Trump Thread

[Montmorency]

And yet, his approval has been increasing recently.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com...roval-ratings/

I find it remarkable how stable his approval ratings have been over the full term (perhaps only Obama is comparable in this regard out of the records of all Presidents as shown on 538). But his base will respond, thus slightly bumping his approval, every time he engages in his bailiwick, which is cultural-symbolic warfare and antagonism. Economics is literally meaningless in registering Trump's base support (as opposed to interest group or financial support).

You must understand - as so many have noted, but as this twitter thread does relatively succinctly - is that Trump's only option to build support is to divide the country (read the whole thing):

Starting from the proposal that Trump’s failure to even try to “unite” the country after the bombs doesn’t only stem from his character but his business model.

Or to put it otherwise, it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his continued political success depends upon his not understanding it. Trump’s prospects for political survival don’t depend on uniting country, but on continuing to divide it in ways that are reinforced by the political geography of Senate, the rural-urban divide in House seats etc. Even if (implausibly) he wanted to build unity, he couldn’t stick to it without undermining his only viable political strategy (the people who hate him are going to go on hating him). This seems obvious.

What is maybe less immediately obvious is that the Democratic party faces very similar strictures. The broad aspirational claim that the country could be ‘united’ by a president depended on a very different ecosystem, where TV etc had a highly pronounced centrist bias.

As the historical work of @pastpunditry and the ecosystem mapping of @YBenkler et al. demonstrate, this has been radically transformed. We now have a bifurcated media ecosystem, with Fox News and its satellites radically at odds with the old consensus, which persuades viewers into a version of @normative epistemic closure (see also @drvox passsim). This means that Democratic presidents aren’t ever going to be able to unite the country either – a substantial minority will always believe they are part of a madrassa/benghazi/communist/globalist plot.

It’s notable that the last moment of purported ‘unity’ was GWB and the Iraq war – when the traditional media flocked to Fox’s view of the world, rather than vice versa. But there is a substantial minority that will never, ever be united beneath a president that has the (D).

So this creates a problem for the Democrats. They’re going to be asked to bring unity back to American politics, but they’re not going to be able to. When Clinton complained about the “deplorables” she was absolutely right. They may not be deplorable in the sense that they may be good to their neighbors, do not kick puppy dogs for fun etc, but they are going to be eager consumers of conspiracy theories, and they will be difficult to impossible to persuade given prevailing media structures.

What this means is that “uniting the country” is perhaps plausible as an organizing myth for a coalition that would like to think of itself as the unifying spirit of the country, but “uniting the country” should never be mistaken as a program for practical action. Indeed, that goal is likely to be a continuing problem, insofar as the coalition is likely to get cross pressure from a mainstream media that is still drinking its own home-brewed Kool-Aid, when that coalition takes politically divisive measures that are politically necessary under current circumstances. Justifying these measures in terms of broad political programs that are hard for media to assail because of their urgency – e.g. the need to restore American democracy a la Ezra, or the threat of global warming – is one possible way of responding that is obviously good on its own merits, albeit not always going to be effective in convincing media figures who still think they are in an earlier and very different America that operates according to different rules.

But if my barstool punditizing is right, then Trump’s immediate departure from uniting to dividing does not just represent his personal drive to spite and chaos. It also reflects the real state of a country that is so profoundly divided that Humpty Dumpty ain’t never going to be reassembled properly. While deploring the ways in which Trump uses this state of affairs, Democrats should be under no illusions it can be fixed.

Also, here is a useful article that elaborated on the recent topics of discussion here (re: compromise, extremism, partisanship), and explains why even alignment on economic policy between Democrats and Republicans will never allow for a meaningful coalition. (The TLDR is that the parties used to be similar enough that voters felt cross-pressured between identity groups associated with either party, but now they are more cleanly divided along lines like race, sex, and class)

Let me repeat my belief that this is our best option:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: