What will it take to change their minds?
by digby
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I read this analysis from Gallup in which they take a look at the bizarre and unprecedented fact that Trump’s approval rating started out low and never budges, no matter what happens. This is new. Generally, presidential job approval is at least somewhat related to events and performance but in his case, his base seems impervious to reality.
Gallup attributes this to polarization between the two parties and I’m sure that has a lot to do with it. The mostly white, evangelical Trump base believe he can do no wrong. And there are a lot of these folks. It appears to be around 40% of the country who identify that way. And I firmly believe they are motivated almost entirely by their loathing for the eggheads, the racial minorities, the non-Christians, the city folk, the uppity women, the immigrants. They do not think they should have to share this country with anyone who isn’t like them. In fact, they are livid about it.
But I think we also have to acknowledge that right wing propaganda on television, radio, and social media has fed these impulses and created such an insular information environment that many of these people simply don’t have any idea that Trump is failing on an epic scale. They think the only problem is the “fake news media” that is sabotaging him. They are living in an alternate universe in which only good news about their idol is real and the bad news is all made up. As far as they know, everything’s going great!
This is one of the most confounding problems we face and it’s a very difficult problem to solve. Obviously, it would be helpful if social media would act in a responsible way to at least keep out foreign propaganda. But that won’t solve it. The right wing has been at this for a long time (who do you think foreigners take their cues from?) and they have a First Amendment right to lie to their followers.
The one thing that gives me hope is the fact that this story is not new in America, only the means of delivery is. Basically, we fought a civil war over exactly this stuff. As I have posted so often on this blog, here’s Honest Abe in 1860 spelling it out. Trying to explain how impossible it was to deal with the Southern slave states using normal democratic means, he asked, “What will it take to satisfy them?”
This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly — done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated — we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas’ new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.
That also describes the state of Trump and his party in 2018. The issue is slightly modified for modern times, but their approach to dealing with it is exactly the same. They demand total capitulation and will settle for nothing less. Compromise is meaningless to them because it suggests that they are not 100% right about everything. Basically, the members of this faction, which is always there in one form or another, don’t really believe in democracy and never have.
This is why it’s so important that they be repudiated at the ballot box in numbers that are indisputable. There can be no protest votes, no hedging, no “pox on both their houses” in 2020. These people have taken it to the limit and if the country endorses this lawless rogue president and his party again there will be no stopping them.
The Democrats have a large number of potential candidates testing the waters. I’m for spending the next year seeing what they’ve got and finding the best person who embodies the values of the majority of Americans — that is the 60% who do not support this miscreant and the conservative movement that created him. It’s a tall order. The majority is a big coalition with many different interests and agendas. It’s a big country and it’s not going to be easy to reconcile it. But at this point we have no choice but to put our heads down and get that done. There will be no agenda for any of us if Trump gets a second term and these Republican radicals are validated.
So, I hope to spend the next year looking closely at all the candidates. I don’t have a favorite and I will certainly vote for whomever the voters choose to run against Trump. That’s a no-brainer. But I do hope they pick the strongest candidate and one with a vision for the future and a commitment to fundamental values of fairness, equality and liberty. Democrats always do better when they offer Americans an optimistic vision of progress and their most successful presidents have always embodied that in one way or the other.
The contrast of that inspirational agenda with this man who openly pledges to reverse progress, to take the country back to an earlier era, build walls and weapons of war and retreat from any positive engagement with the rest of the planet is stark.
If the Democrats succeed in giving America that choice we will see what kind of country we really are in 2020.
We’ll be watching all this like hawks here at Hullabaloo and covering it closely. This next year is going to be extremely challenging and I hope you all don’t decide to tune it out because it’s just too much. (I understand the impulse, believe me.) But if you do just want a place to check in with the zeitgeist once in a while, get a little activist info from my great contributor Tom Sullivan every morning and some big picture stuff from me throughout the day, I hope you’ll continue to stop by.
And if you find what we write here every day to be valuable, I hope you’ll consider putting some change in the Hullabaloo holiday stocking. If you’ve already donated, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you haven’t and would like to help support this blog for another year, the paypal buttons are on the sidebar and below as is the snail mail address.
And I wish all of you Very Happy Hollandaise!
cheers — digby
Digby’s Hullabaloo
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