There are a bunch of reasons. And there is still time for reason.
On one of his recent shows, Bill Maher seemed to lose patience with his guests — Andrew Sullivan and Seth McFarlane — for expressing stupefaction at the very idea that Donald Trump still had voters. The host, who is not suspected of Trump tolerance in the least, seemed convinced that the issue was spent and dull.
I normally agree with Maher, a sardonic and pugilistic liberal after my own heart. But on this matter, I think, he’s wrong. He’s wrong in a way that afflicts democracies everywhere these days, a mulish era when many have been radicalized by social media. The implied assumption is that persuasion is impossible.
If that were true, it bodes ill for societies where (unlike in the US) the voter turnout is high. It’s bad enough when everything is about getting out the vote. If the vote is out anyway, then all we are left with is eternal domination by the fecund. We would in all cases be replacing a discourse of ideas with something not unlike a census.
So I am here to argue that one can still persuade! There are no “deplorables” (or at least not that many) — there are just people making deplorable decisions. So with all due respect to Maher, normally as wise as he is crusty. it is still worth the effort to deconstruct the shocking viability of the obviously unworthy Trump.
It is more than just an American problem. Trump’s election as president in 2016 was a shock to the world. The presence of such a malicious narcissist at the helm in the United States was a thing to be endured, like a terrible disease. Living abroad as I do, I had a front-row seat to the damage it did to the country’s brand; America, many concluded, was not right in the head.
Now he has chances of being returned to office, this time despite a record of infamy to match his persona. People will knowingly back an ex-president who was twice impeached, tried to overturn the 2020 election, incited the deadly Jan. 6 invasion of the Capitol, mishandled the pandemic, and now faces almost 100 felony charges.
It’s clear that in a second Trump term the United States would move pretty far toward authoritarianism and its freedom ranking would plummet. He’d purge the military and government, install loyalists and hound enemies, as in Turkey and Hungary, following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s model, within the rickety bounds of the US Constitution. He would try to pull out of NATO and let Russia roll over Ukraine.
So people around the world are mostly horrified, but not in quite the way that some Americans might think. They’re not fearful that Trump will be making America great again at their expense in some global zero-some game of greatness. Rather they think he doesn’t understand basic things (like that exiting the Iran nuclear deal left it closer to a bomb) and fear he might blow up the world by mistake—or on purpose.
They pity America as well as themselves and ask how Trump could possibly be electable, given that this outcome would immediately trigger a global emergency and risk economic and military catastrophe. I think the explanations might be useful for voters: Ask yourselves if these reasons—which I’m pretty sure are the reasons—are good enough to risk destroying America as a force for good in the world.
THE CULTURE WARS
If millennials and Gen Z were the majority right now, America’s absurd cultural wars would favor the left. As things stand, they’re a gift for the Republicans.
Barely 10 percent of Americans identify as progressive, and even liberals bristle at the “woke agenda.”
The public moves rightward whenever reminded of the obsession with race and identity (as opposed to patriotism and national pride), of the all-encompassing concerns about gender and the tolerance for “transitioning” children, of cancellations and accusations of cultural appropriation, of the ridiculous idea that universities should be “safe spaces” as opposed to places where one is challenged, or of the preposterous (and hopefully defunct) notion of “defunding” the police. The overreach has soured the public on even reasonable levels of affirmative action.
Most of the reasonable people I know who voted for Trump cited their repulsion with all this—which makes it a house on fire for Democrats. You could easily argue that if not for the progressives Trump wouldn’t be electable. You don’t much hear about it in the media because much of it has been colonized by the movement.
THE ISSUES CUT BOTH WAYS
The Republicans are out of step with the American public on major issues from gun control and health care (the people want both) to climate denial and rampant inequality (the people want neither), nor especially abortion (most don’t want the ban Republicans are pushing).
