How To Weigh A Human Head
Inside the mailbag: Donald Trump ... Affordability ... MAGA
Heather L. What is continually shocking to me is that even when Trump’s poll numbers are “plummeting”, the approval rating among Republicans remains an absolutely staggering 68%. I mean WTF. Just in the past few weeks alone, he’s insulted the Pope, threatened nuclear war, ranted incomprehensibly for hours and hours in the middle of the night, on social media, etc. etc.
What do you think it will take -- will anything EVER -- change the MAGA faithful’s minds about Trump? And if they NEVER change their minds, do you think that means that elected Republicans will NEVER change their support for Trump -- not until they’re voted out of office? And then what does this all mean for any possible recovery effort to salvage our democracy? How do we rebuild the country if some subset of people literally never come to their senses?
Hi Heather. Not sure which poll or polls you’re looking at, but I want to challenge your intuition that 68 percent in-party approval is staggering. In a polarized system, it’s actually perilously low. The helplessness we all feel from time to time isn’t really because Trump’s supposedly unshakable base makes him teflon. It’s because public opinion is more or less our only source of leverage against him, and he doesn’t respond to public opinion in the manner of a well-adjusted person.
Trump is almost as unpopular now as he was after the insurrection, with room left to fall. But I think from there we intuit, reasonably, that this should prompt a change in behavior, and often it just doesn’t. Trump has spent the overwhelming majority of his two terms in a limbo zone where he’s not popular enough to win a snap election, but not so unpopular that members of his party will turn on him in droves. That is less a function of people not changing their minds (they definitely are changing their minds) than of a system that (under certain circumstances, anyhow) insulates incumbent parties from consequences. We don’t have snap elections! And that means a disciplined majority party can commit to a program of abuse that’s terribly unpopular, and “get away with it” for at least two years.
But setting that aside, here are two habits of mind that help me keep a handle on where things are and where we seem to be going: The first is to think along the margin; the second is to not over romanticize human nature.
I frequently hear from people in this pro-democracy movement that Trump voters are beyond reach, and so Dems should stop trying to appeal to them. Reroute their efforts into reaching demoralized Democratic and Dem-leaning voters. And—sure turnout and persuasion are two great tastes that taste great together. But take this post for instance:
The screen grab comes from a recent New York Times focus-group report. I don’t mean to pick on posters at random, this one just happened to cross my feed a couple days ago. And, yes, Argenis and Alla seem pseudosavvy about politics in a barstool-prophet kind of way. In Alla’s case, she uses cliched insights about politics to justify her bad decisions to others and maybe to herself. She either likes Trump’s predatory nature deep in her lizard-brain, or can’t admit she was wrong. Stubborn people are very frustrating. But to draw the inference that all Trump voters are beyond reaching, you have to ignore both of the other participants in the same screen grab! Obviously Pamela and Franceska deserve a heap of “I told you so”-style gloating from their liberal relatives. They got suckered by a con artist more transparent than the wallet inspector. But here they are admitting error and regret! Their sentiments:
‘I should’ve known Trump was who he always appeared to be.’
‘I should’ve realized his outrageous promises were false.’
That’s two gettable voters right there, out of four. Not a valid sample, but revealing. When Trump drops from 90 percent support among Republicans to 70 percent support among Republicans, that means many, many, many millions of Americans have shifted. They will not all vote Dem. But some will! And others will choose not to vote Republican. That’s plenty for Dems to win elections by landslide margins.
Then on human nature: It’s sad but worth remembering that even in democratic societies with better systems of accountability, something like 20 or 25 percent of citizens are basically fascist. So once Trump gets down into the low 30s, he won’t have much farther to fall.
I reflect at least once a month on this blog post that’s almost old enough to buy alcohol. Read the whole thing if you want, but the profound insight I took away from it, all the way back in 2005, is in the part where John asks Tyrone to estimate George W. Bush’s approval floor, and—without skipping a beat—Tyrone responds “27 percent.”
Why such a precise number? Because that’s the percentage of the vote Alan Keyes won when he ran for Senate against Barack Obama. Back in 2004, Illinois was pretty well representative of the whole country. And both Keyes and Obama were black men, so the experiment was controlled for racism and sexism. But Obama was an incredibly impressive, thoughtful candidate, while Keyes was a deranged fanatic. And yet 27 percent of Illinois voters that cycle voted for him anyhow, putting raw partisanship and authoritarian ambition ahead of every other consideration.
Polls vary, but that’s about where George W. Bush ended his presidency. And whether or not Trump ever reaches his floor, I suspect it’s somewhere in that neighborhood as well. That means tens of millions of your fellow countrymen are OK with the late-night tweeting, pope-attacking, nuclear war-threatening—the whole package. So long as they get to tell us what to do. And they will probably always be with us.
Cassandra: I worry about the Dems “affordability” campaign. At some point we need to start talking about what that is going to look like. While the government can’t control much pricing, how are Dems going to get more money into the pockets of working people? Do you think that a lack of specificity on what fixing affordability is a long-term Achilles heel for Dems?
To answer the second question first, no, I don’t think so. If anything it’s the other way around, or almost the other way around. Specificity tends to hobble campaigns, making it harder to win. Making vague, non-credible promises, by contrast, is a great way to win elections, if you’re okay with everyone getting pissed when you fail to deliver.
So how should Dems thread that needle? They should start by examining “affordability” discourse in both literal and figurative terms. I explained the difference at length in the November piece you’ll see embedded below. The tl;dr is that “affordability” is a catch-all complaint. Some use it to express partisan antipathy—Trump bad, cite prices. Some people mean it in the strict dictionary sense—price level too high. Some mean it in a figurative sense—my circumstances are or feel precarious. Maybe if things were cheaper, I’d be less anxious about A.I., or the next recession or pandemic. If calamity were to strike tomorrow, it would wipe me out.
That kind of nonspecific “affordability” concern can be addressed relatively quickly, through safety nets. Enhancing existing ones, building new ones. Those can be campaigned on and enacted fairly fast, at least in theory. And that’s great news, because bringing down prices in certain critical sectors is a much longer-run challenge.
For the literalists who really do mean that they want nominal prices to drop, Dems should distinguish, e.g., housing, health care, child care from staple goods and discretionary commercial products like televisions.
I don’t know how people would respond if given a binary choice between a world where essentials are affordable, but luxuries are expensive, and another (ours) where luxuries are affordable but essentials are expensive. I do know they’d almost certainly feel more anxious in the latter. Policymakers thus owe it to us to ensure essentials are within reach. It’s just a hard thing to accomplish within an election cycle. We can surely build a ton of dwellings in order to lower market prices, but when’s a policy like that going to allow John and Mary Swingvoter to afford a home? Three years? Five? If you’re a single issue “make houses cheaper” voter, that’s probably not gonna cut it.
But the root solution to the affordability problem probably isn’t to increase expendable income and reap political dividends for giving people breathing room. In fact, I know it isn’t. How do I know this?