So Trump recently announced that the intelligence services and federal law enforcement hide a “criminal deep state”, which is out to get him. Of course the heads of all of these agencies (appointed by Trump) think this is nonsense, and they say so publicly. Almost every day Trump does something that is an impeachable offense, and these paranoid lunatic ravings about a deep state are no different. But the Dems are wasting their time thinking about impeachment, as the GOP would not impeach Trump if he murdered someone in broad daylight in the middle of 5th Avenue. (Actually, I stole that idea from Trump himself.)
So what’s going on here? Why does Trump say such ridiculous things? Let’s go back to the 2008 campaign, and look at something that I did not fully appreciate at the time:
Ugly whispers about Barack Obama’s race, birthplace and religion that began during the Democratic primary erupted into full-scale conspiracy theories among some Republicans, including McCain’s supporters.
At a town hall in Ohio that September, just days after he had officially claimed the GOP nomination, McCain was on stage speaking about Obama when someone in the crowd yelled, referring to the Democratic nominee, “Terrorist!” A few weeks later, while McCain was campaigning with his running mate, then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, in Pennsylvania, rally-goers greeted mentions Obama with calls of “Treason!” and “Off with his head!”
After a particularly raucous rally in New Mexico, McCain aides told the candidate about some of the slurs shouted by the audience, and the senator, who hadn’t heard them, was shocked. “Where is this crap coming from?” he asked an aide. . . .
Down in the polls, McCain was in Minnesota looking for a lifeline among working-class voters in the upper Midwest, but what he found were anxious voters who turned their rage on him when he pushed back against attacks on Obama and defended his rival from what would now be described as “fake news.”
When a man stood up and told him he was “scared … to bring a child up” under an Obama presidency, McCain winced visibly. “I want to be president of the United States, and obviously, I do not want Sen. Obama to be, but I have to tell you … he is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president,” McCain replied, prompting loud boos and cries of disapproval from the audience.
As he tried to calm the audience, the crowd only seemed to get more riled up. “We want to fight, and I will fight,” McCain said. “But I will be respectful. I admire Sen. Obama and his accomplishments, and I will respect him.”
The audience erupted in loud jeers, including shouts of “Liar!” “Come on, John!” a woman yelled.
“I don’t mean that has to reduce your ferocity,” McCain said, trying to speak over loud boos from his supporters. “I just mean to say you have to be respectful.”
A few minutes later, an elderly woman stood and told McCain she could not trust Obama because was he was an “Arab.” McCain shook his head and took the microphone back, interrupting the woman mid-sentence, something he almost never did. “No, ma’am,” he said, correcting her. “He’s a decent family man, citizen, who I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that’s what this campaign is about,” McCain said. This time, some in the crowd clapped, but the candidate looked aggrieved.
McCain didn’t understand that the GOP had changed, that they no longer sought out candidates with dignity and character. His supporters wanted a bigoted demagogue that would feed them fake news about the people they hated. Even by 2008, this was no longer the party of Goldwater, Reagan and Bush. Regime change happened in 2008, not 2016.
It no longer matters that Trump’s own law enforcement and intelligence officials repudiate him every day, on issues ranging from Iran to Russia. That would have mattered in 20th century America, but we have a new political regime, more akin to Venezuela under Chavez, or Italy under Berlusconi. Ross Douthat has a interesting column that warns the Dems about playing into Trump’s hands:
One of the few people to really see Donald Trump coming was the University of Chicago economist Luigi Zingales, who warned way back in 2011 that American politics was going the way of his native Italy, that we could easily produce our own version of Silvio Berlusconi, and that Trump was an obvious candidate to bottle the celebrity-populist-outsider cocktail.
So Zingales’s advice to Democrats after their 2016 defeat carried more weight than the average act of punditry. On the evidence of Berlusconi’s many victories and rare defeats, he argued, the best way to beat Trump was to do exactly what many liberals understandably didn’t want to do — to essentially normalize him, to treat him “as an ordinary opponent” rather than an existential threat, to focus on issues rather than character debates, to deny him both the public carnival and the tone of outraged hysteria in which his brand of politics tends to thrive.
Maybe that’s the least bad approach, but I’m not so sure even that will work. Bush was hammered by the media in 2005 because of the perception that the federal relief effort after Katrina was incompetent. His poll numbers fell sharply. The relief effort after the recent hurricane in Puerto Rico has been equally ineffective, and yet Trump’s polls numbers were unaffected. Perhaps part of the difference is that Puerto Rico is not a state, but I suspect there’s more to it than that. Trump is not seen by voters as heading a government in the same way that Bush was seen as heading a government. Remember, Trump says his own government is a criminal conspiracy that is trying to bring him down. So why would his supporters blame Trump for how that criminal conspiracy did in Puerto Rico, or even New Orleans for that matter? Trump did so well campaigning against the government that he decided to keep doing so even after being elected.
People often point to his hypocrisy:
Attacking Obama for playing lots of golf and then doing the same.
Attacking Hillary for the lack of a secure email system, and then relying on an insecure cell phone.
Attacking previous administrations for giving in to China, and then caving in to China himself.
Attacking fake news, and then engaging in fake news.
Attacking the “swamp”, then engaging in lots of corruption to enrich himself and his family.
Attacking the fake unemployment data under Obama, and then citing the same data as evidence of a strong labor market today.
There are dozens more such examples, probably hundreds, but none of it matters. His supporters want the government to keep their hands off their Medicare, and they want the government to stop sabotaging Trump. The Dems won’t win back the presidency until they figure out that Trump is not the leader of the government.
Trump’s support is like a religious cult. Eventually the spell will break, and if there were a deep recession that hit ordinary Americans this would somewhat reduce Trump’s poll numbers. But I don’t expect a deep recession, and smaller issues that don’t affect average people won’t dent his (modest) popularity. While it’s true that he only polls in the low 40s, there are just enough anti-Trump Republicans who will hold their noses and vote for him anyway to put him over the top in a general election, especially against a left wing candidate like Sanders or Warren. (Especially Warren, as gender is also a problem for the modern Democratic party.) If only they’d nominated Biden in 2016, we wouldn’t be stuck with Trump for 4 years.
Or maybe 8.
PS. Yes, part of the problem in Puerto Rico is the incompetence of local officials. But that was equally true in New Orleans in 2005. So why did Bush get more blame? Maybe conservatives don’t care about Spanish speakers in Puerto Rico, but even the liberal media was far tougher on Bush than Trump.
Again, he’s not viewed as the head of the government, he’s at war with the government. If Mueller didn’t exist, Trump would have had to invent him.