- Joined
- Jul 19, 2012
- Messages
- 14,185
- Reaction score
- 8,768
- Location
- Houston
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Libertarian
I believe that most people in my Twitter feed, left and right, don’t know many genuine Trump supporters, if any. I can count two, maybe three among my Facebook friends, and I went to high school in Oklahoma. It’s the exact problem I discussed back in January: There’s a cosmopolitan vs. traditionalist divide that runs through our politics, with cultural cosmopolitans running both parties.
The fact that Trump is so firmly positioning himself against those cosmopolitans, more so than any national politician since Ronald Reagan, makes it difficult to evaluate his campaign, and deprives us of the conversation we need, because for the first time in a long time, a major party candidate isn’t really trying to curry favor with opinion leaders.
None of this is to say that Trump will win. I would not at all be surprised if Trump implodes before autumn, or next week for that matter. Clinton really could bring home the Sanders voters, and the remaining NeverTrumpers could prove intransigent. President Obama’s popularity could continue to rise. Democrats will undoubtedly sharpen their attacks. All other things being equal, I still think there’s probably a 70 percent chance of Clinton winning.
But I will confess it is really difficult to sort out how much of this is a dispassionate analysis of the data.
None of the people who we rely on for information, the news media whether mainstream or alternative, politicians, pundits, or what have you, know any Trump supporters. They don't know them and don't know what they want. They don't know of the intensity with which hatred and resentment against them burns out there. That's why people might wake up on a certain day in November wondering what the frick happened, and it won't be anything they don't richly deserve for their hubris will have brought them low.