After Tuesday’s losses, some political commentators are wondering if Donald Trump is finally losing support among his base. Michael Kruse recently visited the town of coal and steel town of Johnstown, PA, a year after he and Trump visited it at a campaign stop where Trump promised to bring back the coal and steel industries. Kruse says that even though Trump has not delivered on any of the promises that he made to them in his campaign stop, the people he spoke to last year still back him, mainly because Trump attacks the people that they hate, and they take at face value Trump’s “insistent declarations of success no matter the reality” and his inveterate blame-shifting.
At a raucous rally in late October, right downtown in their minor-league hockey arena, he vowed to restore the mines and the mills that had been the lifeblood of the region until they started closing some 40 years ago, triggering the “American carnage” Trump would talk about in his inaugural address: massive population loss, shrinking tax rolls, communal hopelessness and ultimately a raging opioid epidemic. When Trump won, people here were ecstatic. But they’d heard generations of politicians make big promises before, and they were also impatient for him to deliver.
“Six months to a year,” catering company owner Joey Del Signore told me when we met days after the election. “A couple months,” retired nurse Maggie Frear said, before saying it might take a couple of years. “He’s just got to follow through with what he said he was going to do,” Schilling said last November. Back then, there was an all-but-audible “or else.”
…But what I wasn’t prepared for was how readily these same people had abandoned the contract he had made with them. Their satisfaction with Trump now seems untethered to the things they once said mattered to them the most.
“I don’t know that he has done a lot to help,” Frear told me. Last year, she said she wouldn’t vote for him again if he didn’t do what he said he was going to do. Last week, she matter-of-factly stated that she would. “Support Trump? Sure,” she said. “I like him.”
When I asked Del Signore about the past year here, he said he “didn’t see any change because we got a new president.” He nonetheless remains an ardent proponent. “He’s our answer.”
I asked Schilling what would happen if the next three years go the way the last one has.
“I’m not going to blame him,” Schilling said. “Absolutely not.”
Is there anything that could change her mind about Trump?
“Nope,” she said.
…This reality ought to get the attention of anyone who thinks they will win in 2018 or 2020 by running against Trump’s record. His supporters here, it turns out, are energized by his bombast and his animus more than any actual accomplishments. For them, it’s evidently not what he’s doing so much as it is the people he’s fighting. Trump is simply and unceasingly angry on their behalf, battling the people who vex them the worst—“obstructionist” Democrats, uncooperative establishment Republicans, the media, Black Lives Matter protesters and NFL players (boy oh boy do they hate kneeling NFL players) whom they see as ungrateful, disrespectful millionaires.
And they love him for this.
…By last week, though, John George told me that despite what they might have said people here didn’t really believe Trump would make good on all his promises. “Deep down inside,” he said, “I don’t think anybody thought the steel mills were going to come back.”
…So many people in so many other areas of the country watch with dismay and existential alarm Trump’s Twitter hijinks, his petty feuds, his penchant for butting into areas where the president has no explicit, policy-relevant role. All of that only animates his supporters here. For them, Trump is their megaphone. He is the scriptwriter. He is a singularly effective, intuitive creator of a limitless loop of grievance and discontent that keeps them in absolute lockstep.
There is undoubtedly something satisfying in having someone in high office loudly and publicly articulate all one’s own grievances and doing so can carry Trump a long way. There is also the psychological fact that once one has publicly committed strong support for something (a politician, a religion, an ideology, even a sports team), one finds it hard to admit that one was wrong in one’s judgment and walk it back. Such people will try and find a reason, any reason, to justify their continued support and will even strengthen it, as some of the people in Kruse’s article seem to have done. So we should not expect large-scale abandonment of Trump as long as his rhetoric targets the people they hate.
But there may be a small slice of people who were lukewarm, who silently voted for Trump despite their misgivings. It is these people who might drift away. Given the delicate balance, it would not take a large number of such people to switch their votes to cause problems for Republicans in future elections, and Tuesday’s results might be a sign of that slight shift though it is too small a sample to draw deep conclusions.
What we can be sure of is that Trump will retain enough strong and vocal support that he will be able to hold rallies with the enthusiastic crowds that he needs to feed his ego, and this will convince him that he is popular and so he will continue to do what he is doing. Trump’s “insistent declarations of success no matter the reality” and his inveterate blame-shifting are a potent source of self-delusion. He will continue to think he is winning whatever others might say, so why should he change?
Funny, and depressingly ironic, how these same people complain about “identity politics” among those on the left.
But it won’t.
