"Trump Voters" Are Just Republicans

Okay, I am going to make this short and sweet. If more people followed my on Twitter it'd be a tweetstorm, but I'm too old fashioned and unpopular for that.

We've been hearing for well over a year now about "Trump voters." They are supposedly all retired industrial workers in Youngstown and Green Bay who love Trump for his "populism" due to their "economic anxiety." There's a shit ton of bullshit in that narrative, but it's the assumption behind it that bugs me the most. You could've talked about "Trump voters" in the primaries, but since the general election they don't really exist. "Trump voters" are essentially just Republicans. Trump only got 46% of the vote, which was less than Romney in 2012. He did not attract a massive wave of new voters. Yes, he did manage to poach a few Obama voters in the upper Midwest (which tipped the electoral college), but nationwide this does not amount to some new species of voter. He also won the election because Republicans who did not like him in the primaries went out and voted for him in the general election.

They did not necessarily vote for the media's version of Trump. They wanted things like an anti-abortion Supreme Court justice, business deregulation, tax cuts, etc. This is why I am so surprised that people think that Trump's moves to scrap Dodd-Frank or put a bunch of Goldman Sachs alums in the White House will somehow alienate his voters. It won't. They're Republicans, after all. As long as Trump keeps hurting the people they don't like (Muslims, brown-skinned immigrants, African-Americans, the poor etc.) and makes liberals mad, they'll be all for him. Even if their economic prospects worsen, they'll be happy as long as those other folks are getting nailed a lot harder.

It's also why the GOP establishment won't "come to its senses" and turn on him. He is pushing voter suppression, attacks on immigrants, Islamophobia, financial deregulation, and an ultra-conservative Supreme Court nominee. That's exactly what they want! Why would they change that? Plus, if the shit hits the fan and things go wrong, they can just blame them and pretend they never really supported him. I doubt they'll ever actually have to do that. Trump and the Republican leadership have entered into a blood pact, and there's no going back. After all, autocrats never lack for willing collaborators.