Month: March 2024

MSNBC’s data guy Steve Kornacki took a look at the polling a few days ago that I think addresses some of the weirdness we’re seeing with the national polls and the election results.

Donald Trump is winning his primaries handily and has a virtual lock on the Republican presidential nomination — but a common interpretation of the results says that he is also exhibiting profound weaknesses among independents that portend dire general election consequences.

But there’s a hitch. A look at general election polling reveals a completely different story among independent voters — and a dive into all the other data we have on the 2024 presidential race shows why Trump’s poor independent numbers in the primary and better performance in general election polls are completely consistent with each other. The short answer: These are two very different groups of voters.

First, the evidence for Trump’s weakness among independents voting in this year’s GOP primaries is straightforward. Despite the widely acknowledged — even by his critics — inevitability of his nomination, Trump is still losing around 40% of the vote in Republican contests. And he’s getting crushed among independents, a group that looms large in November. From exit polling data, here’s how bad Trump’s numbers have been with them so far (note that exit polls weren’t conducted in Michigan):

But the recent NBC News poll paints a very different picture among independent general election voters:

For context, Trump lost the independent vote to President Joe Biden in 2020 by a 9-point margin, 52%-43%, per the NBC News national exit poll. So the current general election polling actually indicates slight improvement for Trump (and a decline for Biden) among independents, albeit with a significant number indicating they don’t want either candidate.

For that matter, even as Trump is losing 40% of the overall vote in Republican primaries, general election polling shows no slack in his support among Republican voters. He took 92% support from Republicans in our last poll.

How could this be? Look at the primary results and you see a front-runner who is hemorrhaging independents at an alarming level and a Republican electorate that contains wide resistance to him. And yet, look at general election polling, and you see … almost none of this.

It’s possible, though, that there’s really no inconsistency here at all.

Start with the simple stuff. A chunk of former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley’s primary voters (23% of them in South Carolina, per the exit poll) say they will nonetheless be satisfied with Trump as the GOP nominee. So at least some of the Trump current opposition stands ready to rally around him in the general election, which helps explain why general election polls show almost unanimous Republican support for Trump.

And given Biden’s own dreadful poll numbers with independents (a 27% approval rating with them in NBC News’ latest poll), there are surely some of them who will be motivated to vote against Biden in November and thus cast ballots for Trump, even if they’ll never pronounce themselves satisfied with Trump.

But all of this only goes so far. It still leaves the bulk of Haley’s primary voters appearing to be dug in for good against Trump.

The answer that reconciles those figures, or at least a big part of them, with the general election polling is that many of these Haley votes are likely coming from people who already cast ballots against Trump in 2016 and 2020 — and who are committed to doing so again in 2024.

To them, these primaries amount to a bonus opportunity to cast yet another vote against Trump.

The pool of independents who voted in the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries will be far different from the much, much larger pool of independents who will vote this fall. After all, primaries attract far lower turnout than general elections, so those who are most motivated to participate can skew the independent pool in various directions. The question becomes whether there’s a particular type of independent who feels drawn disproportionately to participate in these GOP primaries.

And here there’s an obvious answer: the “Trump resistance.” Opposition to Trump extends across many demographic groups, but the most dramatic activation against him has come from white, college-educated voters in suburban areas. Many of them routinely voted for Republicans until Trump came along. In 2012, white college graduates sided with Mitt Romney over Barack Obama by 14 points, per the national exit poll. But by 2020, they were going with Biden over Trump by 15.

That swing is only part of the story. What matters for our purposes is that the anti-Trump segment of white, college-educated voters is also proving exceptionally motivated to get to the polls and vote against Trump and his party in any and every election they possibly can.

We saw this just weeks ago in the special election in New York’s 3rd Congressional District, anchored in suburban Long Island. Like primaries, special elections are low-participation affairs, where turnout disparities can make all the difference. Sure enough, per data compiled by Newsday, in the five locales with the highest concentrations of white, college-educated voters in the Long Island portion of the district, turnout ran from from 69 to 76 percent of the level seen in the 2022 midterm elections. In these places, the Democratic candidate, Tom Suozzi, romped.

By comparison, in the five locales with the lowest share of white college-educated voters, turnout was only 54 to 61 percent of the 2022 level. That disparity goes a long way toward explaining how Suozzi won the race by 8 points.

And it’s not just Long Island. Democrats have been achieving success, often by unexpectedly high margins, in one special election after another, thanks in no small part to this enthusiasm.