Hillary Clinton was the worst candidate any party has ever fielded (evidence: she lost. To Trump). It is hard to imagine the Democrats coming up with a worse candidate. I have every confidence that in 2020, they will manage it.
She was a capable, intelligent woman who had to fight entrenched misogyny, decades of right-wing attacks that managed to get embedded in left-wing minds, and a press that was more than willing to keep bringing up those e-mails and give her opponent untold free publicity (to the point that they would rather air an empty Donald podium instead of Clinton giving a speech on policy), as well as Republican efforts in states they controlled to make sure as few Democratic voters as possible were able to exercise their franchise.
And she still won the popular vote. It took an antiquated sop to slave-holding states to get Donald into office.
This isn’t true -- In the specific case of coal/environment and immigration , he has actually done stuff that he said he would . (Gutting the EPA, relaxing environmental protections , trying to reduce legal immigration etc). He msy not have delivered legislation but that is nowhere near the same thing. Most of his supporters see him as for e.g. trying to block immigration (with the ban) or halve legal immigration -- He might get blocked by the courts or by the Republican party or by the bogeymen liberal elite which will make them support him even more
@sonofrojblake
Bah. Hillary has her flaws (Specifically her support of big money and all kinds of wars) -- but she was competent , she was progressive and she was goddamned tough (unsurprisingly that works against women). I wish people would stop perpetuating this myth of how she was the worst candidate ever when you just need to look at the fucking republican clown nominees -- every single one of them was way worse than Hillary could ever be.
If a voter looked at Hillary and Trump and said meh more of the same thing or Hillary is worse , the problem is with the voter . if you listened to the Hollywood tape and said Im still going to vote Trump , the problem is with the voter , not with Hillary. If you looked at Trump vowing to destroy the EPA etc and still voted for Trump , problem is with the voter.
Stop absolving the voters of their problem. A lot of us who stay in America but have migrated here from other countries are not surprised at all that Americans would prefer a racist , sexist boor over a woman -- Probably some Americans wont be surprised too. Stop trying to pretend that if it was just Sanders , he would have won -- maybe he would have , maybe he wouldn’t (But noone would claim that Sanders was the worst candidate if he lost to Trump!)
Ill also note that if say Sanders was the candidate , and he won , and the House and the Senate remained as they are what would have been his 9 month accomplishment ? What would he have done that he claimed he would do ?
Oh push off. So did Gore.
FIFY.
She lost. To Trump.
Pesky voters, voting the “wrong” way.
If that had happened, he would have been. That’s what an election IS. Isn’t it?
Then again, if Sanders had been the candidate, polls showed he was MORE popular than Trump. Polls showed Clinton was LESS popular than Trump (the only candidate EVER to poll lower than Trump, as I recall).
He’d have struggled, no doubt. But he’d at least have had reasons to point to. What excuses does Trump have? (Other than inexperience and incompetence, which he is literally using as an excuse).
As long as Trump makes racism publically acceptable these folks will continue to love him.
The inability of Trump and the Republican clowns to get Obamacare repealed may account for his hold on his base.
This isn’t complicated. “Intelligent,” “capable,” “tough” are not qualities that make a good candidate in an election. “Appeals to voters” is literally the only quality that makes a good candidate. If Hillary didn’t have that (and, lest we forget, she lost to Trump) then she wasn’t a good candidate, by definition.
#4 Tabby, #5 Deepak
You’re forgetting that sonof’s understanding of the term ‘good candidate’ is essentially a no true Scotsman fallacy: a good candidate wins. There’s no point debating debating it further with him.
Oh and apparently invivoMark thinks similarly.
To rip off Flavia Dzodan: my politics will be in power, or it will be bullshit.
The first priority of any politician who isn’t in it entirely for themselves is to GAIN POWER. Otherwise you’re just pleasuring yourself on the sidelines while the grown ups take care of business. The right never forget this. It’s enormously frustrating when the left do. (As they seem to have in the UK currently)
sonofrojblake:
That’s quite informative regarding your mental schema.
She appealed to 2,865,075 more voters than Trump. If appeal is the only qualification, than by your own definition, she was the better candidate.
#12
You phrased that the wrong way around. If, as a politician, your first priority is power, then you are in it entirely for yourself.
#14 Dave
She was better,but not better by a wide enough margin to overcome the biased Electoral College system, therefore she wasn’t better after all!
#10 Holms,
You appear to have forgotten that “candidate” and “president” are two different words that mean two different things.
