Here’s how we tend to look at the election:
There is something seriously wrong with trump voters, but hopefully, as his presidency is disastrous, they will see just how wrong they were and want to do better next time.
Here is both why that’s largely not what is likely, and my opinion on a reason why they voted for him.
We Democrats tend to have an idea about politics that is based on the founding fathers’ view: democracy is about the people having self-rule and trying to have good policies for the country.
By that standard, there are better and worse presidents, where the better ones are presidents like FDR, JFK, LBJ who ‘do great things’ for the country and the good of the people.
What we’re not appreciating is how poisonous the ideology of the right and Reagan have been to the ‘other side’ in spreading what is effectively an anti-government cult.
Reagan’s ‘The government is not the solution, the government is the problem’ competes for the most harmful thing a president has ever said.
Without stating it as such, it was an attack on the very idea of democracy and government. Out the window were those ideas of ‘the public welfare’ It was simply criminals who took from the people.
This why perverse attacks like ‘limousine liberal’ have so much traction with voters on the right. Not the CEOs who are fighting to cut wages and pollute, but the liberal politicians are the ‘elite’.
It’s a rather brilliant attack in recognizing the public wants an elite to attack — but in getting the people to target the people’s representatives rather than the plutocrats, who are the ‘job creators’.
Now to get the point of the diary headline.
trump, for his voters, belongs to US, not to THEM. That sounds crazy, but here’s why:
Because forget the man — he’s the president and the head of the government — the thing WE are for that they HATE.
That’s why they are so happy to hand over the keys to the evil, terrible, tyrannical government to the most chaotic, destructive ‘outsider’ they can — because that’s what horrible government deserves.
It’s why the same crowd has cheered their politicians on regarding government shutdowns that make no sense to us.
They just hate government that much. Forget rational. They aren’t understanding how government benefits them. They have drunk the kool-aid that government means Stalin and Mao.
This is why the simple appeals that ‘smaller government’, that lower taxes, are always better without limit have had such traction.
That’s so different than our view most Democrats don’t understand it.
And it’s why they have cognitive dissonance about the programs that do specifically help them getting their support — hate government, but don’t touch their Medicaire.
And it’s always easy to find the targets that reinforce their view. $500 wrenches for the military don’t show private-public corruption, they show government is bad.
Railing against ‘regulation’— pick the few worst of thousands if you must for examples — and unneeded agencies — is warmly welcomed.
That’s how they view it, it seems to me.
Put trump in charge, precisely because it is putting someone who is not a believer that government can be good, like them, in charge and that what they want.
It’d be like allowing the Democrats to pick the head of the RNC. Can we pick a crazy person? GREAT!
And all the bad that comes from trump isn’t because they made a bad choice. It’s because government is bad, and his bad presidency proves it — Democrats would be even worse, they think.
I’ve heard from a lot of trump voters, ‘how can he be as bad as the last eight years’. That’s their level of delusion. They don’t understand what happened nine years ago, the Great Recession, anymore.
And by the way, the Great Recession — government’s fault.
And they now will largely throw Bush under the bus as well, thinking it makes them ‘bi-partisan’ with their hatred of government.
So, in short, the trump president is going to be about the presidency — the government — and all Democrats’ fault, and not about their choosing trump, at all.
I’m not sure there’s anything that would convince them, ‘Hillary would have been better. You made a mistake’.
That’s what we’re up against. And it’s a reason why the Democrats who have won nationally have tended to be the ones who say things about how they’re ‘new’ Democrats against ‘big government’.
So, as we wait with baited breath for them to say, ‘we’re sorry, yo were right’, we’re going to have a long wait. THEY’LL be the ones saying ‘I told you so. All the bad shows government is bad.’
I think this is how fragmented the country has become and how, without recognizing it — they keep all the respect for the symbols like the flag — they have turned against what democracy really is.
And they do tend to view Democrats as being as wrong as we view the anti-government extremism I just described — as people who would welcome government tyranny.
And so they’re very motivated to ‘win’ against us.
I think that’s what we’re up against, and we have a lot of education to do to build common interests as being understood.
Until then, the plutocrats have learned to turn democracy against itself and get the plutocracy they want, with the people cheering them on.