if indeterminate number of Americans really don't care about the democratic niceties. Just doesn't bother them to see vulgar criminality triumph. Trump is the maestro. But he didn't create the audience. Too many of us refused to see what the country has been becoming. Leibovich is right as is Zeynep Tufekci in the NYT. Helps that she's Turkish and knows the appeal of strongmen.
I make no excuses for Trump, but I'm not as willing as some others below to lump most Trump supporters into the "deplorables" category. Do you have any suggested reading on what conditions lead to the rise of strongmen historically?
Not just confined to United States
That I found interesting was that elite decisionmaking is often the more important thing in holding them off.
Prior to the modern primary system, the Republican Party could refuse to put a Donald Trump on the ballot because they disliked him. Now you just need to be famous to get people to pay attention to you in a primary.
The ingredients for the embrace of a strong man by the general public do seem to be lacking. No hyperinflation, no mass unemployment, no recent losses in large wars. Hopefully things stay reasonable over the course of the next year and the public can reject him again.
incredibly weak parties. Look at the Republicans in the House there is no way for the Speaker to control the renegades because he needs their votes. Slightly different equation for Dems because their renegades want to see more government action not less so they tend to toe the line when push comes to shove.
The combination of Citizen's United and Internet Fundraising has made parties less important for individual candidates than in the past.
I think the issue with your last paragraph is it ignores the religous battle for the soul of the country that is driving much of the Trump adoration.
It normally takes a religious or ethnic panic and something more concrete.
We had more great replacement fears/political chaos in the late 1800s to early 1900s but never fell into a strong man. Mussolini took off on the chaos of the post ww1 era. Hitler was aided by austerity fueled unemployment/resentment over WW1. I'm just hopeful that without incumbency and a reasonable shot at economic normalcy Trump does worse in 2024 than 2020.
for an actual panic. The economy is ostensibly good now, but you'd never know it by the way a lot of social media personas talk.
"young people can never hope to own a home!"
"historic inequality!"
"the system is rigged for the rich and failing us! We need to blow it up"
"I paid $200 for eggs and a gallon of gas!"
Now that's not to say there aren't some problems that need addressing - we have an issue with homelessness that is fueled by drugs and a rising cost of living in some areas, for example. But if you only read social media (and ugh, a lot of people do) you'd think the sky was falling every day.
60...even 40 years ago we had a relatively stable news system that, even if you think they were "liberal media", formed a general public consensus of thought that was trusted. Now people just write whatever they want and believe whatever they want.
That would be a death blow to DeSantis and his all-in 99-county tour of Iowa. Haley only really started working there a few weeks ago, concentrating much more on NH. DeSantis will not have a sustainable campaign if he finishes third, especially if outside the margin of error.
My other thought is that Republican Party voters, and especially the subset of them that vote in primaries and caucuses, are almost comically broken.
I quote Jay Nordlinger, who said the following in reaction to a clip of the 45th president calling the prosecuted individuals from the Jan 6 mob “hostages” who had been treated worse than anyone in history:
“Tens of millions want this man to be president. Again. It's not that they don't have options -- Republican options. They have several. But they want him. Which says more about us, as a nation, than about him.”
Cash
I categorically disagree with the assertion below that "Trump is not the problem." Trump's the problem. He's the leader who's stoked this. That said, I have a hard time not lumping his supporters into the basket of deplorables.
2016 could've been seen as naive. 2020 was bad. Voting for him now, given everything he's done and said he wants to do? I'm sorry, that's a moral issue for me. He's a traitor. They're supporting a traitor who cravenly opposes everything we're supposed to hold dear as a nation. He's the modern day Benedict Arnold.
They've been ripe to be led, but he's done the leading. They're bad. But they're nothing without him. This is a healthy opportunity to embrace "and."
As for the data and DeSantis, he'll just have to jump back into his clown car.
Many have demonstrated a capacity to be led to dark places, and I struggle to find a durable line that would be "too far" for the quarter of Americans who are all in for MAGA. I use the word durable because a sizable number of them found sudden moral clarity in the afternoon and evening of January 6, 2021, only to see it evaporate within a week.
But Trump earns more of my ire than his acolytes. Painful as it is, Trump is an extraordinary leader, and it is inescapable that a large portion of the citizenry is susceptible to charismatic persuasion. For the minority of MAGA world who are bomb-throwers and bigots and monsters, Trump has given them license to let it all hang out. But for the much larger segment of (right-leaning) society that is animated by fear of the other - the woke, the progressive, whatever bogeyman other leaders like Hannity and Carlson have thrust in their faces nightly - he has led these malleable folks in dark directions. He is amoral and supremely gifted at stoking passions.
There will eventually come a time when he is gone and it is unlikely that there will be another capable of continuing this grift at this level. My hope is that someone with moral leadership can emerge on the right to recapture the everyman who has been led so astray, but I may be naive. I am certain, however, that I will not forget what my fellow countrymen are capable of, and how essential it is that their passions be directed by a moral leader. The trick will be attracting such a person to public life.
I wish I were more hopeful, regardless of the outcome in November.
Cash
Sustained cold temps--particularly sustained minus temperatures in double digits--are rare in Colorado. The lowest temperature ever recorded in Colorado occurred in February, 1985, when -61 was recorded in Maybell, a small (80 inhabitants), unincorporated town in Moffatt County in the far northwest corner of the state astride the Wyoming-Colorado state line. I couldn't figure out why it would be so cold up there until I saw that Maybell sits at 6,700 feet.
I wish it would be -61 in Iowa every day for about 100 years.
As a falling thermometer in December
If you ask about our weather in July”
(Iowa Stubborn - The Music Man)
It saddens me to see what has become of Iowa. It wasn’t that long ago we had one of the most conservative Senators (Grassley) and one of the most liberal (Harken). For 30 years we had Jim Leach as a Republican in the House, but today he would be a left wing Democrat. In 2009 Iowa was the first in the nation to recognize same sex marriage. Just 15 years ago.
West of I-35 was always solidly conservative Republican, Steve King territory. But the eastern half was decidedly more liberal. Iowa City was always very left wing, and Cedar Falls just a bit more to the right. Cedar Rapids and Des Moines trended Democratic. The Quad Cities, Dubuque, Waterloo, and Ft. Dodge were blue collar union strongholds, primarily John Deere influenced.
There are still liberal and Democratic pockets, but the state is full on red and heavily MAGA.
I used to defend Iowa’s first in the nation status. The diversity of political opinion (if not race, etc), the serious civic mindedness of the populace, and the low cost of entry were strong points in my opinion. But no more. I’d be happy to see this be the last Iowa caucus with a switch to several groups of state primaries.
Fred Grandy was a Republican but these days would be in the same category as Leach.
I’d like to wish everyone a happy Go Back to Ignoring Iowa Day.
The state is as exciting as the Hawkeye offense.
elected and unelected. I grew up in an area that was pretty evenly split between R's and D's (had been a long time R stronghold) and there was more agreement between the parties than disagreement. It was an area with good union manufacturing jobs and the area thrived.
Then came the late 70's and early 80's. The manufacturer's moved to Georgia to break the unions, interest rates soared and so did unemployment. I think it topped out around 23% and we were in the top 10 for unemplyment in the nation.
The economy recovered but those good jobs did not come back in the same way. There was some growth until the 2008 crisis when the area was back in the top 10 when it was named one of the 10 markets where home values would take the longest to recover thanks to the out of town subprime lenders
The county voted overwhelmingly for Trump in 16 and 20. I grew up there so I know a significant part of it is racism and a backlash from Obama's election but it is also a frustration over their lives being upended and made increasingly difficult. I have written before about my view on the confluence of the Civil Rights movement and offshoring and how the silmultaneous nature deflected responsibility for the societal changes so I wont repeat that here.
These folks have not shared in the gains of the last 40 years in the way many others have. Ironically we now have a company that wants to build an EV battery factory and research campus with jobs paying 55,000 a year and up but many of the people who would benefit opposed the project because the parent is a Chinese company. Never mind that Volkswagon is among the largest shareholders Trump says China is bad.
