiberal left (Jon Chait, John McWhorter, JK Rowling), but in general most Liberals act like a pack of terrified sheep who refuse to call out the problem in their own ranks. But that approach just further empowers trump. The Democrats could do a lot to steal his thunder and undercut his appeal by finally admitting that the far Left should stop condemning all speech it doesn't like as violence and all dissenters as morally compromised.
Leonard, the "far left" is a tiny minority who would be ignored were it not for Faux News giving them a platform. They were ignored for the fifty-two years between 1968 when "Students for a Democratic Society" imploded after the Democratic Convention and 2020 when "Wokeism" became a thing after the George Floyd demonstrations.
Yes, there are a lot of priggish scolds in academia, especially among young people. But Heaven forfend that people who at one time would have been locked up for being "different" should stand up for themselves and call out bullies these days. The Horror. I'm going to have the vapors.
Man up and admit that your "tribe" is a bunch of bullies who love to torture people who are "different". HOW they're different doesn't really matter to a bully.
In response to my assertion that the far left should stop attacking the character, or questioning the morality, of all who dare question its assertions, you reply:
“Man up and admit that your ‘tribe’ is a bunch of bullies who love to torture people who are ‘different.’ HOW they're different doesn't really matter to a bully.”
Do you need me to identify the irony here? I pointed out the self-destructive tendency the Left has of assassinating the character of all dissenters, and you respond by attempting to assassinate my character.
When I reference a style of anti-intellectual ad hominem discourse that emanates from the Left, obsesses over questions of identity, and further empowers trump, your post serves as a good example of what I’m talking about.
Leo - as an old dude I almost feel guilty that my personal habits and beliefs threatened so many republicans' sense of identity. I was raised catholic and went to church weekly growing up, but by the early 1980's I stopped going. None of my siblings or in-laws attend mass. None of my nieces or nephews or their spouses attend mass. One, I think, goes to one of those fake evangelical churches. The whole idea of christian belief was lost on an extended family of nearly 40 people across 3 generations starting in the 1980s. Some of these people are actually republicans yet they also abandoned Christianity.
What caused that? Maybe the failure is yours. Maybe the failure belongs to the Christians who so soiled themselves with hatred and selfishness such that lots of people just aren't interested in their bullshit anymore?
No doubt there are some on the so called left who are really screwed up. They explain away criminal behavior and substance abuse as the result of systemic racism or lead poisoning or some such thing rather than admitting these people just have serious character flaws. But all that pales in comparison, in my opinion, to the complete nonsense coming from the republican party of the 1990's and beyond. They just couldn't figure out how to appeal to anyone other than the wealthy, white, and Christian. It worked out OK for me. I'm a comfortable upper middle class white guy. Yet the republican religious brand is toxic to me. It's hateful.
Now, I don't give a flip what republicans think about anything. They have no credibility left at all after throwing in with trump. (And they didn't have much before that.) Good luck!
Accurately describing the character(s) of a person or a group of people is not "assassinating the character".
True. But that comment was not accurate.
I disagree.
It isn’t as though you haven’t been guilty of name-calling:
Anandakos’ first two paragraphs answers this: these people aren’t ‘in our own ranks’. Ask them — the extremists you are pointing to don’t identify with any political party and generally condemn liberals as enthusiastically as they do conservatives. Few spend significant effort to support core liberal issues like healthcare, and income and wealth inequality. They are indeed a tiny minority with little to no influence on policy. Where their activity has been consequential, the situations have often self-corrected (I’m thinking of the Hamline University affair, for example). There is no reason for liberals to give them undeserved attention.
You could be right. I think it's hard for Democratic candidates to win by attacking the left, though. Primaries can be tough.
Obsession with identity?
Gosh, far be it people don't like being targeted for discrimination and abuse for their identity!
Trump supporters like to call themselves “Patriots” but I think they are actually Royalists. Trump is their idea of a “King”. Religious leaders say he is appointed by God and compare him to King David. He is said to have “The common touch”, which people love in royalty. His homes have the gaudy fake royal look. He has royal looking fake “Crests” made for him. When people address him as “Sir” I’m sure he hears “Sire”. He does as he pleases in a Mel Brooks “It’s good to be the King” way.