There’s every reason to suspect this same energy is at work in the GOP presidential primaries. The rules in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Michigan all allow for mass participation by non-Republicans, meaning there has been little barrier for “resistance”-types to take part. They may not consider themselves Republicans, but they are supremely eager to vote, so why wouldn’t they join in en masse, especially with no meaningful contest on the Democratic side?

This is consistent with the results we’ve seen so far, with Haley’s support rising and falling depending on the concentration of whites who have college degrees in any given area. For instance, on Saturday in South Carolina, she actually won the state’s 1st Congressional District by 6 points. Not coincidentally, the 1st District contains the highest share of white college-educated voters in the state, with its anchor, Charleston County, clocking in at No. 1 among counties.

And we know that many of these college-educated whites voted for Joe Biden in 2020, since he won Charleston County by 11 points. For Haley, this made Charleston the single biggest potential source of crossover votes from anti-Trump non-Republicans. It seems she took full advantage, routing Trump in the county by 24 points — her best showing anywhere.

The intense political engagement of anti-Trump, college-educated whites has been evident for some time. It could be crucial in November, ensuring Democrats that a big chunk of their base won’t need any prodding to vote. And especially if overall turnout dips significantly from the record-high levels of 2020, it could also translate into a decisive edge for Democrats in close battleground states.

But when it comes to the GOP primaries now unfolding, what looks at first glance like a new and alarming weakness for Trump may very well be just the latest manifestation of a now-familiar phenomenon. 

Biden voters don’t run around in garish costumes festooned with his face or wave gigantic Biden flags from the back of their Biden-covered pick-up trucks. They just vote. And they vote in great numbers. That quiet enthusiasm is apparently impossible to pick up in the polls.

Hoookay….

I don’t know the story here, but anyone who would do this, even as a joke, is seriously messed up. It may be a cult but this is something even more disturbing.

Chauncy deVega at Salon has an interesting compendium of commentary by various experts in Christian nationalism today that’s well worth reading. Here’s one excerpt from Katherine Stewart the author of “The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism.”

There’s a disconnect between the reality and the narrative framing that sticks to everything. For example, we continue to get horse race coverage that tells us about Trump’s “big win” in South Carolina as if this were just another normal election cycle. On the other hand, the combination of Trump’s legal jeopardy and his increasingly unhinged, overtly fascist rhetoric is indisputable evidence that what we are facing is anything but normal.

As for Trump’s claims about being a prophet or some type of messiah, I think we have here a convergence between what appears to be Trump’s mental disorder and the needs of a base that has been primed for fascism. The only surprising thing about Trump’s claims is he has not yet said he is better than Jesus. That is sure to come! 

It is what it is, and anybody who has been watching this unfortunate man for the past decades knows exactly what I’m talking about. It’s just sad. The more pressing problem is that fascism so often works through the cult of the leader. The leader is always one who suffers on behalf of the victim majority, but who nonetheless triumphs against the evil cosmopolitan elite. And Trump seems to understand this instinctively, which is why he insists that, in his legal struggles against a supposedly corrupt system of justice, he is standing up for the little guy. 

We can’t know the extent to which Trump believes his own lies. The more important point is that majorities of Republican voters believe him when he speaks. In last summer’s CBS News-YouGov survey, Trump supporters – astonishingly –tend to trust him more than they trust their family and friends, conservative media, or even their own religious leaders. We cannot overstate the role of conspiracism and disinformation in bringing us to the point we are in right now. Many MAGA voters have been drawn into a fear-filled, fact-free world. They continue to believe the Big Lie that the 2020 was stolen; they think Trump was the greatest president ever; they say that his indictments are just political persecution from a “weaponized” system of justice; and they have been persuaded that a global cabal is trying to strip away from them everything they hold dear – and that Trump is the savior who will face down the demons and set the world aright. 

Yikes.

Dr. David P. Gushee author of several books including his most recent, “Defending Democracy From Its Christian Enemies” says this:

I hate to say it, but it sure looks like his notable appeal to the non-college white male is connected to a certain credulousness on the part of his base to Trump’s increasingly outlandish religious appeals. And his supporters either don’t know or don’t care that he is articulating cruel positions on such matters as deporting undocumented immigrants and abandoning Ukraine and maybe Europe as a whole to the Russians. 

Idolatry is when a false god or no god is worshipped as God. Trump’s narcissism enables him to see himself in idolatrous ways. Trump is using increasingly idolatrous language to describe himself. I think this may be because he actually believes it but it certainly is because he finds that the language works with a part of his base. 

