Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

It's really stupid to assume that each Presidency is an analogue for the next or the previous one, but since this is the kind of middle minded analysis you offer, I'll play. (Why not?)

The resistance to Obama actually did help Obama. The more they alleged crazy shit about him, the more he ignored them and motored along in the center.

As the crazy went crazier, he stayed cool and detached. The loons who called him a socialist were marginalized, ignored. They got no traction against him. He effectively looked at them and, as if he'd a magical remote, turned the channel. Or hit the mute button.

By his second term, even those who disagreed with him politically thought he was a respectable statesman and gave him credit for shepherding us through the economic crisis.

So yes, Obama was strengthened by the crazies. He looked like one of the few adults in the room more and more as the Fox news nuts frothed around him.

Opposition to Obama did not actually help him get things, though, even if you thought he looked more like an adult.

Trump is strengthened a bit differently of course, as unlike Obama, he is as crazy as the crazies who attack him. He isn't able to trade on being the statesman who is above the lunacy of the rabble at his ankles. But he still has a decent trade on which he capitalizes, and it's this: "I'm a bull in a china shop, no doubt. But I'm shaking shit up. And these people who are after me are a mix of deranged social warrior idiots on one side, and sleazy swamp bureaucrats on the other." And let me tell you something - something Less and Icky have hinted at but won't say directly to you because you're an insufferable person to debate with - That Message Resonates. And it resonates most in the old Blue Wall states that matter, Florida, and Texas.

I'll repeat it, in the hope that it permeates the concrete between your ears: Trump's argument that he's a change agent up against bizarre and clueless progressives and "swamp" people is, in marketing terms, "sticky." It works. It works really fucking well. And the progressive counter message - yelling about alternatively overheated and nebulous concepts like "saving democracy from fascists," or "justice for abuses of power" - however true and noble those aims might be (along with being alternatively deluded and naive), Does Not Stick the Same Way. It's in the bin with Things Ignored, like the Never Trumpers' messaging in 2016.

The opposition to Trump helps mobilize his base. He plays on that. But his base is only 40% of the country. Trump's message certainly resonates with conservatives.