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Notes -
Do Trump Supporters Actually Want To Win?
Prompted by this sanctimonious, if interesting, FT column. Emphasis mine:
For a long time, a certain pro-Trump (or anti-anti-Trump, if you want) narrative on the 'intellectual right' was that there was no real alternative to Trump. Sure, they conceded that most criticisms of Trump-the-man were correct, but this was the Flight 93 Election. The alternatives were all versions of Mitt Romney or Marco Rubio, who didn't say the things Trump occasionally did. We can restate the Flight 93 theory like this:
DeSantis' presence complicates the Flight 93 theory. DeSantis has a record of some competence on conservative issues. Certainly not enough for the very online dissident right, but they had soured on Trump by late 2017 themselves, and so have no horse in this race. Whether DeSantis of Yale and Harvard is a 'true believer' is a complicated question, but then again the same could be said about Trump of New York via Wharton; the former certainly seems a much more capable administrator.
The column posits that Trump's success against DeSantis in this phony war stage of the 2024 primary campaign is a case of "vibes based politics" winning over 'substance based politics'. In 2016, intellectual conservatives could defend Trump because - whatever the vibes were - he was the only candidate on substance, too. In 2023, the banality of Trump's support is more clear. Ironically, it leads to a case for an interesting question - if Trump had merely attached his vibe to Ted Cruz' political platform in 2016, would he still have won? Was it less 'build the wall' and more who the frontman for building the wall was? The smart case for Trump would seem to be reducible to:
DeSantis is a "phony" or establishment conservative who will turn in office and resign himself to implementing the Mitch McConnell checklist of tax cuts, deregulation, more money for the military and cutting some welfare spending. The problem with this is that Trump was in office and accomplished little but (some of) the above, and hardly has a lifelong history of staunch conservative politics himself. If the problem is associating with elite circles, Trump has a long history of the same.
DeSantis can't win the presidential election even if he takes the primary, Trump can. This argument is more persuasive, if only because Trump's record shows he has technically convinced enough people in the right places to vote for him to show he can win. But Trump also lost a presidential election, never hit a 50% approval rating (even once, something Biden has apparently managed) and seems not to be experiencing any great groundswell of public support from swing voters. The promise of Trump is now tainted by the reality of Trump, so MAGA might ring slightly more hollow to those who aren't true believers.
I love this line because thinking about what your enemies fear is often an interesting thought experiment. Republicans are being presented with a choice between Trump and an American Viktor Orban. Nothing is settled, but they appear to strongly prefer the former.
People support Trump at this point because of the people who hate him. The media hates him, the FBI hates him, the democrats hate him, the McKinsey class hates him, the intellectuals hate him, etc.
Michael Moore actually summed it up perfectly https://youtube.com/watch?v=TEHekdQSiXg
Trump is absolutely despised by everybody who sees The United States as a resource to be mined, packaged, and sold, and those same people seem to like DeSantis. It really isn't even about the policies. They just want to hurt their enemies.
Those same people did very well under Trump though, nearly across the board. If you want to punish generic "people in power", the evidence suggests that electing Trump seems like a bad idea. Not only did they lose no power, asset prices boomed alongside New York Times subscriptions. Nobody was better for Trump's enemies than him.
Whenever reviewing the stats on Trump’s first term, I haven’t seen much disambiguating between BC and DC - Before Covid and During Covid. Consequently, both sides can point to the term and say they were right about Trump.
BC stocks soared, DC they plummeted.
BC employment hit record highs, DC it tanked.
BC a rising tide floated all boats, DC the megacorps were the sole allowed source for America’s goods and services.
So, what evidence are you citing for the very general statement “If you want to punish generic "people in power", the evidence suggests that electing Trump seems like a bad idea.”?
Stocks did great during Covid, reaching an all-time high in late 2021. Covid, and the utterly retarded money printing that followed, were a boon for speculators.
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They plummeted and recovered during COVID, then fell After Trump.
Yes, the SP500 regained all its COVID losses by August of 2020, but it did not fall after Trump; it opened at 3816 on Jan 20, 2021 and was at 4700 at the end of the year.
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Those same developments happened everywhere, also in countries that (obviously) didn't have Trump in charge.
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