Not long ago, I heard a pollster describe Donald Trump as "the ultimate high-floor, low-ceiling candidate." It was a professional's way of acknowledging a peculiar fact about Trump's support as measured statistically. At his very best in this regard, his high point was probably on election night 2016, when he gained 46% of the popular vote--or, as I would characterized it, Michael Dukakis territory. Lately, after four years of deception and malfeasance, including an impeachment trial with an outcome that his party rigged for him, and with a strong opponent in his race for re-election, Trump is doing not much better than 40% when it comes to popular opinion. Allowing for a typical statistical margin of error around 3%, that suggests that 3% also defines the limits of Trump's ability to manipulate what people think about him.
On the other hand, to be perfectly fair, it also defines the limits of what Trump's opponents can do to undermine what people think about him. And this, mind you, despite a trail of nakedly corrupt behavior that one would think would reduce his public support, at the very least, to the level at which Richard Nixon found himself post-resignation: around 25%. Yet there he is, only about 6% below his peak.
Why?
I have believed for a long time that the key to his popularity can be found in Trump's own world view, which, despite his rhetorical preference for puffery, prevarication, and flat-out lying when discussing his self-perceived "greatness," is in fact deeply nihilistic. He's said more than once that life isn't worth living, since it ends in death, and the only thing worth doing with life is to tear it all down as you make your trip to the boneyard. Whatever else one can say (none of it good) about that point of view, it's certainly reflects the manner and extent to which he's failed to do his job.
And the 46% to 40% of the people who follow him? I think they're every bit as nihilistic as he is. They don't like the world as it is, one that is no longer structured to favor white men supporting themselves in union-guaranteed jobs. They lack the ambition or vision--or both--to imagine the possibility that they have the power to change, to find the possibilities that might (and do) actually exist in the post-industrial world. They are, the inheritors of the post-war prosperity, frankly too spoiled, despite their poverty, too ignorant and immature to take whatever spare money they have and spend it on something other than build an arsenal worthy of a small army--say, retraining for a new career, or moving someplace where there are jobs that they could do.
Yep. Why try to make live better, when you've got Trump to tell you that it's better to just blow it all up, and take all of the people you hate with you. They're going to Hell, and you're going to Heaven. Right?
It doesn't make sense to me. But it makes sense to them.
Does this point of view seem harsh to you? Well, tell that to Virginia Heffernan, formerly of the New York Times, and currently of the Los Angeles Times. She seems to be on the same page with me.
I have to admit, however, that my wife has a slightly different point of view. She thinks that Trump supporters are motivated not by despair, but by arrogance. Whether from whiteness, or from religion, they think that they're bullet-proof, because they think Trump is bullet-proof. They really think that COVID precautions are for losers. They not only think that they're not going to die, so long as they blindly follow Trump off of whatever cliff he's leaping on any given day, but that the rest of us won't die if we fail to support them in jumping.
Who's right?
Does it matter?
One way or the other, if we all end up going off the cliff, whether we choose to or are dragged there by the political power Trump is able to extract from his 40%-to-46%, it may not.
And so, once again, with 16 days to go:
VOTE!
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