Tuesday, August 25, 2020

Who are these people who still support Donald Trump?

Interesting article from an American pollster and political analyst on CNN. If you can't get our head around why some people (lots of people, in fact) still support Donald Trump after all the proof the last four years has given us that he is singularly unsuited to be a president of any country, let alone the United States, and still less can you understand who these people actually are, read on.
These are people who believe, against all the evidence, that a businessman is the best person to run the country economically. They believe that COVID-19 was not Donald Trump's fault (hard to argue with that), but that he's doing his best to contain it (argument there!) They are people who do not distinguish between genuine Black Lives Protesters and the looters and rioters who are taking advantage of them. They don't want historical monuments torn down, and they think that defunding the police in any way is ridiculous and shouldn't even be discussed. And, yes they really do want America to be first in everything, whether it deserves it or not. The oppose immigration completely and utterly, as well as any other policies that they see as giving foreigners benefits at their expense. And, perhaps most importantly, they want a non-politician who will fight for them relentlessly, and who will "tell it like it is", as the phrase goes (even if "telling it like it is" actually involves lying constantly).
Note that there is noting here about supporting someone who will do the right thing in a tough situation, about someone who will look out for the poor and the downtrodden. That's because these people truly believe that they ARE the downtrodden, even though they are generally speaking not. They are Mid-Western middle-class middle-of-the-road regular folks.
Another important factor is that these are not necessarily Fox News-watchers - that's a whole different type of Trump supporter, and there is nothing that can be done about them. These are not even national cable network watchers. These people typically get their news from local television, regional websites and Facebook. They don't see even a small part of the vast amounts of media coverage of national and international politics that is available, and they care even less. They care about having a job, and they care about being better off than they were yesterday, however that advance may be achieved.
The only possible saving grace in all this depressing news is that most of these people have zero loyalty. Many of them voted for Obama, and may actually be Democrat "by nature", but changed to Trump in 2016, for the reasons described above or just for no particular reason ("a change"). And if they can swing the almost inconceivable distance from Obama to Trump, they can just as easily swing back to a more middle-ground Joe Biden.

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