POLITICO
Democrats Look at Trump Voters and Wonder ‘What the Hell Is Your Problem?’
By John F. Harris 2 hrs ago
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/democrats-look-at-trump-voters-and-wonder-what-the-hell-is-your-problem/ar-BB1aHttT
In an odd way, Donald Trump’s political performance in 2020 an election he looks on track to narrowly lose is far more impressive than his performance in 2016, the election he narrowly won.
a group of people holding a sign: Supporters of President Donald Trump listen to him speak during a campaign rally in Rome, Ga., on Sunday.© Evan Vucci/AP Photo Supporters of President Donald Trump listen to him speak during a campaign rally in Rome, Ga., on Sunday.
Unquestionably, his 2020 results are more disturbing, for anyone who does not share his enthusiasm for the politics of personal and institutional contempt. It has never been more clear the large numbers of people who do share that enthusiasm, or at a minimum have no overriding objections. This, in turn, has never been more unsettling in the implications.
If the president manages through some combination of good luck and legal challenges to win a second term, ash-in-mouth Democrats and their sympathizers will ask Trump voters in a spirit of recrimination, “What the hell is your problem?”
If Joe Biden hangs on to his narrow lead, his backers can ask the same question of Trump voters in a spirit of reflection, and possibly even genuine curiosity. Democratic disdain for Trump is natural; disdain for his voters is more problematic. But there is no logical way to scorn Trump without being somewhat scornful of voters who cheered his ascent to power and were eager for him to keep it.
The Trump victory in 2016 was blurry, and therefore relatively easy for people to distance themselves from larger meaning. Hillary Clinton, the logic went, had singular vulnerabilities. There was Russian interference. Lots of Trump voters likely didn’t think he was going to win but were eager to use their votes to send a message of protest to the establishment of both parties. Plenty of people regarded his persona as a flamboyant put-on, and assumed he would embrace moderation and restraint in the event he was invested with real responsibility.
The 2020 results remain blurry but the central question on the table in this election was vividly clear. Is Trump’s norm-shattering governing style okay with you? Former president Barack Obama framed it sharply in at the summer convention: “That’s what’s at stake right now—our democracy.”
Here is an uncomfortable reality for Obama and anyone who agreed with his words. Trump is on track to grow his popular vote total by millions of people, not one of whom could have been under any illusions about what they were voting for. Unlike 2016, there is no way to dismiss this as a flukish accident of democracy, or an illegitimate manipulation of democracy. His support was a robust expression of democracy.
More discomfort: This was a bravura political achievement. Strip it—just for a moment only—from moral context, from the fact that crowded, maskless rallies during a pandemic are flagrantly irresponsible, that many of his words were remorselessly demagogic. In the midst of the coronavirus catastrophe, just weeks after that virus left him in the hospital needing supplemental oxygen, in the face of bad polls and mostly hostile news coverage, Trump raced across the country and came close to winning. He is a movement politician who, with his back to the wall, often demonstrates remarkable moves.
continued: