Boy, did these things need saying. In his Wall Street Journal column Holman Jenkins remarks on Trump as a phenomenon:
Bruno Maçães, a Portuguese political scientist, recently pointed out that European thinkers have become obsessed with U.S. domestic politics. “They’re not watching German politics. So again, tell me why this is so bad.â€
His point is subtle and best illuminated by new work from liberal scholar Cass Sunstein on how true voter preferences can stay unrevealed in a democracy and then emerge spontaneously. Mr. Trump made new things sayable. The U.S. relies on a military alliance with countries that no longer spend money on having militaries. Our China trade openness has been rewarded by the rise of a neo-Maoist totalitarianism in China. We engage in costly climate policies that have no effect on climate.
We might also remind ourselves of a general principle: It’s not Donald Trump who is a threat to a democracy; it’s politicians generally. Democracy is a system for curbing their quest for power. Of the two candidates in 2016, which was the protégée of the president in office? Which was backed by longstanding and highly organized support networks? Mr. Trump is accused of violating norms, but which party concocted evidence that its opponent was a Russian agent? Which now questions the legitimacy of basic institutions like the Electoral College and the Supreme Court? Which encourages the mobbing of partisan opponents in restaurants?
In 2008, Barack Obama’s campaign was a snow job about bipartisanship. Political misdirection clearly has its uses, but this hasn’t been the Trumpian approach. Mr. Renshon rightly describes him as a president who does “much better in keeping his promises than in speaking accurately about them.â€
I do not like Trump for any number of reasons, not the least of which is that my assessment is that he sees people, women in particular, solely in instrumental terms. But I don’t think that’s why so many Democrats hate him with a white hot hatred.
Besides his not being Hillary Clinton, I think they hate him because he doesn’t give lip service to the prevailing wisdom and most particularly their prevailing wisdom. That isn’t a vice. It’s a virtue.
It would be fun to fisk this piece as it is a good example of the Trumpian style of lies and exaggerations and ignorance of history and current events. That said, your point about why so many Democrats hate this guy is kind of interesting, but I think that we first have to consider conservatives attitudes towards Obama. From where I am sitting, listening to the people with whom I work and the articles sent to me I think that conservatives hated Obama almost s much as Trump. They clearly hated Obama more than Dems hated W, and that was about the same as conservatives hated Clinton.
It looks to me like starting with Clinton (I don’t really remember the kid of rabid hatred we see now going on with Bush 1) we have seen an escalation in hatred from the opposition towards the sitting president. I think this is mostly the result of the media and think tanks who get paid to promote that hatred with the faux outrage of the day.
As to what Trump says, it not his unwillingness to stick to prevailing wisdom, but his steady stream of lies and his constant insulting of others and his promotion of violence, mostly through Twitter. When he sticks to policy, people still disagree, but not with the heat you se in response to the other stuff. In short, his communication is all about pleasing his base, and his base loves it when he is nasty.
Steve
Heh. As I’ve noted so many times before, his imperfections are there for all to see. He doesn’t hide things. But Jenkins pretty much nails it. The left would be well served to formulate a coherent strategy that isn’t Trump Sucks!
I’m not sure they are capable. Take a sache through the comments (or essay) section of OTB any day. Or CNN or WaPo etc. it’s a decent reflection.
But there was with respect to Reagan and Nixon. Nixon experienced a very similar reaction from the press that Trump has. They’d hated him since the early 50s. It considerably predates online media and think tanks.
His point is subtle and best illuminated by new work from liberal scholar Cass Sunstein on how true voter preferences can stay unrevealed in a democracy and then emerge spontaneously.
No shit.
Where would we be without such brilliant academic expertise?
I would dispute that for Reagan. If nothing else you have to remember that a lot of Democrats voted for him. Also, the Dems left him alone after he left office. No serious attempts to prosecute him for Iran contra. It wasn’t dragged out for years and years. Would that happen now for a president from either party? Dont think so. Maybe for Nixon, but we didn’t have social media so it wasnt the non stop barrage we have today so hard to tell, and Vietnam made everything messy. I would say, that at least in my part of the country, the dislike for Kennedy was about the same as for Nixon.
Steve
I think your evaluations of Trump are wrong. He is the candidate that most closely agrees with you. You should vote Republican because you are a Republican.
Voting for trump in 2016 was purely an anti-HRC one, When he won I was taken aback, and yes concerned about how he would handle the power & responsibility of the presidency.
After almost 2 years in office I’m still taken aback, except this time by how Trump has been able to push through the malarkey and actually notch some achievements. Despite lots of Trump foot-in-mouth moments, the obnoxious push-back by all his enemies – obstructing Dems, one-sided MSM, a non free speech academia, superficial Hollywood celeb taunts, and billionaire Silicon Valley/far left donors aiding and abetting anything anti trump – he remains undaunted and feisty.
Consequently, I have come to admire the man, his physical/mental endurance, his connection to blue collar workers. Trump seems more real to me than Politicians before him, like Obama. He wears his warts and incongruencies openly, invites all classes of people into the WH & Oval Office, attracts mobs of “happy†people to his rallies, both confronts and embraces allies and enemies. And, who knows maybe he’ll be impeached by the libs.
Perhaps he and his presidency are one of a kind.
As to comments about Trump’s personality, his technique of using exaggeration, misdirection, insults, untruths, lies, bluster and boastfulness, he himself has said time and time again that these are necessary because his adversaries in deep state Washington and the media, invested as they are in a revolving door, incestual relationship would react to any sign of conciliation or apology as a sign of weakness and attack him from all directions.
Remember, in this fight we sent him to Washington to win, he is still the definite underdog and can give no quarter to political enemies, as that is what they are.
GS- So if a Democrat calls people deplorable, it is a horror and we hear about it forever. When Trump calls people on the left equally bad things weekly, it is necessary? Ends justify the means? Hmm, I had to have a private email account so I could carry out my agenda. That sound OK? Why not? Where do you draw the line?
jan-What connection to blue collar workers? He has never done a day of manual labor in his life. He doesn’t know any. A bloviating, lying billionaire is more real? Just wow. I guess you see what you want to see.
Steve
I despised him before he became president, having watched his career over 35 years when I lived on the East Coast: A career informed by lies, cheating, buffoonery, and a lack of basic decency. That he is now the titular head of the Yahoo party is no surprise to me. A perfect president for the gulls of the boobocracy.
Steve, you don’t have to become connected to people by simply doing the work they do. I’ve worked with many a Dr. who proceedually understood the tests, surgeries, medications used by his patients, but had no clue about their concerns, fears, family issues, sometimes even the side effects of a given treatment.
In turn, Trump may have never handled a drill, but he has been around the labor force, walking construction sites for much of his life, and is said to have taken advice from and promoted men/woman for their particular skill sets rather than their ethnicity, gender or having a college degree. There are many anecdotal stories regarding this ease and sense of comradeship Trump has demonstrated with working people. Anyway, “they†seem to feel he is the real deal, and positively respond to him and his agenda.
As for Trump’s decades in the business world, the good/bad stories about him are all over the map. Consequently, my own POV is mainly shaped about his tenure and policies over the last 2 years in the WH.
IMO physicians are disinclined to being empathetic both by training and temperament. I would not be a bit surprised if as a profession we are selecting for high-functioning people with autism in the practice of medicine. There have been any number of studies finding high numbers of sociopaths or psychopaths in the profession but I don’t think that’s quite right.
I am not aware of the studies showing a lot of sociopathy among doctors in general. There are some showing that for surgeons.
https://www.mediaite.com/tv/tvmedia-ranks-among-top-3-professions-with-most-psychopathic-personalities/
I think that we tend to select more heavily towards the high functioning autism end of the spectrum as you note. But, back to Trump, for those of us who live int eh NE and have been subjected to him for years there are essentially no stories about him slumming it with the working class. None of that was circulated until he, surprise, decided to run for POTUS. Jus look at his lack of charitable donations.
Steve