The will-to-believe that we find in some of these followers is a classic precursor to idolatry. A lack of serious knowledge of the historic Christian faith is also a precursor to people being attracted to the use of religious symbols and language even when they should be repelled by what the faith itself would describe as an obvious misuse. e.g., just because someone uses religious language that does not mean they are a friend to faith or to believers. They may be a predator to faith and the faithful. But you have to actually know something about the religion to be able to tell the difference. Many scholars are trying to make sense of this, and here an internal Christian theological perspective is the most help. That is, we know that what Trump is doing religiously is parasitic on, rather than an expression of, vibrant and real Christian faith. 

Nothing I have seen to this point shows me that Trump’s hardcore religious base can be pried away from him. Not even imprisonment is likely to make a difference with this base. Sometimes in politics, and in history, a malignant force must simply be defeated, and then defeated again, and then defeated again. That is where we are. 

David L. Altheide author of the new book “Gonzo Governance: The Media Logic of Donald Trump”:

The disinformation about Trump’s defense of Christianity from leftists who want to tear down crosses is key to so-called Christian Nationalism. There is scant evidence that Christianity is under attack in the United States. But in true gonzo fashion, Trump creates a false image that appeals to extreme Evangelicals and Pentecostals. He is their savior. His effort to paint himself as a victim of political persecution plays to religious fundamentalists and others who have supported exclusionary and discriminatory policies. Many of his supporters fear ongoing rapid social change in our culture, including social media, the push for more rights by women, workers, and minority groups. And like Hitler, his sanctimonious appeal for strong resistance to guilty verdicts and criticisms of his racist policies is justified by the Divine, and that we all “answer to God in heaven.” When Trump refers to Jan. 6, 2021, insurrectionists as “persecuted Christians” he is following Hitler’s lead of defending racist policies with holy appeals. In 1936, Nazis claimed that God revealed himself “through our Fuehrer, to enable us to accomplish our great mission in the world.” Churches were tolerated as long they did not interfere with the state and did not oppose German racial ideals.   

Most of Trump’s rhetoric to religious zealots is intended to solidify their support. Trump’s minions are not likely to be dissuaded by anything since, in their support for a man who asks no forgiveness of numerous sins, they have already compromised many basic Christian ideals and standards of morality and conduct. Christians are aware of Biblical cautions to beware of false prophets, but political zealots could care less: They are political and will support anyone who advocates for their right-wing views of abortion, America as a white Christian nation, patriarchy, and discrimination against foreigners, most immigrants, and racial minorities.

MAGA is a cult and its dominated by people who call themselves evangelical Christians. They love him more than Jesus.

I thought this was an astute take on all this:

Marge Greene has been fighting funding Ukraine from the get and now she has the power to stop it altogether. And she’s using it.

Speaker Mike Johnson, and everyone else in the House GOP caucus, is scared to death of this woman. She is the defacto Speaker of the House because any speaker knows that she will trip that motion to vacate without a second thought and that will be the end of their speakership. McCarthy managed to co-opt her early because he knew how dangerous she was but she’s not going to make that mistake again. She knows her power lies in being the most vicious, ruthless person in the US Congress and she won’t give it away again.

If Johnson crosses her, he’s done and he knows it.

Among the loudest voices taking Johnson to task is Greene, who has threatened to file a motion to vacate his office if he does not meet the demands of herself and other hardline conservative House GOP members, particularly on opposition to providing more aid to Ukraine in its ongoing war with Russia. Greene has said that those funds should instead be spent domestically, including on measures to strengthen security at the U.S.-Mexico border amid an influx of migrants arriving into the country.

Speaking with Politico for an article published Sunday, the congresswoman admitted that the GOP’s desperation is largely why Johnson still has the speakership, even as his position within the party is increasingly perilous.

“I don’t think he’s safe right now,” Greene said. “The only reason he’s speaker is because our conference is so desperate.”

Ukraine’s future is in this woman’s blood soaked hands right now. How in the hell did this government come to put so much power into such a person’s hands?

What am I saying? This misbegotten system put Donald Trump in the White House so obviously anything is possible.

He’s still at it:

Former President Donald Trump was accused in a lawsuit Wednesday of trying to “drastically dilute” the value of stock shares in his social media company held by the firm’s co-founders, potentially depriving themof hundreds of millions of dollars in profits.

The partnership, United Atlantic Ventures alleges that Trump Media & Technology Group engaged in “wrongful 11th hour … maneuvering” to dilute UAV″s minority stake in the media company, a court filing says.

The Delaware Chancery Court lawsuit comes in advance of the planned merger of TMTG with a shell company called Digital World Acquisition Corp., which would result in the shares of the combined entity being publicly traded.

If DWAC shareholder approve the merger next month, Trump’s 90% stake in TMTG could be valued at more than $3 billion, given DWAC’s current share price.

UAV is a partnership of Andy Litinsky and Wes Moss, who initially pitched Trump the idea of creating Trump Media in February 2021, after the former president was banned from Twitter and Facebook following the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

Both Litinsky and Moss were contestants on Trump’s television show, “The Apprentice.”

TMTG later built and launched Truth Social, the social media platform that Trump uses almost exclusively to communicate with the public.

The planned merger comes as Trump, who is the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, has been ordered to pay more than $500 million in civil judgments in New York, related to trial verdicts for business fraud and defamation of the writer E. Jean Carroll.

“The attempt here is to deprive them of the deal,” said Christopher Clark, a lawyer for UAV.

“It’s not like they went out and bought a lottery ticket,” Clark said of the co-founders. “They actually went out and did the work, they created Truth Social, and now the beneficiary of that, Donald Trump, doesn’t want to pay.”

“Not a unique story, unfortunately,” Clark said, referring to Trump’s infamous practice of contesting bills from contractors and lawyers.

This is the same crime he’s been committing for decades and getting away with it, at least until the State of New York finally stepped up and did something about it. But he’s clearly still at it. If these guys manage to deprive him of his 3 billion dollar deal, that would be of great service to the world.

That applies to clickbait polls like today’s NYT poll that has everyone spinning out. No, women are not suddenly voting for Trump. And this too:

Punching back with style. Too bad it was behind closed doors.

A Tweet (suck it, Musk) regarding the closed-door House questioning of Hunter Biden caught my attention in a big way. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) used his questioning time to punch back against the GOP’s phony Burisma inquiry.

Enjoy, from the transcript:

BRILLIANT!

If you have not read Eric Swalwell’s questions to Hunter Biden during his hearing, you have to.

SWALWELL: Any time your father was in government, prior to the Presidency or before, did he ever operate a hotel?

BIDEN: No, he has never operated a hotel.

SWALWELL: So he’s never operated a hotel where foreign nationals spent millions at that hotel while he was in office?

BIDEN: No, he has not.

SWALWELL: Did your father ever employ in the Oval Office any direct family member to also work in the Oval Office?

BIDEN: My father has never employed any direct family members, to my knowledge.

SWALWELL: While your father was President, did anyone in the family receive 41 trademarks from China?

BIDEN: No.

SWALWELL: As President and the leader of the party, has your father ever tried to install as the chairperson of the party a daughter-in-law or anyone else in the family? BIDEN: No. And I don’t think that anyone in my family would be crazy enough to want to be the chairperson of the DNC.

SWALWELL: Has your father ever in his time as an adult been fined $355 million by any State that he worked in?

BIDEN: No, he has not, thank God.

SWALWELL: Anyone in your family ever strike a multibillion dollar deal with the Saudi Government while your father was in office?

BIDEN: No.

SWALWELL: That’s all I’ve got.

Here’s how ABC News reported Hunter Biden’s “defiant” appearance and Swalwell’s snark:

Rep. Eric Swalwell, the Democrat from California, led one particularly pointed exchange intended to draw out the differences between President Biden and Trump, the Republican front-runner to challenge him for the White House.

“Did your father ever employ in the Oval Office any direct family member to also work in the Oval Office?” Swalwell asked.

“My father has never employed any direct family members, to my knowledge,” Hunter Biden testified.

Swalwell went on to ask questions referring to the Trump hotel in Washington, D.C., Trump’s legal case in New York City, his daughter-in-law’s recent bid to lead the Republican National Committee and his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s business dealings with Saudi Arabia.

“As President and the leader of the party, has your father ever tried to install as the chairperson of the party a daughter-in-law or anyone else in the family?” Swalwell probed.

“No. And I don’t think that anyone in my family would be crazy enough to want to be the chairperson of the DNC” — the Democratic National Committee.

Had his father ever been fined $355 million? “No, he has not, thank God,” Hunter Biden testified.

Lesson? Read the transcript. This pointed statement from Biden, for example:

So when you — when Jared Kushner flies over to Saudi Arabia, picks up $2 billion, comes back, and puts it in his pocket, okay, and he is running for President of the United States, you guys have any problem with that?

Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) adds more and points out the “stark contrast” between Biden’s actions with a private enterprise and Jared Kushner’s deals with foreign governments.

Now, when do House Republicans charge Biden with lying under oath, not because he did but because it suits their narrative and helps Donald “91 Counts”?

(h/t BF)

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A conversation from first principles

“On the Continued Battle for the Soul of the Nation” was President Joe Biden’s topic on September 1, 2022 at Independence Hall in Philadelphia.

“Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic,” he warned, and warned again:

MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution.  They do not believe in the rule of law.  They do not recognize the will of the people. 
 
They refuse to accept the results of a free election.  And they’re working right now, as I speak, in state after state to give power to decide elections in America to partisans and cronies, empowering election deniers to undermine democracy itself.
 
MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards — backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love.
 
They promote authoritarian leaders, and they fan the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country.

And, oh, the pearl-clutching afterwards! Biden was being un-nice, mean, partisan. How dare he? The man-child leading MAGA called it “the most vicious, hateful, and divisive speech ever delivered by an American president.” (Takes one to know one, as any schoolyard bully knows.) “[J]ust eight weeks before midterm elections,” The Washington Post Editorial Board scolded, “Mr. Biden was wrong to conflate upholding the rule of law with his own partisan agenda.” Pundits questioned his political judgment to address the elephant in the room rather than campaign on bland-but-safe kitchen-table issues.

Two months later, the over-hyped, midterm “red wave” flattened to a ripple. Cause and effect? Maybe. Maybe not. But Biden’s “mistake” in campaigining on the soul of America may indeed have been an inflection point, “one of those moments that determine the shape of everything that’s to come after.”

But America’s short attention span means we are too easily distracted from America’s first principles, says Anand Giridharadas, by “Whac-A-Mole crises ginned up by fascists.” By which he means the hysteria over immigration. Sometimes it takes a son of immigrants to appreciate what makes this country worth fighting for (The Ink):

We shouldn’t be having a defensive conversation about immigration that starts with the story of border chaos.

We should have our own conversation from first principles: This is an extraordinary country. It’s extraordinary for many reasons. Among the reasons it is extraordinary: it is a country built of the world, from the world, from every part of the world.

I have had the fortune, as a journalist, as a foreign correspondent, to visit dozens of countries. And I’ve enjoyed all these countries I’ve been to, but I’ve actually never been to any other country that truly aspired to be a country made of the world.

When you’re in France — there are immigrants in France, but it is not like the United States. It is not a country made of the world. It is a country centered on Frenchness.

A lot of countries in the world — people may not know this — don’t even have birthright citizenship. If you live there, if you’re born there, even if your parents are from there, you still don’t necessarily become a citizen.

Eric Liu, a friend of mine, a Chinese-American, wrote in a memoir called A Chinaman’s Chance about how his family’s been in China thousands and thousands of years. His parents left, came to America. He said if he wanted to go back and become Chinese, he couldn’t. 5,000 years of loyal living in China, one or two generations in the United States.

Becoming Chinese is not a thing. Becoming Indian is not a thing. Becoming American is something that we do to a million people every year. We’ve done it under Republicans, under Democrats.

My family came here 47 years ago. I think we’ve had a pretty good run of contribution to this country — perhaps except my own.

So I think we need to not just react to Whac-A-Mole crises ginned up by fascists, but actually own this notion that our blood is better with the blood of many people in it. Our country is better when more people are here.

We have built everything we can because we have every kind of idea, every kind of contribution mixing together, and people who don’t have a heart, people who are miserly, or people who are cynically trying to raise money off of hatred don’t belong in the American story.

Conservatives by their nature resist change. But they are fine with it, grudgingly, if there is a buck to make from it. Their red line is cultural change that threatens a status quo that preserves white, male Christians atop the American social pyramid. For all our “created equal” chest-thumping, yes, we still have castes here, as Isabel Wilkerson argues. Some of us aspire for America to be better than that. Others are just fine with it, especially if there is a buck to make from it. Abolitionism was one of those inflection points where change happened against their resistance. We are at another of those points today.

It is helpful to have Giridharadas around to remind us who we aspire to be. In the streaming age, his bandwidth is narrower than Neil Diamond‘s and Neil Sedaka’s back in the day, but his message is as strong.

Conservatives never back down; they double down. It’s a debating style the left has never embraced, but should. We hem and haw when challenged. We justify and present facts. I looks and feels weak to conservatives who value strength and strong conviction, like Giridharadas’. Punch back.