#14 Dave
She didn’t campaign AT ALL in Wisconsin, and did poorly in most swing states, which are the only states where your vote matters in a presidential election. Moreover, voter turnout was mediocre at best, and it’s the responsibility of a successful campaign (and thus candidate) to get the best voter turnout for their side that they can.
Why is the discussion about Trump’s electoral appeal a year ago, when the post is about his enduring appeal to some?
(I think I know why)
I see so “Appeals to voters is literally the only quality that makes a good candidate”. Campaigning properly in the right states is also the only quality that matters. Also getting voters to turn out is also the only quality. Any other “only qualities” that matter?
#17
Wrong, but I’m glad you phrased your comment that way, because it allowed me to see where you and sonof are going awry. When you and he use ‘good candidate’ to mean ‘candidate that won the election,’ you are mixing it up with the word ‘president.’
Oh and I’ll note:
Which she achieved, by a margin of nearly three million.
Not what I said -- What I said was judging “worst” based on who wins and loses an election is a fucked up way of looking at things. You are after all looking at the country that also gave the world George Bush Jr. -- Twice!
But I guess till Hillary came along Gore/Kerry were the worst ever , no ? Funny how we never heard that.
Determining of the “worst” candidate? I thought it was more of a tribal event where people hold their nose and vote for members of their tribe -- with a few nomads deciding who wins.
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” -- H. L. Mencken
Is more or less what happened here -- except that everyone has a good chance of getting it good and hard, not just Americans.
@invivoMark
If your definition of good candidate is “Wont lose to the opposing parties candidate” then you have a problem. I suppose you will be out supporting Roy Moore next. Even with the allegations , he is probably going to win , no ?
Why is everyone still pretending that they could have predicted the outcome ? How do you know that Sanders/Biden/Warren whoever would have won -- Would you be similarly assessing them if they lost to Trump? Hell we don’t even know if Trump will be a single term president or not -- whoever be the opposing candidate.
@Holms, 15:
It’s you that has it backwards. If your first priority isn’t power -- i.e. the ability to actually effect change -- then you’re only in it for the prestige and whatever else you can get out of it for yourself. Lucrative speaking gigs for people like Goldman Sachs, for example, just to pick one at random.
Tony Blair is the perfect example. After the left suffered decades in the wilderness in the UK, led by “principled” but unelectable men, Tony Blair looked with a cold eye at what was holding Labour back, and excised it. The result was three successive election wins, which allowed his government to finalise peace in Northern Ireland, devolve government to Wales and Scotland as well as NI, bring in the minimum wage, SureStart centres, civil partnerships and much more. He put getting into power at the top of his agenda, and the country was better for it because his intended use of that power was progressive. Unfortunately, he followed Bush into Iraq, which will be all he’s remembered for. Thanks Yanks.
The perfect counterexample is Nick Clegg. He talked a big game as leader of the centrist Liberal Democrats. His headline policy was an end to tuition fees for university students. He could afford to promise that sort of thing, because as the leader of the third party there was no realistic chance of him ever becoming PM and having to deliver. He was able to carry on drawing his generous salary and expenses and promising the moon on a stick… and then came 2010, and horrifyingly he held the balance in a hung parliament. And what did he do? He abandoned his policies for a sniff of power. Once in power, he voted to TRIPLE tuition fees. His party were punished for that in 2015, and he’s yesterday’s man, rightly.
@John Morales, 18:
That’s easy. I mentioned the sainted Hillary, and the bleaters who can’t believe or accept that she lost just won’t let it go.
Example: Tabby Lavalamp@3, with “a press that was more than willing to keep bringing up those e-mails”. “Those emails” were a self-inflicted wound. Marcus Ranum on FTB had a lot on these at the time. Check his posts out. If Clinton had been anyone else -- any other woman or man -- the discovery that she’d been using a personal server would have sunk her campaign on its own, rightly, from her own side. But she was Hillary Clinton, dammit, it was her turn. Just like it was Jeb Bush’s turn until Donald Trump showed up. And the Democrats watched the systematic dismantling that happened to Bush and everyone else… and ignored it. Completely failed to get the memo that business as usual was not going to work. And even now, Clinton supporters and, hilariously, Clinton herself, are going round the world loudly blaming anyone but her.
@Holms, 21:
You’ve mixed up the words “best” and “largest”.
And can we please just leave it with the “she won the popular vote” bleat? The popular vote is irrelevant. Clinton knew that. She signed up for the contest knowing that. She even had the opportunity to make it relevant… but didn’t. She was obviously perfectly satisfied with the system as it stood. Most relevantly, in her tsunami of justifying self-pitying bullshit she’s currently peddling on her book tour, “and anyway I won the popular vote so ner ner” is NOT one of her prominent arguments, because she knows it’s irrelevant.
