Why do people want Trump?

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Well yeah, we're both smart guys, we just have clashing values and styles (mostly styles, IMHO) coupled with a generation gap.

IIRC you're a Christian yourself, if a heterodox one, and so have a better insight into that culture than a lot of people here who talk about it without having experienced it, whereas I fraternize with right wing people, including many Christians, through my gun hobby despite living in a progressive area, and so have a better view of what makes them tick than people who just read about them on the internet. Trump gives them a way to strike back at people they see as looking down on them in a very un-Christian way while keeping their own hands clean, and probably gives them a bit of a vicarious thrill while he does it too.

Yet the exit polls showed an increase in the black and hispanic vote for 2020. White college ed males was the only decreasing vote for him. Go figure.

Disclaimer, I didn’t like him in 2016, 2020, and pray for someone else in 2024.

Was it? I seem to recall the small matter of 3 Supreme Court justices and countless lower court appointees, putting the 40 year project of reforming the federal judiciary within striking distance of success, with Roe in particular looking more vulnerable than it ever has. That's a big deal to a lot of religious conservatives, and the tilt of the courts to the right generally is a big deal for a much larger group than that, myself among them, my silver lining from the chaos of the Trump presidency.

There's other stuff too, the wrecking ball approach to regulations and bureaucracy was something conservatives have wanted for decades, and not just the wealthy business elites, I'm pretty mixed on the tax cut, I think that political capitol could have been better spent elsewhere but tax cuts are very on brand for the GOP, what he did with immigration was something the working class right had been screaming for as long as I can remember, etc. You might not recognize these things as wins, but for his voters, they absolutely were.



Convinced yourself that shallow thinking and emotional reactions are only vices of the right, have you? Kinda reminds me of Hilary and Co reaching for excuse after excuse in 2016, first it was Comey, then it was the Russians, then it was Fake News (remember, that term started on the left), then it was Facebook, never willing to admit that she'd been a bad candidate and run a bad campaign. It's all because those darn conservatives are shallow thinking emotional bigots, right? It couldn't possibly be that they had actual policy objections to the Democrats, and were sick of being treated like toddlers who weren't capable of knowing what their own interests were and needed constant supervision by a smug coastal elite who derisively referred to them as flyover country, could it?

Do you actually not hear the condescension in your replies? Cause I'm hearing it loud and clear.



And that makes you qualified to make sweeping assertions about his supporters? Are you starting to see the problem here?

You're saying the lower paid are now better off? And that giving the courts more right-wing power is a good thing economically for the masses?

"Convinced yourself that.......?" If you don't agree with my opinion, better to stick to just politely saying so and giving your reasons. Calling me self-delusional doesn't help anything. We know Hilary Clinton was a suit, and I don't know what the Democrats were thinking when they picked her. You probably don't realise that I don't like the Democrats, I don't think they're are left-wing enough. I wouldn't dream of supporting them except perhaps to keep Trump and the Republicans out. I know the political system is shot through with corruption and BS, and I've never tried to claim that any party is sincere or much more than self-serving. It's just that Trump is even worse than the rest of them.

You might think Trump's working-class supporters are mostly thoughtful people. For all either of us know, it's not impossible that you could be right. Neither of us have met more than a fraction of them. But there was a guy who explained his support for Trump thus: "When he talks, he says things how I'd say them myself." Now it's not too much of a leap of faith to say that Trump talks like an idiot. What does that tell us about that guy?

Sorry if it sounds condescending, but I'm pretty sure they're being conned.

The problem here as I see it is that the way you phrase things suggests to me that you're spoiling for a fight. Nobody here has met the majority of Trump supporters. By your logic, nobody here is qualified to say anything about them. But given the thread title, we're invited to offer explanations why people want Trump. I've offered my explanation, you're free to offer yours. But do stay polite, it's clearly a thorny issue and I can't imagine you'll convince anybody of much if you don't.

Some of it. I think some of is they know they, and their way are becoming history and Trump gives them the last opportunity to impede for a time or at least trigger the “bad guys” before going down. A bit analogous to retreating troops destroying everything before the inevitable wipe out or surrender.

Or a kamikaze taking out as many of the enemy with them as possible. Remember, one of the most influential essays making the case for Trump in 2016 was The Flight 93 Election, which made the analogy that the Democrats were flying the plane of the state into a building, and that even if Trump didn't know how to fly the plane, they should charge the cockpit anyway because it's better to go down fighting than waiting to die.

Who said we were strictly talking economics here? Both sides are driven at least as much by cultural stuff as economic, and the right in particular is highly motivated by their impression that the left is trying to destroy their way of life. Slashing business regulations and curbing immigration also do help the middle and lower classes economically as well, making entrepreneurship easier and raising the bargaining power of labor by curbing the supply of workers willing to accept low wages helps them out quite a bit in fact.