I’m reminded of a Roy Blount Jr. tale of reading in The New York Times that a southern folk remedy of eating kaolin clay (a main ingredient on Pepto) as a stomach ache remedy was on the wane. Naturally, some New York sophisticate asked if Blount ate dirt:

At that point there were two tacks I could take. I could say, “Well, I know there are some folks down south who like to chew on clay, but I never ate any myself and neither did any of my relatives or friends, and in point of fact I never even saw anybody eat dirt.”

The response to that tack would have been a knowing look. “Here is a man who comes from people who eat dirt and he thinks he is better than they are.” She would be thinking I couldn’t handle stigma. Or that I was inauthentic. Southern and inauthentic: the worst of both worlds.

So I took the second tack. “Hell, yes, we eat dirt,” I said. “And if you never ate any blackened red dirt, you don’t know what’s good. I understand you people up here eat raw fish.”

“And eat cold soup,” I once heard Blount add.

“Hell, yes, I support immigration” is not the answer Whac-A-Mole fascists expect. Try it out. See above for the punch combination that follows.

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Pine martens, a species of mammal related to weasels and badgers, were once common throughout Britain. But sadly, due to habitat loss in recent centuries, their numbers were greatly reduced — bordering on the brink of extinction.

Thanks to conservation efforts, pine martens have begun to make a comeback, but sightings of these shy animals remain rare.

“Unfortunately, pine martens are notoriously difficult to spot,” Charlie Mellor of the Woodland Trust wrote. “They are so elusive that they are often studied via footprints, droppings and bits of lost fur rather than by direct sightings.”

Recently, however, footage has emerged hinting at a lesser-discussed aspect of pine marten behavior — that they know how to have a good time.

Les Humphrey lives in Scotland, near the northern tip of Great Britain. There, he has a motion-sensing camera pointed out toward his garden to monitor for pine martens passing through.

The other day, Humphrey shared an amusing clip of one such visit with the group Mammal Society, capturing two pine martens having an absolute blast with child playthings in his yard — jumping and swinging like a pair of rambunctious kids.

“This has become a nightly ritual,” Humphrey wrote.

Pine martens caught on camera playing on children's swingset in Ardnamurchan, Scotland. The owner of the video, Les Humphreys, tells us this is a nightly occurence in his garden.

Credit: Les Humphreys, Ardnamurchan Wildlife Watch Facebook Group#pinemarten #wildlifephotography pic.twitter.com/rXTj8h1HqW

— Mammal Society (@Mammal_Society) February 28, 2024

Following up on the post below about Hispanic Christian Nationalists, here Philip Bump takes a deep dive into the PRRI poll on Christian Nationalism’s relationship to Trump.

Last year, PRRI asked a wide swath of Americans to evaluate several statements oriented around the idea of instituting Christian nationalism. Some were explicit: “The U.S. government should declare America a Christian nation,” for example. Others were more esoteric: “Being Christian is an important part of being truly American.”

From the responses, PRRI categorized respondents into one of four groups. Two were supportive of Christian nationalism, including the most supportive of the statements (adherents) and those who were generally supportive (sympathizers). The other two groups were hostile to the ideas, from those who mostly disagreed (skeptics) to those who rejected all the ideas (rejecters).

Using this scale, PRRI estimated the percentage of each state’s population that was supportive of Christian nationalism — that is, that were adherents or supporters. Nationally, about 3 in 10 Americans fell into this category, with 1 in 10 as “adherents.” But at the state level, support would at times near 50 percent. In Mississippi, half the population was estimated to be supportive of the precepts of Christian nationalism.

This can be compared to support for Trump in 2020. And when we do so, we see a clear correlation: a cloud of state labels moving up and to the right.

[…]

If we compare the 2020 results to just the percentage of Christian nationalism among the White population in each state, the correlation gets tighter.

This isn’t surprising, certainly. Support for Christian nationalism is higher among less-educated Americans, older Americans and White evangelical Christians, PRRI found. Those are all groups that are central to Trump’s base of support. This data also doesn’t tell us how causation might work: Are Christian nationalists drawn to Trump or are Trump supporters drawn to Christian nationalism?

Of course, Trump stokes the idea that he is a champion — the champion — of America’s Christian population. He makes explicit appeals to the role of Christianity that Christian nationalists support. His presumed goal is that support for Trumpism and Christian nationalism grow stronger together.

I guess I will never get over the fact that these people worship that lying, rapist, swindler but here we are.

Are there any Christian leaders out there who have the respect and authority to challenge this man’s hold on some of these people? No?