DeSantis is more like a dictator. He says the right words but is just a commoner.
Yep. Sadly, we didn't get rid of all the Tories when we had the chance.
One of my relatives from the Revolutionary War -- not a direct ancestor; a cousin many times removed -- a Robert Bullington was "bound over" by what was the equivalent of a Grand Jury for trial in 1780 for killing his brother-in-law-in-law -- the husband of his wife's sister -- one David Nance. Nance was a known Tory who still lived in southern Virginia that late in the war. Playing with fire, he was.
Anyway, Robert killed him, pretty publicly, and was arrested. The grand jury found "probable cause" and ....... that was that. There was never a trial, and Robert lived until 1822 at which time he passed on a significant legacy to his five sons and two daughters.
Robert's wife's father, William Crenshaw, wrote his daughter Mary -- the one who married Nance -- out of his will, but made a plan for David and Mary Crenshaw Nance's children, which was to execute only after she died.
I include this historical tale only as an example of what should have happened to ALL the Tories. Perhaps we would never have had a Civil War had they been liquidated.
This blog is beginning to stink with the fetid aroma of the Greedy Old Party. Not you, Kevin; the trolls like Leonard.
This isn't a comment in support of Leo's position, but I think some people on this blog goes WAY too far in labeling anyone they don't agree with a troll.
Would you agree that leo is a troll, yes or no? Would you agree that Atticus is a troll, yes or no? Because if you don't reply in the affiermative to both of those specific questions, well, all I got to say is that your troll detector is giving you nonsense readers, and that, unfortunately, I heed very little of what you have to say on the subject.
I don't follow the comments on this blog super closely and can't say I'm familiar with Leo's comments, other than the ones on this particular post. I wouldn't consider those to be an example of trolling. Clearly he is posting things most people here don't agree with, but it doesn't seem like it's solely to incite people. The comments are pretty calm, reasoned (even if I don't agree with the reasoning), and at least SEEM genuine.
I do have a bit more recollection of Atticus's comments, and I'd say he definitely seems more troll-like. Definitely racist (however, I wouldn't say being racist automatically makes someone a troll).
There was some poster not too long ago whose name I forget who was a clear example of a troll in my opinion. Mostly nonsense just meant to rile people up. As far as I've seen, Leo doesn't fit the bill, but like I said, I haven't been keeping a file of his comments.
What have I said that is racist? And, I never comment just to rile people up. True, I know my opinions are not often shared by the majority of commenters here, but debating and sharing dissenting opinions does not mean you're a troll.
It's the feedback loop.
The majority of folks who want to contest him also want to appeal to his voters, so they support his flailing defense while they hope and pray that he gets a criminal conviction before the end of the primary season.
The more the GOP voters see this, the more they're convinced that Trump is truly an aggrieved target of a political witch hunt -- if other trusted GOP leaders are saying the same thing, it must be true.
When the vast majority of the echo chamber, from Fox News to GOP politicians, is saying the same thing -- that Trump is an innocent and good man -- what do you expect GOP voters to do?
As for the GOP who are pretending to support Trump, well, they're stuck in their own, idiotic trap. They had a chance to break away after J6, but they came back to embrace him.
Maybe it is just the fact that Trump has been around forever. He's been a nationally known celebrity since the 80s. We seem to be in a political moment where people are drawn to politicians who have been known for a long time - the comfort of the familiar.
There appears to be a real generational preference going on, and Gen X is not liked at all in politics. Obama, Biden, Clinton, Trump, W, etc are all Boomers or Silent Gen. Politicians in their 50s, the heart of Gen X, really struggle on the national stage. Harris, McCarthy, DeSantis, Klobuchar - no matter the party, no one loves them. Paul Ryan, the Gen X politician who seemed to get the most love from party and press fell from grace very fast. Others, like Buttegieg, fail to get much momentum once they are up against the oldsters.
