Neal Milner: Even COVID-19 Is Unlikely To Sever Trump’s Bond With Voters
The pandemic may have upended the world, but it hasn’t changed the fundamentals of why people liked Donald Trump in the first place.
Why in the world do anti-Trump people keep thinking he鈥檚 going to change?
Like now with the coronavirus.
How has the 鈥渢his time things will be different鈥 view worked for you so far? It鈥檚 safe to say, 鈥渘ever.鈥
So all the invective, all the criticisms about the way the president is dealing with the pandemic that鈥檚 killing so many, all that talk about your anger, his soullessness and your despair — what has it gotten you?
It makes you angrier, more desperate, and more convinced. So what?
OK, I understand and sympathize. But I am not your therapist.
It鈥檚 time to get off the couch, free yourselves of that constricting combination of invective and wishful thinking and take a good, hard look at why things are going as they are.
It鈥檚 time for you to really pay attention, as the subtitle of , to what Trump says and why people listen.
If you don鈥檛, you will, angrily but tragically, underestimate President Donald Trump鈥檚 strength in the 2020 presidential race.
Here are fundamental facts about the president and the pandemic.
Trump鈥檚 approval rating has essentially remained the same even as public concern about COVID-19 has gone up.
About 45% of the public continues to approve of Trump鈥檚 actions, basically what it has been throughout his presidency.
The president has not received the sizable handling-the-crisis bump that other nations鈥 leaders have, but same old, same old for Trump is good enough.
A recent ABC News poll indicated that the enormous partisan division over Trump is almost exactly where it鈥檚 been all along.
A finds that 80% of Republicans said they trust Trump for medical information about the coronavirus, while only 74% said they trust the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Republican trust for doctors and scientists like Anthony Fauci (85%) was higher than Trump trust, but not by much.
Those approval ratings suggest that, as horrible, unprecedented and life-changing as the pandemic is, the rule of thumb for understanding how it鈥檚 being handled is: Things remain the same.
There are two answers to why Donald Trump is acting the way he is.
First, he is a fully formed individual with a set of traits and behaviors, developed well before he became president, that remain the same.
His pandemic press conference answers, my friends, may seem to be blowin鈥 in the wind, but it has always been so, and he is proud of it. That鈥檚 how he rolls.
Second, essentially the same people continue to support him for the same reasons they voted for him in the first place. And that has a very great deal to do with the way he rolls.
Take another look at those reasons. Is there anything in there that you could not have said during any stage of the Trump presidency?
It鈥檚 misleading and delusional to see the 2016 Trump victory as a crazy electorate choosing a crazy president.
The answer is no, and that鈥檚 the point.
Let鈥檚 take a closer look at each of these reasons. But before we do so, a couple of words about my outlook and approach.
My perspective is very much influenced by Hart鈥檚 book, “.” Hart analyzed thousands of tweets, campaign and presidential speeches, as well as news articles and letters to the editor. He also paid close attention to what people actually say about Trump.
Compared to past presidents, Trump is unique in his faith in the power of his emotions. He is proud of his emotions, not afraid to show them, and, as Hart puts it, thinks non-emotional politics is not politics at all.
So it鈥檚 not surprising that given this faith, Trump hates complexity. Trump lives in the moment. He wants to keep things simple. He finds it hard to 鈥渞ise above things because doing so elevates him to an airy, undependable space.鈥
He wants people to feel what he feels. The president also feels reverential about his supporters鈥 emotions.
Trump is also an effective and frequent storyteller. He thinks by means of narratives.
Storytelling is not so much about laying out facts or clear presentations. It鈥檚 about creating a community, a combination of making people feel what you feel and validating the listeners鈥 own feelings.
Historically there is a style of politics whose themes go like this: I have been cast adrift, beset by dark and malign forces, and I am outraged that this has happened. Trump uses this style more than any president since 1948.
Trump’s Emotional Connection With His Supporters
Those themes are also the overall beliefs of a large number of Trump supporters.
It鈥檚 misleading and delusional to see the 2016 Trump victory as a crazy electorate choosing a crazy president.
More accurately, a troubled electorate chose an outlier who has a surprising amount of cultural awareness.
They felt what Trump helped them to feel 鈥 to admit they were feeling 鈥 about being ignored, trapped by a destructive global culture, and dismissed by elites and the press.
Like Trump, many of them trusted their intuitions and were suspicious of experts. Trump鈥檚 bombast energized them. It gave them a voice.
They believed that when Trump lies, they can nonetheless determine his true intentions and forgive the lie accordingly.
As Hart puts it, Trump knew many Americans felt ignored. He acknowledged it with an accessible, populist style.
He knew many felt trapped. He uplifted them through emotional storytelling.
He understood that many felt weary of the political system. He used tweets to energize them.
All these links between the way a sizable part of America feels and Trump鈥檚 relationship to them remain in place today.
This relationship between the president and his constituency is not about a flimflam man playing Three-card Monte with a bunch of na茂ve suckers.
It鈥檚 a relationship with cultural roots, and it has become quite stable.
So what we have, on the one hand, is a strong and stable relationship between the president and the millions of people who approve of him, and, on the other, a strong and stable number of people who probably believe what Bernie Sanders says 鈥 that Trump is the worst president in history.
And that brings us to the pandemic and the 2020 presidential election.聽 As put it, 鈥淚f Democrats can successfully associate the substantial harm wreaked by COVID-19 with Trump, they win in November. But if Trump and the Republicans can deflect enough blame elsewhere and Trump gets credit for making things less bad than they could have been, Trump will win.鈥
The writer called this 鈥渢he crudest of calculations,鈥 and it is because the perceptions of harm and success will be filtered through what has become very stable partisan screens with strong emotional and cultural components leading people to see Trump鈥檚 handling the virus in totally different ways.
In other words: pandemic or not, Trump is not likely to lose that 45% who approve of him.
In other words: if you can鈥檛 imagine Trump winning, considering the preposterously incompetent way you feel he is dealing with COVID-19 — well then, you don鈥檛 have much of an imagination.
