The Bulwark’s resident curmudgeon JV Last offers up a disturbing thought that has certainly been crossing my mind a lot these days. He asks, “what if Trump is right about America?” meaning what if Trump just understands American’s better than the rest of us?
He points to these things Trump has been right about:
(1) Republican voters. For 40 years it was dogma that Republican voters wanted a president who blended social and fiscal conservatism and waited his turn to run.
In 2016, Trump understood that Republican voters no longer wanted any of those things. They wanted the craziest son-of-a-bitch available.
(2) The Republican party. The GOP looked like a formidable, disciplined gatekeeper. Trump understood that it was weak and would go along with whatever a man of pure will demanded of it.
(3) The Conservative movement. For three generations conservatives pretended that they cared about policy ideas, such as restrained spending, small government, free trade, and robust foreign policy. Trump understood that the Conservative movement only cared about triggering libs and that so long as he made liberals unhappy, conservatives would take whatever he gave them.
(4) Presidential politics. National politics has long been forward-looking and results oriented. Voters liked and rewarded presidents who passed legislation and talked about the future instead of re-litigating the past. As president, Trump was indifferent to legislating—his major accomplishments were a tax cut and criminal justice reform. As a 2024 candidate, Trump has basically no legislative proposals and spends most of his time talking about his personal grievances.
What’s more, Joe Biden dedicated his term to passing a string of bills, all of which were popular and many of which were bi-partisan. Voters seem not to care about any of this governing. At all.
Trump understood that American politics had transformed into an attention economy.
(5) COVID. You really aren’t going to like this, but Trump was right about the politics of COVID. At the end of the day, people cared more about the economy than the deaths.
It amazes me that today when people complain about what went wrong during COVID, they talk about business closures, travel restrictions, remote schooling, and sometimes having to wear masks in public parks.
They never talk about the 1 million Americans who died from COVID during the pandemic.
Trump understood that the living do not care about the dead.
He also points out that Trump understood that Americans don’t have the will to defend allies or even maintain “strategic ambiguity” with Taiwan, that impeachment was meaningless and that he had Nikki Haley figured out from the beginning. All true.
I don’t think Trump understood any of this consciously it’s just that he instinctively relates to the right wing base which has been clamoring to be set from from all that ideological mumbo jumbo for years. They want to dress up in costumes and dance and scream about everything they hate. They always have. That’s why talk radio and Newt Gingrich and Fox news and then Trump were instantly popular when they came on the scene.
Trump is one of them and was just too ignorant and narcissistic to know that he was breaking all the political rules. He didn’t know they existed. He is the American id.