Friday, January 10, 2020

Understanding why Trump won, wins, and could likely be reelected


Those who didn't vote for Trump and those who actively hate his very provocative public behavior seem unable to understand the reasons of his growing domestic support, his foreign policy's successes and the sustained economic boom he presides and encourages.

Watching some documentaries may help those who are not hostages to the oxymoron of partisan logic and thinking. Turning off CNN, Fox, Breitbart, MSNBC and PBS can be a good start. Read books and the reasoning of the other side of your ideological and political spectrum instead.

Let's begin with the contempt and condescension towards Trump's intellect and his supporters':


Hillary Clinton has yet to realize why she blew her own  "blue wall" in the Midwest -the only wall she could break through- and why her party has left her for the Far Left, that blames her for not having been even more wrong about understanding the "Somewhere" voters that used to vote Democrat. 

One good start to understand why middle America's Obama voters turned into Trump voters is reading J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy :


And the more in depth sociological and demographic-based analysis in Charles Murray's "Coming Apart":




In his book "The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics" British sociologist David Goodhart explains this "cognitive the same phenomenon between Remainers and Brexiteers in UK as well. He does it in terms of "anywheres" -college educated urban professionals with global skills finding jobs around the world - coming apart from "somewheres" -trades-trained suburban multi-generational blue collar workers losing their jobs to globalization and "creative destruction" fueled by "anywheres'-.




Even if you are an "anywhere" -or perhaps especially if you are one of those "anywhere" worried about the apparent right-turn in US and Western Europe voters- it's still time to look at the other side of your spectrum and remember that elections not only have consequences,  but lessons that if not learned, may come back with a vengeance.

Relax, give yourself time to open your mind to the other side's views and give a second look at how and why Donald Trump became our 45th president in 2016.


And if you think Trump is dumb and ignorant in political matters you should also check this long interview he gave David Rubinstein well before he decided to run for office a second time. 


There is a method to Trump's "madness", to his deliberate incivility towards others, and to his very New York-real estate-mogul bargaining tactics. And that method is by any means any less astute than Washington DC politicians grandiloquent rhetoric. 

Those who look down on Trump's intellect or political acumen could use some recent memory to look at how their previous forecasts based on that premise make them look now:


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