Why do they stick with him?
Why do Republican primary voters still follow Donald Trump despite all his personal demons, his seemingly innumerable legal problems, and his record as president?
Those four years were undisciplined chaos.
So what gives? Why do even soft Trumpers stand by their man?
The polls show that any “generic Republican” beats Joe Biden. And Nikki Haley, new, and seemingly sensible and persuasive (things are not always as they seem), beats Joe Biden in a walk.
And she is still barely known by the country.
So why do the Trumpers stick? Especially evangelicals?
The process is partly to blame.
There is no time. The primary process is front-end loaded, so an alternative campaign can’t build slowly.
Our party nominating system is a mess. Three things are rewarded – demagogic slogans, big money and name recognition. That’s not democracy – not in the deliberate sense.
Let’s come back to that: the process.
Time notwithstanding, Ms. Haley has doubled her support in a few short weeks and she is able to raise funds from a broad base of donors.
So, the good news is that a little under half of Republican voters do want something different in 2024, as I suspect Democratic voters do.
Perhaps 45 to 48 percent of Republicans have, thus far, not given up on their party or our politics.
That’s a second essential touchstone – despair; giving up or refusing to do so.
Let’s come back to that, too.
The press has not done well covering real issues – constitutional, economic, or human. And it is truly difficult to cover presidential competence and incompetence. Mr. Trump has made the press crazy as well as lazy. The press is distrusted.
But we cannot blame the press for voters who simply refuse to see Mr. Trump as he is – an unstable person who cannot govern and does not believe in our Constitution
So why do they stick?
I think NOT because they are all deplorables or have a “shared psychosis,” or “narcissistic symbiosis” with Mr. Trump.
I think it is because many voters see Mr. Trump as the great enemy of America’s elites, who have failed us for 50 years.
And they think the elites are attempting to bully him out of the 2024 race. Mr. Trump has effectively exploited this perception.
Indeed, some of the cases are unnecessary and others should have been combined. The January 6 case, being prosecuted by Jack Smith, is the one that matters. And it has been eclipsed.
The populist right, and for that matter left, is also not wrong about our elites.
I came of age during the Vietnam War – a war both the major parties, most of the press, and an overwhelming majority of Congress supported. Four presidents and their advisors sent young men to die for empty slogans and concepts. Without clear war goals. And long into the late 1960s and early 1970s, when they all knew it was lost, all these good leaders of men pretended to believe the opposite.
Three million people (minimally) died. Mostly civilians.
That’s when our national disillusion began. Watergate, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq I and II, the banking and real estate-induced crash, etc., all followed.
So, yes, our elites reek of bad faith and self dealing.
This is the deep, popular connection to Mr. Trump: Disillusion and reaction. And his willingness to be the wrecker, based on our rage.
Mr. Trump mirrors the radicals of the 1960s. The process and the leaders have failed, so tear down the whole damn system.
He is Abbie Hoffman in an expensive but ill-fitting suit and a clown tie.
And he’s P.T. Barnum, but a strange one.
He sells despair.
And makes it his weapon.
Do his people really buy it?
They do.
Because they have been sold on the idea that our political process is the country, is us.
It’s not.
And they have been sold on the idea that their lives should be better and they have been cheated – blue collar folk, teachers, college grads. Anyone not in the NFL or Hollywood has been robbed.
They haven’t.
They have been told the government doesn’t work, and can’t work, so often and for so long, by left and right, that they take it as truth.
It is untruth.
I don’t think Trumpism is classically or inherently fascistic, or even nationalistic. It springs from despair. Sometimes disappointed entitlement and cheap, unearned despair. But sometimes (in rural America and Appalachia) genuine social and economic disenfranchisement.
Despair in any case.
People wreck when they have given up.
But bad leadership and petrified process do not justify the wrecking ball.They are prudential failures, not fundamental ones.
The people sending small checks to Ms. Haley have not given up.
We need to add to their numbers daily. Americans are an inventive and resilient people. Our problems are not larger than us.
This "No Tribe" really made me realize how reactionary the Trump ideology is.
What struck me was when you said Trump was selling despair. It opened my eyes as the definition of despair is,
> "the complete loss or absence of hope"
Obama was selling "Hope".
Trump is selling "No Hope".
It was truly a revelation.
Thanks
My PhD sister believes Trump has a cult like following. God description.
Then there is a fraternity brother and golf partner of mine who was a 30 year educator but wouldn't watch the Congressional investigation because the witnesses "were all Democrats". We knew then and now almost every witness was a Republican