Opinion - I Was Wrong About Trump Voters - The New York Times
By: Bret Stephens (nytimes)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
By Bret Stephens
Opinion Columnist
The worst line I ever wrote as a pundit — yes, I know, it's a crowded field — was the first line I ever wrote about the man who would become the 45th president: "If by now you don't find Donald Trump appalling, you're appalling."
This opening salvo, from August 2015, was the first in what would become dozens of columns denouncing Trump as a unique threat to American life, democratic ideals and the world itself. I regret almost nothing of what I said about the man and his close minions. But the broad swipe at his voters caricatured them and blinkered me.
It also probably did more to help than hinder Trump's candidacy. Telling voters they are moral ignoramuses is a bad way of getting them to change their minds.
What were they seeing that I wasn't?
That ought to have been the first question to ask myself. When I looked at Trump, I saw a bigoted blowhard making one ignorant argument after another. What Trump's supporters saw was a candidate whose entire being was a proudly raised middle finger at a self-satisfied elite that had produced a failing status quo.
I was blind to this. Though I had spent the years of Barack Obama's presidency denouncing his policies, my objections were more abstract than personal. I belonged to a social class that my friend Peggy Noonan called "the protected." My family lived in a safe and pleasant neighborhood. Our kids went to an excellent public school. I was well paid, fully insured, insulated against life's harsh edges.
Trump's appeal, according to Noonan, was largely to people she called "the unprotected." Their neighborhoods weren't so safe and pleasant. Their schools weren't so excellent. Their livelihoods weren't so secure. Their experience of America was often one of cultural and economic decline, sometimes felt in the most personal of ways.
It was an experience compounded by the insult of being treated as losers and racists —clinging, in Obama's notorious 2008 phrase, to "guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them."
No wonder they were angry.
Anger can take dumb or dangerous turns, and with Trump they often took both. But that didn't mean the anger was unfounded or illegitimate, or that it was aimed at the wrong target.
Trump voters had a powerful case to make that they had been thrice betrayed by the nation's elites. First, after 9/11, when they had borne much of the brunt of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, only to see Washington fumble and then abandon the efforts. Second, after the financial crisis of 2008, when so many were being laid off, even as the financial class was being bailed out. Third, in the post-crisis recovery, in which years of ultralow interest rates were a bonanza for those with investable assets and brutal for those without.
Oh, and then came the great American cultural revolution of the 2010s, in which traditional practices and beliefs — regarding same-sex marriage, sex-segregated bathrooms, personal pronouns, meritocratic ideals, race-blind rules, reverence for patriotic symbols, the rules of romance, the presumption of innocence and the distinction between equality of opportunity and outcome — became, more and more, not just passe, but taboo.
It's one thing for social mores to evolve over time, aided by respect for differences of opinion. It's another for them to be abruptly imposed by one side on another, with little democratic input but a great deal of moral bullying.
This was the climate in which Trump's campaign flourished. I could have thought a little harder about the fact that, in my dripping condescension toward his supporters, I was also confirming their suspicions about people like me — people who talked a good game about the virtues of empathy but practice it only selectively; people unscathed by the country's problems yet unembarrassed to propound solutions.
I also could have given Trump voters more credit for nuance.
For every in-your-face MAGA warrior there were plenty of ambivalent Trump supporters, doubtful of his ability and dismayed by his manner, who were willing to take their chances on him because he had the nerve to defy deeply flawed conventional pieties.
Nor were they impressed by Trump critics who had their own penchant for hypocrisy and outright slander. To this day, precious few anti-Trumpers have been honest with themselves about the elaborate hoax — there's just no other word for it — that was the Steele dossier and all the bogus allegations, credulously parroted in the mainstream media, that flowed from it.
A final question for myself: Would I be wrong to lambaste Trump's current supporters, the ones who want him back in the White House despite his refusal to accept his electoral defeat and the historic outrage of Jan. 6?
Morally speaking, no. It's one thing to take a gamble on a candidate who promises a break with business as usual. It's another to do that with an ex-president with a record of trying to break the Republic itself.
But I would also approach these voters in a much different spirit than I did the last time. "A drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall," noted Abraham Lincoln early in his political career. "If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend." Words to live by, particularly for those of us in the business of persuasion.
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The author of this piece is Bret Stephens, a supposedly moderate conservative who has nonetheless spent a lot of time over the past 7 years making excuses for Trumpism.
Once again here we get another op-ed that claims that people just dont understand Trump supporters who really just want the "elites" taken down and saw the flawed but earnest Trump as the vehicle to do that.