I don't think it's a surprise that someone named Kennedy is getting lots of press. Looking back to the 20th century seems to be part of the zeitgeist right now. Trump's appeal is part of that.
Because. They. Are. Psychological. Authoritarians. How many times does this need to be repeated, FFS?!?
Okay, not _every last one_ of them is. But once you strip out the low-information morons and those trapped in their church cults, that's basically what you've got. Psychological authoritarians will not let go of their support for someone until they are definitively humiliated, and the Fox bubble will not let that happen to Trump until he is thrown into prison in a jumpsuit that is somehow less orange than his skin tone - and maybe not even then.
"It’s not that the specific issues are unimportant. Our daily political debates still revolve around them, whether D.E.I., abortion, etc. But they become secondary, in a sense, to the gut-level hatred and mistrust that now defines our politics, so that almost whatever issue one party puts in front of its voters will rouse the strongest passions. What matters now isn’t the specific objects of scorn but the intensity with which partisans are likely to feel that those targets threaten them existentially."
Yeah - I think "gut level hatred" is a perfectly fine reason. And this is where I part company with my fellow democratic voters. I see no reason to help other Americans given that they are mostly the enemy.
"They see the face of America changing, with white people set to become a minority of Americans in the not-too-distant future. They see church membership declining and some churches closing. They see interracial and same-sex couples in TV commercials. They support Trump because they think he is the last, best hope for bringing back the America they knew and loved."
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/19/opinion/polarization-nationalism-patriotism-history.html
Another fun quote from that article...
"I asked Arlie Hochschild — a sociologist at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of “Strangers in Their Own Land” who has been working on a new book about Eastern Kentucky — about the threatening policies conservatives believe liberals are imposing on them. She wrote back: “Regarding ‘threats felt by the right’ I’d say, all of them — especially ‘trans’ issues — evoke a sense that ‘this is the last straw.’ ” In their minds, “the left is now unhinged, talking to itself in front of us, while trying to put us under its cultural rule.”
On this point, I am a bit sympathetic. Given the truly small number of trans people, it is astonishing to me that democrats were willing to die on that hill. But hey - we're here now. It's not entirely unreasonable to view democrats as defending criminals like George Floyd (who absolutely should not have died for his crimes) and freaky trannies like the ones Biden invited to the white house last month (and showed their tits!) Oh well.
The flip side of that also applies. Given the truly small number of trans people, why do Republicans pay so much attention to them? It has been reported that several states have passed bills relating to trans girls in high school sports even though there was not one single child in those states that would be affected by the bills. Didn't those state legislatures have something better to do than legislate about a completely non-existent problem?
I never really understood that argument. Why is it better to be reactive with legislation? Even if there hadn't been a trans kid playing on a girls sports team in your particular state, everyone has seen that happen in other states and schools. What' wrong with being proactive?
"I never really understood that argument. Why is it better to be reactive with legislation?"
Exactly! Next I hope that republican legislatures will turn to the (potential!) scourges of vampires, werewolves, and the Loch Ness Monster. Sure, liberals will say "why do you care about this?" and "please, can we use government to solve real problems?" but they just aren't interested in being proactive.
After all, Republicans are all about proactively addressing looming issues of great importance, which is why right after legislating about who can use which bathroom and who is sufficiently female to play junior high softball, they'll get right to work on climate change, I'm sure.
Your argument is nonsensical. There have been boys playing on girls team. As far I know, there have not been any instances of vampires and werewolves.
There have not been.
Except in your imagination of harassing children.
Sure there has. And you know there has.
FOAD, you malicious little troll. Your rhetorical dishonesty is legendary.
It is almost unheard of for legislation to be passed in anticipation of a problem. It might, in principle, be a good thing but it just doesn't happen until some politician sees an advantage in stirring up "the base" with a non-existent problem.
But, in these cases, the problem has occurred. Even if it hasn't occurred in the that state (which is almost certainly not the case, rather there probably just hasn't been media coverage), it's well documented it has occurred in other states. Wouldn't that be sufficient to pass a law?
