"Trump country" stories help explain our politics, not the next election

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Retweeted by Dave Weigel: https://twitter.com/daveweigel

No one will win in 2018 or 2020 by trying to convert the most hardcore of Trump supporters. That isn’t how elections are won. It never has been.

Link to tweet

“Trump country” stories help explain our politics, not the next election

Trump can keep his base and still lose reelection in a landslide.

Updated by Ezra Klein@ezraklein Nov 10, 2017, 9:50am EST

The “journalist-among-the-Trump-voter” subgenre of stories is a unique phenomenon of this political era. There was no similar rash of articles in 2010 asking Barack Obama’s staunchest supporters in mostly black neighborhoods why they still backed the president, how they justified the soaring unemployment rate, whether they felt betrayed.

The reason is that journalists didn’t miss Obama’s rise and they weren’t perplexed by the motivations of his voters; there was no mystery to solve. Donald Trump, by contrast, blindsided us. The political press — myself included — underestimated both the depth and the durability of his support, and has been trying to atone for that mistake, and ensure it’s not made again, ever since. But in trying to take Trump’s staunchest supporters seriously, we need to make sure we don’t lose sight of his weaker supporters — and his numerous opponents. They’re the ones who decided the 2016 election and will decide the 2018 and 2020 elections.

Michael Kruse’s Politico story revisiting diehard Trump supporters in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, is among the best of these Trump country stories I’ve seen — it’s a tremendous piece of reporting that has a lot to say about our politics. What Kruse discovers is that Trump’s supporters don’t care about his broken promises, don’t believe the swirling scandals, and haven’t heard many of the dominant criticisms. Their filter bubble leads to bizarre moments like this one:

Everybody I talk to,” he said, “realizes it’s not Trump who’s dragging his feet. Trump’s probably the most diligent, hardest-working president we’ve ever had in our lifetimes. It’s not like he sleeps in till noon and goes golfing every weekend, like the last president did.”

I stopped him, informing him that, yes, Barack Obama liked to golf, but Trump in fact does golf a lot, too — more, in fact.

Del Signore was surprised to hear this.

“Does he?” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

He did not linger on this topic, smiling and changing the subject with a quip. “If I was married to his wife,” Del Signore said, “I don’t think I’d go anywhere.”

....

[flying rabbit]

1. K&R nt