I can understand those people who have been led astray by the promises of Donald J. Trump that he woudl solve their problems and defeat those woke liberals who ruined their lives. What I can not understand is the lack of leadership and of the elected Republican officials who have been given multiple opportunities to tell the truth about Trump and have repeatedly bent knee and worshipped him. It is difficult to say who is the best example maybe Lindsey Graham who back in 2015 or 2016 said if we nominate Trump he will destroy the party and we will deserve it but there a host of others. I probably need to include the folks in the right wing media echo chamber as well.
It seems the biggest indicator of whether someone supported Trump last night was whether they believed the 2020 election was stolen. If someone believed they mainly supported Trump. If they did not believe it they mainly supported Haley.
Republican party officials and office holders allowed Trump to claim for months before the election that he could only lose if the election was stolen from him. When he lost they allowed him continue to claim the election was stolen and in fact amplified those claims. To see the texts from Fox News Host and how different they werre form their public statements in shocking and enraging. But whywould the "common man" believe these lies when no one they trust told them differently. In one of the initial debates the moderator asked the candidates if they would support Trump if he were the nominee. Everyone except Hutchinson adn Christie raised their hands (DeSantis always a profile in courage first looked to see what others were doing). If the candidates running against Trump believe he is fit for office and willing to support him why shouldn't Joe from small town Iowa or Illinois?
The politicization of the evangelical church also factors in here. Wrapping the poltical battle in religion gives it a component where compromise is impossible.
As someone else said in this thread I am worried about the outcome of the 2024 election either way. If Trump wins I dont know if the guardrails will hold. If Trump loses I dont know how the Republican party accepts the legitimacy of the election and that is the most fundamental characteristic of the past 200 plus years.
Goes to what I said below. There are people susceptible to a demagogue anywhere in the world, and our country is no different. It's the Messiah Complex. The biggest disappointment to me is the people in power who know what a danger he is but enable him anyway.
Trump is absolutely the problem. No one else would have done what he did and gotten away with it. Case in point: DeSantis. One, I don't think he would have ever considered in a million years overthrowing an election. Second, he wouldn't have the charisma to pull it off if he had.
Trump is unfortunately unique, because he has a cult. He's not unique in American history, but is unique at this time. It will be a happy day for this country when he is finally off the stage no matter who gets rid of him.
...not in every detail, of course, but the overall concept is rather similar.
In McCarthy's case, after he was off the stage you'd have had almost as hard a time finding anyone who supported him as you would finding a German-American Bundist on December 8, 1941.
Long had his supporters even after his death, but that faded and no one with a similar cult following took his place, so that does work better. Because MAGA will stick with Trump, but most Republicans will move on. MAGA might look for another Trump, but they won't find one.
There's no there there without him.
I agree with your analysis and sentiment.
I have also come to accept the opinion of Mark Leibovich in his piece in The Atlantic “Trump Voters Are Americans Too”, linked and partially quoted below. The quibble I have with his assessment is that the belief or wish is not just the liberals’. It is also the old line Republicans’ who continue to view Trump and his MAGA world as an aberration or fringe element. This too shall pass is a fanciful dream.
74 million Americans voted FOR Trump in 2016. He is leading in the primary polls by enormous margins. These people are not looking for an alternative.
From The Atlantic:
“This is not who we are”: The would-be guardians of America’s better angels have been scolding us with this line for years. Or maybe they mean it as an affirmation. Either way, the axiom prompts a question: Who is “we” anyway? Because it sure seems like a lot of this “we” keeps voting for Trump. Today the dictum sounds more like a liberal wish than any true assessment of our national character...
“This is not who we are,” Representative Nancy Mace, the newly elected Republican of South Carolina, said of the deadly riot.(Jan 6) “We’re better than this.” There was a lot of that: thoughts and prayers from freaked-out Americans. “Let me be very clear,” President-elect Joe Biden tried to reassure the country that day. “The scenes of chaos at the Capitol do not reflect a true America, do not represent who we are.”..