What benefit does it do to harass girls with genital and chromosomal inspections, exactly?
DISCLOSURE I am a boomer, Veteran, gun owner
Registered as non-affiliated and have been that way for decades
Over the last 5 decades "we" have been exposed to a big change on the availability, and focus of how we get our news, and just how that news is represented. Where are the investigative journalists?
Whatever happened to a reporters breaking a news story? Does that happen now? We are getting our stories NOW from Congress or our favorite political leaders
This raises so many issues. We believe politicians over scientists and medical doctors when it came to disease reporting
We believe all politicians over other sources. Why? It is in THEIR best interest to get re-elected. They can (apparently) lie without consequence. Money rolls into their public and private coffers.
And we do nothing about it.
But we BELIEVE them for many reasons
Confirmation bias is probably the biggest reason. If someone talks like we do we like that person - we call them unpretentious and "real". The problem is this - how do we tell what is "truth" these days?
My generation is part of the problem, no doubt about that. We have our own prejudices and beliefs and we bristle when anyone questions them.
I don't get it.
Who can we believe?
The actual experts who have risen to the top of their academic fields via peer review, and the journalists who talk to those experts and have a track record of doing good work.
People don't "believe" the politicians - that's a category error. The politicians tell them what they already want to hear. The average boomer with rightwing brainworms does not have some sophisticated, MMFA- or Jay Rosen-style critique at the heart of why they don't trust the media - they are simply mad that the media is not telling every story with the rightwing slant they demand. Bigger newsroom budgets for investigative journalism would be great, and would also do almost nothing to get people to trust journalists more. (Has all the investigative journalism on Trump's obvious financial and sexual crimes done anything meaningful when it comes to fostering trust in the media?)
I'm afraid I'm going to have to go with Assholiness.
I think it is simple refusal to admit error. Everyone hates to do this, but conservatives, in my experience, far more than liberals. If no one cares about the error, if admitting to it and correcting it doesn't open them to criticism -- "I should have ordered the fish" errors -- then they can do it. But the more others focus on the errors and condemn them, the more committed they are to denying that they are errors at all. So we are still fighting over slavery and all its associated and subsequent horrors. We are still fighting over climate change. We are still fighting over female autonomy.
The more Trump is egregiously, humiliatingly ill-suited for the presidency, the more shame he brings to the US and his supporters, the more committed they are to him. They've dug the hole too deep to stop digging.
The doubledown!
In what way are we still fighting over slavery? Are you saying there are people that are pro-slavery?
Agree with many points made above -- he says he hates the people and things they hate, he's entertaining in a WWE style, he behaves like he's a king and they like both authoritarianism and "royalty," they're invested in him and don't want to admit a mistake, and he appeals to their sense of victimhood, which they use as a source of grievance and a counter to observations about their privileges, and which they cultivate because being oppressed fosters solidarity and makes them more like Jesus.
I think the one thing I would add is that, because he's supposedly rich, he lives a lavish lifestyle surrounded by beautiful women, he has a squad of flunkies whom he treats like dirt but who still obey him, and he is contemptuous of laws and regulations that get in the way of what he wants to do, he's a role model for them. The men want to be like him, and the women want their men to be like him. They identify with him, so his victories are their victories, and his enemies are their enemies. He is the totem of the Tribe (and Tribe is very important to these folks). To abandon him would be to sacrifice a significant part of their identity, both as individuals and members of the Tribe, and that's a very difficult thing for anyone to do.
That long-term celebrity status does seem very significant to his appeal.
For a long time Americans - especially those who are less politically savvy - have loved the idea of non-politicians in government. The chaos of Trump's term in office just reinforces the idea that he isn't really a "politician." An actual politician would have a pile of experienced people they could tap for roles, and would understand how the system works! He had decades of celebrity before, and they clearly still see him as such.
First, leo1008 and Dana Decker are right that the "left" repels a lot of people. Why? Several reasons:
First, it seems that Democrats discuss every issue in terms of how it will affect various individual groups, rather than the country as a whole. You'll find virtually every left of center politician and Op Ed columnist using people of color, Asians, women, etc. to describe the impact of virtually every policy or event. And these terms are absurdly broad -- two randomly selected 'people of color' probably have nothing in common.
