By Political Editor David Bloviator with
Florida Correspondent Jenny Herk in Palm Beach
Now we know whom the two parties will nominate for President this year.
On the Democratic side, it's the friendly moderate seasoned incumbent, bringing a solid record of achievement and legislative success, not to mention economic growth and low unemployment.
On the Republican side, it's an adjudicated rapist and confessed sex offender who is currently under indictment for 91 count 'em 91 felonies and tried to overthrow democracy after he lost the 2020 election.
No contest, amirite?
Um....
With the differences between the candidates so stark, what can account for Trump's hold on almost 45% of the American electorate?
One leading hypothesis is appealing in its simplicity: Trump voters are stupid. The more elegant expression of the case goes something like this:
Throughout US history the most successful con men have all relied on three characteristics of their marks—gullibility, absurdity, and believability—from...Charles Ponzi to Bernard Madoff to Donald J. Trump. Ironically, when the “jig is up” and even months or years later...most of the other marks who have been deceived tend to excuse the fraudster rationalizing his behavior....
The simpler expression can be found by anyone still on Twitter:
The stupidity theory passes the test of Occam's Razor. But theories need to be more than simple. They need to be not falsified.
For adherents of the stupidity explanation, the facts are fatal.
First, there are plenty of Trump supporters with college degrees and beyond:
Some argue that the a college degree is no guarantee of intelligence, and we have a lot of sympathy for that view:
Perhaps Trump’s resurgence among college-educated voters says less about those voters or Donald Trump than it says about what college education has become in the United States: factories for turning out employment-ready adults with economically efficient money-making skills and an adolescent winner-take-all mindset rather than thoughtful, self-aware human beings who understand that their greatest responsibility is to support the communities that not only made their education possible but also a civil society itself.
More cynically put, kids don’t go to college to become better thinkers; they go to get a piece of paper that tells employers they’re smart.
Well, OK. But you have to admit that some of Trump's rabid supporters are intelligent and highly-educated (they're just evil).
Consider the pride of Princeton and Harvard Law School, Cancun Ted Cruz. He was smart enough to flee Texas when the lights went out. And his former Harvard Law professors remember him as smart, although Laurence Tribe boasted that he only gave Cruz an A on his Con Law final when Cruz expected an A+.
Equally loathsome Trump taint polishers and insurrectionists like Senators J.D. Vance, Tom Cotton, and Josh Hawley graduated from Harvard and Yale Law Schools. Stupid? Seems unlikely.
Another fatal falsification of the stupidity hypothesis:
The poll results vary dramatically by race and gender. Biden runs 10-12 points stronger with women compared to men. The differences by race are even starker. A recent NBC News survey, supposedly calling out the decline in Biden's Black support, said Biden beats Trump with Black voters 75-16, or about 40 points better than the all-in results.
Are Black people 40 points smarter than white people? Ten, maybe, but 40%?
So the stupidity explanation seems to fall. Our Wonderful Republican Allies have a variant on the stupid theme, which is that Trump voters have had their brains consumed by the Tangerine-Faced Rac(p)ist and exist in a zombie-like state of loyalty to the cult:
Trump is attempting to rebrand Jan 6 insurrectionists as "patriots" & the day of the attack as a new Patriot’s Day. They're not heroes, they're thugs with a blind allegiance to one man. Why’s he doing it? To take heat off his own legal troubles and criminality. We won't let him. pic.twitter.com/NKpjEGDu7h
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) March 19, 2024
Blind allegiance? The former Republican hacks now doing business at The Lincoln Project use this cult argument to claim a radical discontinuity between the Grand Old Party they supported, which boasted great beloved Republicans like Spiro T. Agnew, Strom Thurmond, Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, Jesse Helms, and Dick Cheney. And Rudy Giuliani.
The stupidity explanation innocently and the cult explanation mendaciously cover up the truth: Trump's followers like him because they share his unjustified white-supremacist male grievance and his willingness to use violence and subversion to protect white privilege:
Trump’s power as the boss of the Republican political crime organization has grown. The loyalty of his MAGA followers has certainly not weakened, and may have increased. Tens of millions of Americans have eagerly embraced Trump's criminal gang, and many millions more are, at the very least, willing to tolerate it and indulge it.
That's why the Republican messaging “Are you better off than you were four years ago?"” which sounds insane to anyone who actually remembers the catastrophic COVID winter and spring of 2020 plays to Trump's base.
They are always better off when they see that an angry old white man who shares their values is in the White House, spewing hate and violence and siccing armed troops on unarmed Black protesters, right up until the moment when they have to be put on ventilators.
The Republican song hasn't really changed in over fifty years. It goes like this:
Didn't need no welfare state
Everybody pulled his weight
Gee the old LaSalle ran great.
Those were the days.
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