You can dismiss Trump voters all you want, but give them this: They’re every bit as American as any idealized vision of the place. If Trump wins in 2024, his detractors will have to reckon once again with the voters who got us here—to reconcile what it means to share a country with so many citizens who keep watching Trump spiral deeper into his moral void and still conclude, “Yes, that’s our guy.”
He's trying to tell us that all 74 million voted "FOR" Trump? You mean, none of them voted for the Republican candidate no matter who it was? Total bullshit. There are an enormous number of people in this country on both sides that held their noses when they voted in 2020 and would be happy for an alternative. Most people do not vote third party if they don't like either candidate, they vote for the Republican or the Democrat. It doesn't mean they are all in on that candidate, far from it.
...
"'Our contemporaries,' Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in 1840, in the second volume of 'Democracy in America,' 'are constantly excited by two conflicting passions; they want to be led, and they wish to remain free.' The result was a peculiarly American compromise, an abiding tension between state power and popular sovereignty.
"Tocqueville had faith that Americans could keep the two in balance. At the same time, he warned against a slide into 'democratic despotism.' The people, he wrote, might someday vote to cede their power and place the government 'in the hands of an irresponsible person or body of persons.' Having witnessed the rise of American democracy, Tocqueville also, it seems, foretold its decline."
********
This is the opening of a recent review of Rachel Maddow's book, Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism, by Jeff Shesol. Is There Fascist DNA in the U.S. Body Politic? (nytimes.com, October 15, 2023). Shesol also reviewed Heather Cox Richardson's Democracy Awakening
I just finished reading Prequel. It's quite a mad story; I'd always been aware of the America First movement and that some leading lights in American culture before WWII had been antisemites, but the depth of detail in the story as Maddow recounts it is fascinating. The research reflects someone who has a doctoral degree in poli sci from Oxford, while the writing style often reflects someone who has a TV show.
Apparently the German government under Hitler, by the mid-30s, had figured that they could easily spread a lot of pro-German and pro-Nazi propaganda in the U.S. due to our very broad freedom of speech along with the ability to have friends of friends of friends of Germany persuade pliable elected people (U.S. senators like Lundeen and Wheeler) to offer their franking privileges for what seems to have been tens of millions of pieces of German propaganda mailed across the U.S. Weird.
Other choice details: Henry Ford wrote a 94-installment series excoriating the Jews--I mean, a lot of the stuff is loony-bin worthy. And Charles Lindbergh, the hero aviator, as late as 1940 was urging audiences that the U.S. should form a partnership with Hitler so that freedom could last far into the future. Ha...ha.
The parallels with what's happening today are plain, and were, I'm sure, expressly highlighted by Maddow. A big sedition trial that started during the war was dragged out by hundreds of defense motions; supporters of the elected officials who'd offered substantial aid in the dissemination of German propaganda cried that the trial was a "witch hunt"; and the defendants whined that the government was using the Department of Justice for political ends, so FDR and his Jew cronies could stay in power forever. One of the defendants, in 1944, entered the courthouse making a Nazi salute and saying "Sieg Heil" to the reporters; probably trolling them, but who knows.
At any rate, I am quite confident that millions of Americans would be fine with Trump as POTUS declaring martial law, suspending Congress, and appointing Steve Bannon as special prosecutor against all Trump's foes.
would essentially accept an authoritarian as president. I don’t remember exactly how it was worded or the precise number in favor. But the conclusion I do remember was that a surprising number of people, about 30% IIRC, would be fine with having an authoritarian president, so long as he/she supported their viewpoint. It was both liberals and conservatives and the percentages were similar for both.
It is disturbing that a large minority from both sides of the political spectrum would be just fine imposing their beliefs on their fellow citizens in a non-democratic fashion.
A larger number of Americans can be characterized as ignorant of basic civics, and certainly have limited or no appreciation of the human capacity for tyranny, the monstrousness that comes with it, and our relatively recent experiment at warding it off.
This is not new and I doubt it will improve substantially in our lifetimes. Hence the need for moral leadership.
