Trump’s supporters–and their problems–are unlikely to be going anywhere soon. (cc photo: Gage Skidmore)
There’s a trope in post-Iowa election commentary that suggests that since Donald Trump’s appeal is based on his self-presentation as a “winner,” his loss in the caucuses is likely to cause his support to evaporate. Thus David Brooks (New York Times, 2/2/16):
Trump’s whole campaign was based on success breeding success, the citing of self-referential poll victories to justify his own candidacy…. Can an aggressor like him respond gracefully in the days ahead to self-created failure?
And Ruth Marcus (Washington Post, 2/2/16):
In the short term, Donald Trump was the biggest loser—true of any front-runner but even truer of a candidate whose campaign raison d’etre is that he is a winner.
What do you suppose is on David Brooks’ mind these days?
Some of this is just wishful thinking—Brooks’ column, after all, is headlined “Donald Trump Isn’t Real,” which sounds less like political commentary and more like a child’s mantra about the monster under the bed. But it’s also based on a misunderstanding of Trump’s appeal.
People do not constantly refer to themselves as “winning” because they have an objective sense that they’ve won a good deal of the time; when you say things like, “When you’re really smart, when you’re really, really smart like I am — it’s true, it’s true, it’s always been true, it’s always been true,” it’s because you have a powerful need to convince yourself that it is true.
And the people who find that language appealing are likewise not looking for someone whose record of being on the winning side has been independently confirmed by experts. They are, if I may generalize, people who worry that they might be seen as losers, and are looking for someone who will reject and refute such accusations on their behalf. That’s what “making America great again” means—and why Trump is very well-situated for a comeback narrative.
Brooks recognizes the resentment at the core of Trump’s support, though he trivializes it and mocks those who feel it:
Many [Trump] supporters may have been interested in symbolically sticking their thumb in somebody’s eye, but they are reality TV watchers, not actually interested in politics or governance. They didn’t show up. We can expect similar Trump underperformance in state after state.
And Brooks suggests that the Trump movement’s grievances are mainly in their heads—amounting to little more than a chip on the shoulder:
Social inequality is always felt more acutely than economic inequality. Trump rose up on behalf of people who felt looked down upon, made them feel vindicated and turned social conduct on its head.
But who are Trump’s people? Real Clear Politics (9/9/15) provided a sketch, based on YouGov polling:
In terms of demographics, Trump’s supporters are a bit older, less educated and earn less than the average Republican. Slightly over half are women. About half are between 45 and 64 years of age, with another 34 percent over 65 years old and less than 2 percent younger than 30. One half of his voters have a high school education or less, compared to 19 percent with a college or post-graduate degree. Slightly over a third of his supporters earn less than $50,000 per year, while 11 percent earn over $100,000 per year.
Middle-aged white people without college degrees—where have we seen that demographic in the news recently? Oh yes—that’s the demographic whose death rates have been soaring, largely due to increases in suicide, opiate overdoses and cirrhosis.
The earnings and employment of non-college educated men have plummeted over the last 45 years or so. Source: Center for American Progress (8/11/14).
And it’s not, as a Guardian article stupidly suggested, because whites are “victims of their own privilege…. They have the money to make themselves lonely and drink.” The mortality increase is highly concentrated in less-educated whites—and people without college diplomas have gotten an increasingly raw deal from the US economy over the past half century.
So the people who are most enthusiastically behind Trump have real problems with real consequences; they’re not likely to forget about them because Ted Cruz had a better get-out-the-vote operation in Iowa. Even if Trump himself somehow fades, the people he’s mobilized will likely be a crucial force in this election and beyond.
This is not to say that the Trump phenomenon is in any way benign; the scapegoating he employs as a political strategy has a clear and ugly history. When you’ve got a charismatic leader of a movement fueled by resentment encouraging his followers to “knock the crap out of” protesters, you need to be worried. (The fact that that violent anger seems to be turning towards reporters as well should be a “First they came for the Communists…” moment for the media.)
What it does mean is that a successful challenge to Trumpism has to have a message that offers a plausible alternative to the real problems that Trump offers bogus solutions to. And, no, “learn how to embrace compromise” is not that message.
Jim Naureckas is the editor of FAIR.org. Follow him on Twitter: @JNaureckas.
This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission from FAIR.