Should-Read: Tyler Cowen's line in early 2016—that 30% of America has always been crazy, but that the crazy used to be split between the two parties, and so was contained, but is now concentrated in one—has stuck with me. He meant it to be reassuring. But the crazy concentrated in the Republican Party turned out to be large enough to take it over. And then there were the 19% who were willing to go along with the crazy in November 2016. And now there are the officeholders who believe that they are tied to Trumpism. (1) Find different officeholders. (2) Break the 19%'s tolerance for Trumpism. (3) Split the 30% so it can no longer win a Republican primary. Those are the three principal tasks to recreate a constructive American politics. And easily grifted morons in and around Johnstown, PA are not key to understanding how to accomplish those tasks: Ezra Klein: “Trump country” stories help explain our politics, not the next election: "Michael Kruse’s Politico story revisiting diehard Trump supporters in Johnstown, Pennsylvania...
...Trump’s [core] supporters don’t care about his broken promises, don’t believe the swirling scandals, and haven’t heard many of the dominant criticisms. Their filter bubble leads to bizarre moments.... Where his story goes awry is in its effort to draw a macro-political conclusion....
Johnstown voters do not intend to hold the president accountable... have eliminated the goalposts altogether. This reality ought to get the attention of anyone who thinks they will win in 2018 or 2020 by running against Trump’s record. His supporters here, it turns out, are energized by his bombast and his animus more than any actual accomplishments....
Here’s the thing: No one will win in 2018 or 2020 by trying to convert the most hardcore of Trump supporters. That isn’t how elections are won. It never has been: Herbert Hoover, in the depths of the Great Depression, held about 80 percent of his vote from the previous election. You can imagine stories going deep into Hoover country quoting diehard Hooverites explaining away their president’s failures. But Hoover still lost his reelection bid in a landslide....
Trump didn’t win in 2016 by a healthy margin. Even with James Comey’s assist, he lost the popular vote, and the election turned on a mere 74,000 ballots in three states.... Trump... has to expand his coalition, or at least stop it from shrinking. At that, he’s failing. There are plenty of Trump voters out there who aren’t deep inside Trump’s bubble, who don’t like the fights he’s constantly picking, who are open to arguments about his record.... We shouldn’t mistake Trump’s hardcore support for the votes that won him the White House, and that he’s at most risk of losing...
As I have said before, this reminds me of American politics in the 1850s. Back then it was the Democratic Party that held the national majority, and the South had the majority within the Democratic Party, and the Slavepower had the majority within the South, and the fire-eaters had the majority within the Slavepower, and with bleeding Kansas and Dred Scott the fire-eaters pushed too far, and the Slavepower, the South, and the Democratic Party fell in line, and the political system broke—and 700,000 peple died and 5 million people became free (or freer).