More of an observation than an accusation, and interesting that you bristle when someone points out that you appear to have convinced yourself of something that isn't true; almost like how you keep insisting that Trump voters must be deluded in some way, right? Makes you annoyed with me, maybe want to vote for someone who would piss me off? See where I'm going with this?



Is he though? That's how all of this started, me questioning what exactly is so terrible about Trump beyond his persona and the chaos it brings, and I haven't yet gotten any solid answers. I mean I'm not unsympathetic to your position, I'm not a fan of the GOP but will take them over the Democrats for my own reasons, but I find your condescension towards rank and file conservatives to be off-putting and worthy of rebuke, particularly given your repeated failures to understand their motives.



Some are thoughtful, more are angry, most see him as a means to an end, and that end is sticking the biggest possible finger in the collective eye of the left; that doesn't require them to think of him as a great man or a brilliant leader or even a trustworthy guy, it just requires them to believe he'll piss off the liberals more than anyone else, and the liberals themselves assure them of that every time they spit out the name Trump from between clenched teeth. You're so focused on this idea that they're being "conned" that you're failing to realize that they know who he is and don't care because their primary goal with him isn't constructive, it's destructive, and the more people like you piss and moan about the guy, the more his supporters embrace him because they read your criticism as more signs that they've got the right guy for the job. Why would they care that their guy is fake rich, a fake businessman, a fake negotiator, fake everything, if he does the one thing they really want, tearing down the libs and their establishment?

Also, I know a lot of these people through my involvement with the shooting sports and gun politics, all flavors of conservatives from all parts of the country, so I have a lot more than 3 examples to look at when drawing conclusions about them, let alone basing generalizations on speech patterns.

Ha, you'll know when I'm spoiling for a fight, this is actually me being pretty nice. You're misreading my posts if you think I'm saying someone would have to have met the majority of Trump supporters to form an opinion, what I'm saying is that maybe the person who actually spends time with them might have a better idea of their motives and attitudes, and that person isn't you with your three people you know and the one guy who thinks Trump talks like him. You're of course free to offer your opinions, just as I'm free to shoot them down when they don't conform to my observed reality amongst the Trumpsters, who again, I do actually spend a fair amount of time with.

Is it just me, but does anyone else see that those who claim to not want to fight are often the most contentious?

You mean this is you trying to be nice.

Re the numbers thing - you made the point that I'm not qualified to offer an opinion about why people want Trump because I've only personally met 3 people who want him. I made the point that by that logic, nobody would be qualified to give an opinion at all. To absolutely know what makes them tick, you'd have to look at all of them. Ultimately we're all guessing, even you with your big circle of Trumpy friends. But if it's any help, all 3 of those people reposted pro-Trump memes - presumably they're not the only people out there who believe those memes. As for the guy who liked Trump because when he talked he took the words out of his mouth, that came from an article by a journalist who had looked into the question of what went on in the minds of ordinary Trump supporters, presumably he'd listened to more than the few he chose as representative of what he'd found.

Interesting that you use the phrase "shoot down" to refer to the way you engage with opinions you don't agree with. Quite an aggressive term, that, perhaps suggestive of a hostile attitude and a closed mind on the matter? I can't be absolutely sure of course, but my best guess is that you're unable to debate in the calm, polite manner that's conducive to a mutual attempt to arrive at the truth. And I don't want to play your shooting games.

Oh okay. Do a lot of Americans really feel threatened by the attempted coup though? The attempt was totally incompetent and felt like a sorry attempt. All they did was enter the capital building and gocked around aimlessly it seemed. So I guess I am surprised people would feel threatened by that, if that's the best Trump supporters have.

Also, when it came to democrats rioting in cities, the democratic party payed some of their bail money when they were arrested, or so I remember reading. So why are the democrats pro rioting when it comes to to democrats rioting, but they are anti-rioting, when it's republicans doing it? Double standard?

Sure, the storming of the Capitol was never going to work, indeed the bad publicity - photos of some bloke dressed up like a clown with Viking horns, and one with another bloke with his feet on somebody else's desk - probably dented Trump's popularity a little. But I more had in mind Trump's other machinations - replacing the judiciary with people who are loyal to him, pretending he "won, actually" and all those desperate attempts to overturn the result with recount after recount and telling State governors to ignore the ballot and just nominate Republicans instead. True, the other side also cheats, but I don't think anybody else has tried so hard to cling onto power. So the Left would naturally see it as more important than ever to disempower the Right before the Right manages to render it impossible to do so.

Oh okay, but how would the left disempower the right, or how would the right make that impossible?