Krugman has an interesting article about Trump voters. You’ve seen all the articles about how strong Trump’s support is among Trump/GOP voters. Krugman has to be a bit diplomatic about what he says in the NYT, but I’m just someone posting on a progressive website so I would summarize Krugman’s column as: sure the Trump supporters are really stupid, but will they ever admit it and turn against him?
Yet there have, by my count, been seven thousand news articles — O.K., it’s a rough estimate — about how Trump supporters are standing by their man, are angry at those meanies in the news media, and would gladly vote for him all over again. What’s going on?
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For the past few months, economists who track short-term developments have been noting a peculiar divergence between “soft” and “hard” data. Soft data are things like surveys of consumer and business confidence; hard data are things like actual retail sales.
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The evidence, in other words, suggests that when Trump voters say they’re highly confident, it’s more a declaration of their political identity than an indication of what they’re going to do, or even, maybe, what they really believe.
I’ve been arguing for some time now that much of the polling data should be viewed very suspiciously. Not because the techniques of polling are giving bad results, but because Republicans are so bat shit crazy, they are not answering most questions honestly and are severely distorting the results. Or even worse, they are answering honestly but their “opinions” are not based on anything factual and will change on a dime to whatever they think the right wing propaganda machine wants it to be.
You’ve all seen the data where Republicans now think Russia is a close ally, or that the economy is now booming, or that Trump has fulfilled most of his promises. Other than the question of who you plan to vote for, almost all the other questions will be distorted because Republicans simply don’t have any philosophical roots and their opinions are simply based upon being the opposite of Democrats.
Trump’s sheer awfulness offers him some political protection: His supporters aren’t ready, at least so far, to admit that they made that big a mistake.
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Sooner or later, however, this levee is going to break.
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What will Trump’s Katrina moment look like? Will it be the collapse of health insurance due to administration sabotage? A recession this White House has no idea how to handle? A natural disaster or public health crisis? One way or another, it’s coming.
This is where I think Krugman is wrong. The Republicans have become the party of ignorance, stupidity, and outright crazy. They pray at the alter of delusion. They no longer understand what reality is, and they don’t really care. Ronald Reagan may very well have been the dumbest president up to his time. He was only surpassed by GWB, and now Trump puts both of them to shame. Republicans keep sliding down a slope of dangerous ignorance.
About 43% of the population (Republicans) will support anyone who says the magic words about stopping abortion, any gun anywhere any time, and a big tax cut. Republicans can’t tell when they’re being lied to and will kill our democracy and hand over our country to full dictators as long as they keep repeating the magic words.
So I don’t think there will ever be a “Katrina moment” for Trump. The Republican propaganda machine will always come up with an excuse to blame Democrats and their supporters have so lost touch with reality that they will believe whatever they’re told.
To end with the good news. That 43% of zombie fascist Republicans isn’t enough to keep control and drag our country down into an authoritarian nightmare. As long as all of us show up and vote for the only way to stop them (Democrats), we can turn this around, isolate their delusional bubble, and change the world for the better.
RESIST!