@deepak shetty:
From what I’ve been able to make out, you guess wrong. Gore/Kerry were actually not subject to the visceral hatred that accompanied Clinton, not even close. They weren’t that unpopular. And, if you must -- they won the popular vote. It’s hard to remember the halcyon days before 9/11, but politics then just wasn’t as polarised as it is now.
sonofrojblake @24:
Perhaps I was too subtle.
Please elucidate in what manner Hillary’s nomination is relevant to Trump’s enduring appeal.
(From the linked piece)
I would be amused were you to endeavour to explain in what manner you imagine Hillary’s (purported lack of) appeal is relevant to this specific justification.
Again, easy. It’s not. Read post 2 again, slowly. The point of it is NOT Clinton’s failure. It’s my estimation that the Democrats will repeat their mistakes. Obviously you missed that in the deluge of “but she won the popular vote” that followed.
sonofrojblake:
You really, really don’t get it, do you?\
This post has zero do do with Hillary or Democratic policy, it’s got to do with Trump’s enduring appeal to some.
(Yeah, I know — you have this mindset whereby whatever Democrats do is of significance and worth considering, whereas whatever Republicans do is just a given.
As Trump would put it: “Sad”)
Hillary must have done something right on emails: when she ran a personal server it had been unacceptable. Shortly after the time she was finished (and, some would say, before) it was not just acceptable, it was expected.
Obama must have done something right on golf: when he went golfing it had been unacceptable. Shortly after the time he relinquished the presidency (and, some would say, before) it was not just acceptable, it was expected.
From the post (and my response @2, which I asked you specifically to read again):
No. What you’ve just described there is an example of gaining political power as a pathway towards an overarching goal and not as the goal itself.
And here you’ve just described the perfect example of a politician that wanted power for power’s sake; when he obtained it his actions proved he had no particular goal beyond obtaining power. You’re muddled, my dude.
But of course this is just a part of your idiotic word game. You are pretending that ‘best candidate’ is not a value judgement, that it is subjective and will vary from perspective to perspective. You are pretending that it instead means ‘candidate that bested the other,’ which is only one contextual meaning of the word and incidentally means that it can over ever be known after the fact. And I say that you are pretending, because I believe disingenuousness is far more likely than such linguistic ignorance, especially given the blatant dishonesty of what follows.
This blog and commentariat are very obviously not enamoured of her, so your characterisation of our regard toward her as ‘sainted’ is a lie. We also fully believe that she lost, and accept that it occurred while preferring that it were otherwise.
@sonofrojblake
So in a post unrelated to Hillary , you bring up the demonic bride of Satan herself and then when you get called out on it , the fault is ours ?
But they lost to a moron puppet.
By the way Sanders lost to the worst candidate in the history of humans -- what does that make him?
which made as much difference as Hillary winning the popular vote.
So people who heard Trump admitting to sexual assault and his campaign rhetoric but said but Hillary’s emails!benghazi!something something have no responsibility at all in your worldview ? Even worse the election is done -- Hillary has lost and is nowhere near power and they still support Trump (The very fucking point of the article!) , that has no bearing on anything ?
You can see the same thing in Alabama -- The conservatives still support Roy Moore even though he assaulted a 14 year old! Think about that and what it means about the voters in Alabama. Dont blame the Democrat’s candidate for that.
In a healthy democracy , being in the opposition is also useful -- you don’t have to be in power (The US is currently not one of those , so you have a small point). But the question is what are you willing to give up to get that power -- if the answer is everything then congratulations , welcome to the evangelical, conservative, Republican party. While the Democrats do have many,many issues we rather they not become the same as the Republicans.
@Holms, 31:
Precisely my point. Power first. Perfect example. So glad you agree.
Nope. There were plenty of people who, at the time, were clear that Sanders was the better candidate. By that they didn’t mean necessarily that he had more integrity, stamina or policy credibility than Clinton -- although he did have all of those things. They meant he was more likely to win -- that with her poisonous legacy and the visceral hatred she engendered in a large portion of the electorate, she wouldn’t easily beat Trump. That was MORE than possible to see, well before even the primaries were completed. But the Democrats stitched up the race -- ever heard of “superdelegates”?