Yet they’re competitive for several reasons: The Democratic side is horrible at messaging the above—a lameness observable among liberal parties all over the world; liberals are mostly not radical on these issues so participation can be low; and the Republican base is seething with an anger that does compel participation, on guns and abortion.
Moreover, the Republicans are absolutely aligned with the public on an issue they’ve succeeded in elevating: immigration. The Democrats cannot seem to convince the people that they agree a country should police its borders (perhaps because some don’t).
This relates to another Republican narrative that seems just barely true enough to be impactful: that Democrats are soft on crime, wishing to allow shoplifting and car-jackings. A project by the Democrat-run District of Columbia was close enough to that to do major harm.
IGNORANCE
Many people just don’t know the truth about the economy now (pretty good) and under Trump (also not bad, until the pandemic, but absolutely not great). And they certainly don’t understand why Trump is a menace. The public should be bombarded with information about what Trump would do in power—and reminders of what he did before. Every tawdry detail of his myriad scandals and charges should be out there every day.
But the Democrats, as said, are horrendous at messaging, and it seems to have infected Trump’s primary rivals in the Republican Party, whose shallow and infantile debates are an exercise in futility.
THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE
Trump (like almost any Republican) would be unlikely to win a straight-up election like other countries have. It is only by virtue of the antiquated Electoral College that they stand a chance, given current demographic trends, population distribution and voting patterns. All district-based systems create distortions. But there is no equivalent in the democratic world for anything like the Electoral College, which gives each voter in Wyoming effectively four votes compared to a Californian’s one.
The currently reality is that the system vastly handicaps the Democrats, so they must win big to win at all. Meanwhile, two of the last three Republican victors won fewer votes than the Democrat. I’m know the contortions Americans will go through to justify this lunacy, and it is sad to see.
Voters cannot affect this in 2024, but they can agitate for change, and there is one real possibility to circumvent it in the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (all states would agree to hand their electors to the winner of the popular vote—and it’s closer than you may think). For now, there is a single saving grace: Even if Trump wins, he will probably have lost. One might regard it as one does a typhoon or a terrorist attack: It was tragically fated, not the will of the people.
BIDEN’S AGE
Yes, Joe is old, and he seems more than a little frail. Watch Biden’s speech at the 2016 Democratic convention and the difference is pretty clear. But his has still been mostly a good presidency, and he has a great team (yes, Kamala Harris needs gravitas training). He makes pretty good decisions, and he’s not a psychopath.
Plus Trump is old as well. If elected, he would be the oldest president ever at the end of his term. And he has senior moments too — a sizzle reel of them would be as damning as anything from Biden. The problem with Trump is that while he too sometimes sounds old and forgetful, he more often sounds lucid and insane.
The age argument does not justify Trump over Biden; it might justify hoping for another candidate emerging this summer at the Democratic convention.
WILL TO POWER
While it’s hard to imagine any serious person thinking Trump is actually fit to be president, some might be wedded to the Republican agenda. His odiousness doesn’t matter as much as one might expect, as it wouldn’t in any country. People simply don’t vote based on the candidate’s suitability but rather because they want their side to be in power (or, sometime, their issues to be prevail).
This may be a stretch, but in a way, it might be laudable: Some may think that checks and balances will limit the horrors—and so it’s rational to favor issues over moral fiber or intellectual ability. I personally assess that Trump is a singularity, and therefore an exception: The danger he poses is great enough to merit ignoring the issues.
But before they can make this case, liberals need to ask themselves a question: What would they do if their candidate were a Trump? Would they not support him anyway? Not even if they assessed he’d be effective in enacting the gun control and universal healthcare enjoyed by every other developed society on earth? Only by answering “no” does one earn the moral right to ask a conservative to do the same.
There are a lot of moving parts, but one thing is clear: empires can crumble, and it can start with an indifference to the arrival of mediocre yet megalomaniacal leaders. Trump is the epitome of that. So here’s the bottom line: The United States does have enemies around the world, and they are the ones who want to see Americans let down their guard and hand Trump the keys.