Second, the Left is always trying to change the terms of debate, but since they've actually won, they're forced into increasingly absurd positions. The level of racism in this country is incredibly lower today than 40-60 years, but the Left can't stop talking about the US being a bastion of white supremacy. The Left is responsible for California's state Board of Education passing regulations discouraging schools from offering 8th grade algebra, to improve "equity", which is implicitly so racist it's mind boggling.
Gay and Trans rights are pretty much protected by even this Supreme Court, but because some people think it might be a bad idea to treat children with puberty blockers, or tell 2nd graders that they can choose whether they're a boy or a girl, the Left treats the US as the second coming of Nazi Germany. And every time that someone says "people with uteruses," we lose more votes from the broad middle.
I really thought that we'd get wiped out in the 2022 midterms. The Supreme Court saved us by delivering the worst decision in my lifetime: Dobbs, a terribly reasoned piece of s**t which imposes significant concrete harms on half the population. Democrats should be wiping the floor with Republicans, but D politicians are just too scared to call BS on some of the most extreme left positions, and that hurts us all.
What the Left is saying is that people should be left alone to make their own choices. It all boils down to that. The reason the Left chooses that hill to die on is that's it's always the same hill. None of these horrors affect people outside the targeted group at all. Same-sex marriage has no effect on my hetero marriage. How people deal with their children's identity issues has no effect on me. Whether a woman has an abortion has no effect on me.
To say that the racism situation in our country may be better than it was 60 years ago may be true, but when is the last time a white man was shot and killed over a broken taillight? Or pulled over for doing 65 in a 70, which I read about last night?
I don't get the animosity towards a group who just wants people to be left alone.
It’s how the Left does it that is irritating. I agree 100% people should be left alone to do what they want and laws shouldn’t be passed against them. However I do not see racism behind every stupid ass thing done by normal people ( not right freaks).
As a native southerner, my theory is that what makes this intolerable to conservatives is the notion that the law should protect those who are different, instead of reinforcing their second-class status. Even back in the Reagan era, even in the Deep South, LGBT peers weren’t protected from bullying, but most managed to get along and several moved back home after venturing away. Gay men in stereotypically gay professions like hair stylist or theatre artistic director were perfectly fine, even well-connected. But the “last straw” is less about visibility than it is actual equality, when they can no longer take comfort in that othering. It’s easy enough to be superficially pleasant without approving of someone, as long as both parties know who’s superior, after all. But marriage and inheritance and all of the legal markers of legitimate relationships mean losing that sense of superiority, because the government no longer supports second-class citizenship.
TL;DR: legal equality means that disapproval of others has to happen on a personal level instead of a political one, and it also takes away some of the I-am-so-tolerant self-satisfaction of having “friends” who are Others. Messing with conservatives’ self-regard really pisses them off.
"Same-sex marriage has no effect on my hetero marriage. How people deal with their children's identity issues has no effect on me. Whether a woman has an abortion has no effect on me."
If an arsonist burns down a house on the next block it has no effect on me. That doesn't mean I should be ambivalent about it.
As a republican, I can say you are completely correct. These things you point out are exactly what most people I know (the majority of whom are republicans) recognize in the left. It just drives the center-righters further to the right.
I think one of the issues we will always face is that there are things that exist that we don't really want to exist, and the Left keeps bringing them up.
The public doesn't want "late term abortion," for example. But they really don't want to think about why those procedures are considered necessary. Some of the fetal abnormalities that can occur are truly horrific - much better to assume the only thing that can go wrong is Down Syndrome.
It's easy to be against hormone blockers and genital surgery as long as you don't have to think about some of the ways actual human sexual development can totally ignore the desire for "just two genders." Intersex individuals come in all different forms, and it used to be standard to do surgery on their genitals without any conservatives complaining. But, of course, that was back when gender was chosen for them, not by them.
