It seems I’ve been too gullible. Again.
I’ve been struggling to understand why we elected Donald Trump. I’m working on ‘how’, too, but like it or not, almost half of voting Americans thought that Trump would be their best option.
I hate the assumption those voters were ill-informed, ignorant victims of the Fox News echo chamber. That never made much sense. You’d have to believe in some new kind of mass hysteria.
I’ve thought the Trump vote was a hail-Mary pass into American political dysfunction. I can easily see voters deciding both Democrats and Republicans are captured by a mix of big-money/big-business donors, and the way their parties are willing to do anything to be reelected. I don’t entirely agree, but I’ve already written how Republicans are morally empty and Democrats hapless.
Even though I disagreed, I thought ‘Trump as a change-agent’ had merit. It wouldn’t matter that Trump is an open liar, if you think he’s the only option that might shake things up. And the lack of options would glue his base to him despite Trump’s offensive nonsense and endless racial dog whistles.
Yeah, so I was being gullible. I want to think the best of people where I can.
On Tuesday, Trump gave up on dog whistles as too subtle. Looking at the KKK factions, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, neo-Confederates, and the other components of violent white resentment, Trump was silent for days. Then he led with the ‘both sides do it’ dog whistle. Trump briefly walked that back under pressure, before he went full-throated in his defense of the white nationalists. Keep the Confederate statues in positions of honor, Trump said, because they’re so pretty there.
Trump’s popularity has been dropping week after week, and his unpopularity has been rising (and no, they’re not two sides of the same thing). At Trump’s delayed response, his unpopularity dropped, although his popularity stayed low. Some people who didn’t like him before, changed to undecided. Trump’s later, forced denunciation didn’t fool anyone. They were words someone else wrote.
After Trump’s racist explosion on Tuesday, though, his unpopularity dropped a lot, and his popularity finally grew. People liked Trump better after he made it clear he really was a white supremacist: people weren’t as unhappy, and a significant number decided they liked him much better.
So, you know, bad on me. I let these people lie to me, and I believed them because I wanted to. I knew Trump was a racist – his actions were pretty clear – but I wanted to see Americans voting for Trump for better reasons.
But they weren’t voting for Trump despite his being the white nationalist candidate, but because of it. When he shouted out his racist cred, his base firmed, and a lot of strays joined back up.
Today, after the terrorist attack in Barcelona, Trump didn’t waste a second before calling all brown people terrorists and suggesting imaginary war crimes with pig’s blood would be the best answer.
Yeah, racist. And an idiot. And a racist. And his popularity continues to rise.
For the surprisingly large white nationalist section of his base, this is Trump delivering on his election promises. This is what they meant by ‘winning’.
