By Marc Cooper (June 28, 2017)
Trump is truly confounding. Unless you understand the core truth about him. His permanent insecurity leads him to seek immediate and instant adulation and that is about it. He has no other “strategy” — in any realm of his life.
Every other president in history, for myriad reasons including the most banal, has tried to expand his electoral base while in office. If for no other reason to help his own re-election efforts.
But six months into this administration it is dead obvious that Trump couldn’t care less. From his own perspective, not to mention that of his putative party of submissive puppies, he is intent only on deepening the commitment to his relatively narrow base of around 30-35% of the electorate. His strategy might make some sense if he had favorable ratings of 50% or so.
That’s not happening. He got a certain amount of soft support from what you might call Yellow Dog Republicans — voters who did not care for him but feel part of the GOP tribe. That 15-20% of the electorate is slowly but steadily ebbing way and I cannot imagine that trend getting reversed.
The only thing Trump and the Republicans have got going for them, electorally, is the utter confusion and lack of leadership in the Democratic Party. I doubt, however, that this will be enough.
I have no idea how the next 18 months will play out let alone the next three years. Yet, I am willing to bet that if Trump makes it to the end of his term (which he probably will) he will get a primary challenger backed by a large portion of the Republican Party including the electeds.
An administration that relies primarily on lying about everything (like saying today nobody will be kicked off Medicare if the Senate bill becomes law) and who has lost the respect of the world (Trumo currently at 22 percent globally) is bound to end up badly. Very badly. Of this I have no doubt. The only interrogative is just how much damage will be done before his carcass is dumped into the dust bin of history.
Meanwhile, those who consider themselves the “resistance” are gonna have to learn that beating him involves ORGANIZING to assert power. Safety pins, marches with no strategic goal, and even FB postings like this all add up to jack.
