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What is the steelman for voting for Trump in the primaries?
He's not a true outsider anymore. He's not an unknown quantity. We know his temperament. We know his governance style. What does he provide over Desantis/Haley/Ramaswamy? He didn't build the wall the first time, why would he do it now?
I have some ideas, but they're all terrible once you think about them for ten seconds. I am willing to believe that the median voter is unable to think clearly for ten seconds before being hijacked by monkey-brain, but I'd like to make sure I'm not missing something obvious.
1. Personal Loyalty: This is close to the Richard Hanania theory. Personal loyalty would make sense if Trump was loyal in turn to his supporters, but he isn't. How many of his lawyers have gone to jail? How many orange-blooded Trump fans lost their jobs or got arrested for believing in him too hard on January 6? He could have pardoned these people, but he didn't. Orange Man good because Orange Man good.
2. Perceived Injustice: Yes, Trump has been treated unfairly by the media and the Washington establishment. Lots of people have been. I can understand why this would be seen as a necessary condition (e.g. "nobody liked by the 'elites' could ever be a good president"), but why would this be a sufficient condition? Surely electability and general competence matter more than an extra standard-deviation worth of grievances against the media.
3. Hatred: I'm not talking about "Hate™". I'm talking about a genuine desire to see one's political enemies suffer. It's not even clear to me that Trump would be better at this than other Republican candidates, but I feel I would be missing something if I didn't put it on the list.
Trump represents a pent up peasant and heartland burgher rage in a way that no other GOP politician can.
Yes, they want to “own the libs”, but that’s misses out the most important part. They want Donald Trump to own the libs. Owning the libs is important but not essential. Donald Trump is essential. Better Trump is in power and fails than DeSantis is in power and actually succeeds. This is, in effect, the decision that is being made.
But in a wider sense, American conservatives aren’t serious people. They consider forcing impoverished black single mothers to give birth to more children higher priority than ending mass immigration. That considered ending the tiny amount of GDP sent to Ukraine (tying up a longstanding geopolitical foe for years at the cost of zero American lives) more important than ending affirmative action - which only happened because of a 30-year effort by some autistic Jewish guy who couldn’t let it go. These are people who genuinely abhor the pittance spent on America’s empire when it has been the mission of every great Western civilization to conquer, to expand and to rule other lands and peoples.
They live in an imaginary mid century fantasy that is itself a product of Hollywood. They do not aspire to greatness, personally or collectively. Kevin Williamson was right about Trump, and about his supporters. The libs - if he wins again - will be “owned” well and truly for 4 years, and then simply pick up where they left off. Trump doesn’t understand institutions, but his supporters don’t care. The ‘deep state’ will let him spend 4 years in the AG’s office fighting spurious legal cases against his onetime political foes, and all the while the rest of Washington will tick along as usual.
I think this is misrepresenting the position of most of the working class Red Tribe Trump supporters I know. Sure, there is an element of "owning the blank" that happens on both sides. But they absolutely do aspire to greatness. They have a very heartfelt belief in the greatness of America. That's why the Trump's slogan was so successful. They are very serious people, with serious problems. That even I as a neo-liberal myself acknowledge are true and correct. Their small towns and cities have been hollowed out my decades of neglect and policy. Their kids are turning to drugs at tremendous rates. Getting good healthcare coverage is difficult.
and Trump for all his faults speaks to them in a way no-one else really does. And many of them acknowledge that he is a serial liar, cheater and has an ego the size of a small moon. But at least he talks about going to bat for them. DeSantis and Haley may be conservative and know the system better than he does, but they also pattern match to exactly the same kind of Republican politician who has sided with big business over the little people for the last 50 years.
See Fetterman's success (even after a stroke!) for another kind of "working class joe" kind of vibe (even as it isn't really true for either Trump or Fetterman). My old neighbor, told me he would vote for Fetterman way before he would vote for DeSantis, and he is diehard for Trump, all day every day.
The truth is, they have been taken for granted, and that has created a level of anger and despair. And for all Trump's opponents may well be better at navigating bureaucracy they are not well situated to tap into that emotion and channel it positively. I think DeSantis is an excellent political operator. But he has the charisma of a wet paper bag where the bottom fell out and spilled your shopping all over the floor.
Trump, I predict will (barring any weirdness) easily win the primary, and it will be a 50-50 shot against Biden, depending on how the economy is feeling in a few months. His big weakness of course is that he is divisive, his supporter's love him, but his opponents hate him, so he drives turnout both ways. I think he probably narrowly loses because of this, but I am by no means certain of that and he could easily win.
But to be clear, Trump supporters are very serious people, they just have very different priorities that you do or I do. To many of them, it is absolutely not a contradiction that abortion is a bigger deal than immigration. Sure a conservative utilitarian might point out that immigration is more of a "threat" to conservatism, but they are not utilitarians. While they certainly do care about mass immigration it isn't a big leap to understand why they might think (what they see as) murder of children is a teensy bit more important than illegal border crossings. Especially when it is possible deport people after they enter the country, but you can't reverse an abortion. Having said that, they support Trump who wants to build the wall, so it isn't as if they are against doing more than one thing at the same time!
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