Cash
schools more, if it could be done free of ideological bent. My years in politics taught me most people don't the faintest clue what their local government does, or who represents them, and they only have a marginally better understanding of national offices and representatives.
from Biden and Mace remind me of what is almost always said when a hockey player hauls off and takes a two handed, baseball style swing with his stick at the head of another player. "He's not that kind of a player..." Well, yes he is that kind of a player. He just broke his stick over another player's head. He is EXACTLY that kind of player because he did it.
What we see out of our voters IS who we are. It is completely without logic to think we are anything else.
to suggest "this is the type of voter these people are"? I think the issue is trying to define people as human beings by their vote.
...when so many define themselves through their vote for him. The MAGA hats, the Trump t-shirts, the car decals, the Trump flags hanging outside their houses, the boat parades - they have made it their entire identity, it hasn't been forced upon them.
then, if you define it as their belief system, it's still just their belief system. There are good MAGA types and bad, good Christians and bad, good Muslims and bad, good gay and straight people, good liberals and good conservatives.
There are many in the GOP who embrace Trump. That frightens me. There are a lot more in the GOP who, faced with the choice between Trump and a Democrat, any Democrat, will simply vote for Trump.
Given that I see Trump as a clear and present danger to the republic, I don't even know how to respond to that.
problem. He is merely a symptom of the problem. The problem is US.
I would give my left nut for sanity in the Republican party. Hell, maybe both nuts.
I was scared for the near-term future of the country when Trump won in 2016. You simply cannot have a rabidly incompetent fraud sitting in the White House. But after what I have seen in the last 8 years out of Trump and the Republican party, I am downright terrified of what might happen -- not only to my country but the the entire world -- if Trump wins.
Hell, even if he loses things are going to be awful. I am fearful of January 6-like events happening in all of the states Trump will claim he "won" but lost.
About McCartheyism back in the 1950's. He was an avatar for a lot of paranoia back in the 1950s. The establishment R's in the day didn't really jettison him until he and later the birchers started costing them elections.
In some ways, one guy coming to represent the paranoid aspect of American politics is good, because beating him can make that movement recede. Granted the fact that he could win is terrifying.
Policy wise, the GOP will probably end up more isolationist and anti immigrant than it was in the pre Trump era. While I don't like it, that's more in keeping with where the party was pre Cold War.
better than expected showing. He has the infrastructure to get people to the caucus sites and I dont think she does. If you are not a hard core true believer Republican are you going to venture out and for her tonght.
I think she likely finishes second but he will be close enough to move on to NH delaying the one on one campaign with Trump.
I appreciate you doing the work but as I read the OP, I had similar thoughts.
The R primary voters are deranged and Haley's campaign doesn't appeal to a majority of them.
2nd choice polls generally have more DeSantis people picking Trump than Haley. Him dropping out doesn't help her. I also doubt she's picking up any of the Ramaswamy voters.
My only hope is that maybe if Trump loses again by a slightly larger margin the fever breaks. But probably not.
Feels like she could pull out NH if she’s a strong second in Iowa. Then it’s on to SC which could get very interesting, especially if DeSantis is out by then.
The fact she is the only “establishment” candidate is killing her with a big part of the Republican base, which has no faith in our institutions.
She's doing this well on the backs of Independents/dems. Her voters in Iowa prefer Biden to Teump in a general. And to win she either needs to win voters from Trump (unlikely. They're the most enthusiastic about their guy) or win every vote from every voter backing a different candidate, including Ramaswamy. That seems unlikely.
I think her ceiling is McCain 2000. She can win NH, but winning that way doesn't leave a road to win much else.
You can picture it. It might not be likely, and that’s incredible to me, but here we are.
The bigger problem is Super Tuesday and a set of states loaded with Republican voters who appear to regard this amoral narcissistic WWE character just above Jesus Christ himself.
Cash
Then she's found a recipe to win in states where people think Trump is a God king. He's above 50% and she's around 25% there despite the name recognition.
An upset there would be so unlikely that I think there's a good chance Trump just melts down and implodes after losing. I just think that's highly unlikely.