For example, there is androgen insensitivity syndrome, which can lead to women without uteruses. There are also physicians who think it is best to remove their undescended testicles prior to puberty, so as to avoid tumors. Much more pleasant to think that all gender surgery is just decadent liberals making things up.
Puberty is occurring earlier than ever, with some very young children beginning puberty at age 6 or 7. And there are kids who never, ever seemed to conform to what our society sees as their gender. I've known some of them, and not respecting their individual desires for names and pronouns just seems cruel to me.
Most of us want the world to be fair and easy to understand. But it just isn't that way. It is very complicated, messy, and unfair. The Left is attempting to navigate those issues, while the Right wants to ignore them, and force the misfits to hide or deny themselves. The Left doesn't always get it right, but they are at least trying to avoid the cruelty that is the alternative.
I'll point out that the issue with medicalizing trans children has nothing to do with biologically intersex children; that's a tiny percentage of children treated with puberty blockers or hormones.
Also, when 50% of Republican primary voters support Trump, that means 14% of the US voting population. The better question will be why if Trump wins the nomination, he'll get at a minimum 45% of the popular vote in the general.
See under "Good Germans."
ouch!
When there are only two teams….
(Trump threatens to murder his political enemies)
(Republicans go apeshit with joy)
Kevin Drum: His appeal is really baffling. I wonder why they like him?
Back in the 1980's I was flipping channels on TV one day and happened to catch Jimmy Bakker's show. It took less than two minutes before I asked myself, "How the hell can anyone fall for this?" Yet he had millions of followers - right up until he got indicted and convicted and served time in prison.
I'm pretty sure it's the same phenomena with Trump today. We can only hope it ends the same.
That's so funny. I had exactly the same experience!
yup. i don't know why people love terrible reality tv, rife with the worst, unrepentant assholes imaginable. but whatever the reason, that's why they love trump. desantis and the rest of the trumpist GOP espouse the same evil bullshit, but none of them could host the apprentice.
I think his initial appeal is that he serves up fear and loathing of the left in an entertaining package. He continuing support relies on confirmation bias and the backfire effect.
In any other context would a chart which bounced around between 40 and 60 (30 and 70 at the extremes) be described as “steady?”
He says the quiet part out loud.
If he were to somehow stop upsetting liberals, his support among Republicans would drop to 0% and they would go look for someone else.
They know there is no one else out there that liberals hate more and that is their sole reason for supporting him. No issues, no nuances, no reasons really, just blind hatred of the other team. They are for Trump only as long as he is the best way of expressing that hatred.
The easiest explanation for the statistics is that the category "Republican" is a self-selected category for respondents. So it's entirely possible that, as the Republican Party transitions into the Trump Party, anybody who isn't mostly or entirely onboard with Trump stops telling pollsters "I'm a Republican" which then tends to skew the results.
Here's an example to illustrate my point:
You invite 20 friends out for a pizza party. About 10 actually show up, and you order all pizzas with meat on them. A month later, you invite those same 20 friends out for another pizza party. You place the same order, thinking "well everyone liked it last time so why change it," but only 8 come this time. All the pizza is eaten though, and everybody agrees that the pizza was amazing. So another month later, you invite your 20 friends and place the same order, and now only 6 come. What's happening? You're offering the exact same thing each time, the same thing "everyone" agreed was "amazing," so what's the problem? Well, the people who hate pizza aren't motivated to show up at all... and the pizza lovers who don't like meat are getting disappointed that apparently you only have meat on offer so they're starting to bow out too. Your parties are "successful" in the sense that everyone that attends loves the food... and nobody is going to dump you as a friend solely based on the fact that you serve nothing for vegetarians to eat... but your parties are also alienating larger and larger numbers of your total friend population.
The same thing is happening to the Republican Party. Lots of people who will still vote R in the next election are being turned off by what's on the current and future Republican menu, so they stop publicly admitting to being a Republican when anybody asks. This means that the subgroup of people who still proudly tell others "I'm a Republican!" is comprised more and more of Trump lovers as time goes on.