Sidenote @ deepak shetty:
It makes him not well-connected enough with the people who run the Democrats. Don’t, please, tell me you’re naive or ignorant enough to think that the primaries are in any way comparable in terms of fairness and representation to the general election.
Back to Holms:
Tell that to all the people who keep bringing up the popular vote as if it were relevant. Bringing up the popular vote is a transparent symptom of denial.
We’re talking about the US here. Even as you are forced to concede I have a “small point” (Ha!) that the country is NOT a healthy democracy, you are still clinging to the bullshit idea that it’s better to be principled and powerless.
My point, which seems to have been wilfully and obtusely missed repeatedly, is that this post is not an idle academic reflection on what a bunch of uneducable dolts Trump voters are. The sentence I pulled out in reply #2 is the crucial one -- what lessons can be learned? What can be DONE about it? And, crucially, will the Democrats learn those lessons and do those things?
If they’re anything like the commentariat here (and I think they are), I’m confident in predicting a “no”.
Dear god, you’re actually looking at it in terms of which occurs first in time, and assuming the first thing to take place is the goal? As in, if I went for a glass of water, you’d say grabbing the empty glass was the priority simply because it precedes the drinking of water? And neglecting the thing that precedes both: the goal I want a glass of water, i.e. the reason the the glass was grabbed in the first place. You’ve mistake the steps taken toward a goal as the goal itself.
So in your examples, Clegg appears to have no goal other than political power, which is why he set about the task of gaining it only to do nothing with it. Blair had goals beyond that, and thus gaining political power was simply the vehicle to that goal.
Goal first, then steps taken toward that goal, then achieving that goal.
No it isn’t. They know full well that she lost the election, you are just making statements about their state of mind that you can’t posisbly know. In short, you are being a dickhead.
sonofrojblake, #2
There is a very easy to spot flaw in your argument.
Hint: You’re looking at just the candidates and not the voters.
No, that’s the opposite of what I’m doing, as I suspect you know perfectly well.
I’d say that if you don’t grab the glass first, you’re going to go thirsty. Of course, you will smugly be able to boast that it was water you were going to drink, while a clearer thinking conservative is glugging down a beer and laughing at you.
You’ve obviously done no research.
Clegg’s goal was not power. If anything, Clegg’s goal was the avoidance of power. His party historically were third-rate no-hopers. His goal was position -- a place in the House of Commons and on any plural panel show, but plausible deniability that anything bad that happened had anything to do with him. He had a plum role, taking an MPs and party leader’s salary, with all that goes with that. Then, horrifically, in 2010 he held the balance of power in a hung parliament. Power was a catastrophe for him and his party. And he very much did not “do nothing with it” -- he bald-facedly did the opposite of his manifesto promises, including and especially TRIPLING the student tuition fees he’d promised to ABOLISH if he got power. Keep up. Saying he did “nothing with it” just makes you look like you know nothing. For instance -- in the very next general election, how did Clegg’s party get on?
You’ve spectacularly missed the point. The point is, he compromised some of the basic tenets of his party to achieve power. Specifically, he rewrote Clause 4 of the Labour party constitution and removed the party’s commitment to nationalisation of industry. This was HUGE. It was what allowed him to claim the party had changed, since “the longest suicide note in history” (look it up). He threw out the “old ways” Labour worked, removed one of the sticks the Tories had to beat him with. And he took 1997 in a landslide.
And, finally, back to the point. Is there any sign the Democrats have got the memo? Is there any sign that they’re prepared to not just do “business as usual” in the way that lost them the election in 2016?
I hope I’m wrong, but I doubt it. Show me I’m wrong, please -- it would really cheer me up.
Another pronounciation of my state of mind, nice. Also, wrong.
If they’re going for beer, then they’re not clearer thinking than I. But you missed the point of the analogy.
If Clegg and Blair are both looking for the glass, Blair is the one who has decided what he wants the glass for already: he wants it so as to facilitate his getting a drink. And so he obtains it and gets his drink. That is, Blair had a goal and getting the glass was a step towards it. Clegg on the other hand wants the glass too, but he doesn’t have a goal in mind for what to use it for. He dithers and says he wants a drink of… ale, but then when he gets the glass he goes for some milk or whatever. He had no goal in mind when he said he wanted the glass, he just wanted it. That is, he had no goal in mind for the political power, he just wanted it for the sake of having it.
The goal provided the reason and motivation for getting the glass / political power vs. getting power for the sake of having it. The goal is the important thing.
Oh so you’re saying he had no goal in mind when he said he wanted leadership? Funny, that’s basically been my point all along -- you took your time, but you’re here at last.