One of the things that Stephens cant bring himself to say is that they were horribly wrong. As I have said many times, prior to the election in 2016 it was well known that Trump was a pathological liar, a crook, a bigot, a moron and a cheat. All these things were well known about Trump before anyone voted for him in Nov 2016. The immense psychological damage Trump did to our country should be laid at the feet of no one but those who voted for him.
There is no doubt whatsoever that a lot of Trump's support was at least partially based on "white grievance", yet Stephens doesnt mention anything like this at all. That is because he wants to make excuses for those who have supported Trump through thick and thin.
Unfortunately the excuse making continues to this day.
Interesting. Would you agree with or dispute his claim that he wrote:
?
All these things were well known about Trump before anyone voted for him in Nov 2016. The immense psychological damage Trump did to our country should be laid at the feet of no one but those who voted for him.
I know I have pointed this out before, but it bears repeating here. The choice in November 2016 was not
The choice in the real world was:
Neither was a hopeful choice for a majority of people. It was literally a choice between two of the most disliked people ever to run for president. Most people who voted for either one had to disregard a lot of unpleasant qualities and memories of the candidate. And I think many people who voted for Trump did not imagine anything like what ended up happening after the 2020 election.
I'm sorry. Hillary Clinton is not remotely on the same scale of awfulness that Trump is. She is a normal politician. Trump is a malignant narcissist with delusions of grandeur and a serial liar.
I always find it interesting that so many people dont care that Trump cant open his mouth without lying.
She is and was worse.
[Deleted]
She was the most unlikeable Democratic nominee in the history of that polling. That’s a fact. I can’t help it if you choose to ignore it. Trump functioning as a politician and elected official was still an unknown quantity.
A lot of people feel the same way about politicians you don’t like. That’s also reality.
Are you going to answer my question about the author?
Yes, everyone knew who and what Donald Trump was before he was elected. Donald Trump was on full display during the Republican primaries. Donald Trump thrashed the Republican Party before he was ever became a candidate for President. The Mitt Romney neoliberal Republicans were wiped off the slate early in the primaries. Status quo Republicans didn't have a chance during the 2016 Republican primaries. The 2016 Republican primaries was a contest between MAGA and the TEA Party. Trump beat the TEA Party faction of Republicans -- to the cheers of Trump's base of support. The TEA Party faction lost and it looks like the TEA Party faction won't be back in power inside the Republican Party.
Everyone ignores that the 2016 general election was a choice between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. There weren't any alternatives. Trump had just overturned the status quo in the Republican Party and was now running against a status quo Democrat. So, the choice during the general election was to try a different course or accept more of the same. Hillary Clinton certainly wasn't going to change the status quo.
Trump was not elected to tweak the status quo. Trump was not elected to shift government toward a conservative status quo. Trump was elected to deliberately and maliciously interfere with the status quo and, hopefully, break the status quo. The status quo elites are basterds and a bigger basterd was need to fight them. And Trump certainly demonstrated he was a bigger basterd; he didn't hide it. Trump won the election BECAUSE he was a bigger basterd.
Wow John! Some folks really do despise anyone who does not share their particular political world view and does not vote exclusively leftist liberal Democrat. I would ask if there are any conservatives, except for family members, that you like but we all know that would be a huge NO!
Your dislike for Trump is obvious....so what's your beef with Trumpism?
Only that it exists.
I get this authors regret for speaking truth since the truth had the opposite effect to those he was being honest about, but the regret is pointless. The fact is no matter what he said back then wouldn't have made any difference. Telling Trump supporters they're fucking stupid didn't really further entrench them, they had already thrown their support behind Trump and are clearly too fucking stubborn and stupid to have made any change no matter how much the truth was shoved in their faces. These folk, much like Trump, do not live in the same reality as the majority of Americans so any attempt to appease them to get them to change their minds is just a waste of time.
You could spend tens of billions on higher education for Trump supporters and coddle them daily telling them how smart they are, but they're not going to change their minds. They're not going to suddenly stop supporting Trump simply because they've been carefully and methodically shown Trumps crimes and attempt to overthrow a free and fair election. Truth, facts and reality have almost nothing to do with right wing conservative Christians beliefs and ideology so its pointless to try and convince them of a reality they refuse to believe in, especially one where they would basically be forced to admit they were wrong.
The author shouldn't regret his original assessment of Trump supporters because he fucking nailed it over a year before Trump actual won the 2016 election. I'm sick of people trying to pretend that if we just treated Trump supporters with kid gloves and bent over backwards to please them that they'd ever entertain a rational thought and would admit how fucking deluded and stupid they had been.