THURSDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2023
Isaacson, Scarborough speak: "God must love the common people, he made so many of them."
The statement is often attributed to Abraham Lincoln. As far as we know, there's no actual evidence showing that Lincoln ever said it.
Whatever! Today, the apocryphal statement could imaginably be extended to encompass the bulk of Trump voters.
God made a large number of Trump voters too! Here are the actual numbers:
Popular vote, 2016 presidential election:
Hillary Clinton: 65,853,514
Donald J. Trump: 62,984,828
Popular vote, 2020 presidential election:
Joseph Biden: 81,283,501
Donald J. Trump: 74,223,975
It's true! Trump voters were outvoted each time, in 2020 by more than seven million votes.
That said, more than 74.2 million people voted for Trump the last time around. "God must love the Trump voter," the apocryphal Lincoln might have said.
For ourselves, we disagree with the judgment of those 74 million neighbors and friends—but then again, they disagree with us! On September 29, the analysts came right out of their backless chairs when Walter Isaacson told Mika and Joe why so many people still support Donald J. Trump.
Isaacson had a major journalistic career, then turned to the writing of books. His biography of Einstein is wonderfully cogent—until he makes the mistake of trying to describe what Einstein established or discovered in his scientific career.
Isaacson stumbled badly at that thankless task, as everyone else has done. But just last week, on September 29, he was asked, on Morning Joe, why so many American hardheads still support Donald J. Trump.
Isaacson is a deeply experienced observer. He had already said this about Trump's continuing appeal to Trump voters, even in the face of the fire hose of indictments and strange public behaviors:
ISAACSON (9/29/23): You know, what's historically amazing at this time is, with the fire hose—with the documents, and destroying the tapes, and everything that's happened, week after week, the hose doesn't affect him among Republican base voters.
[...]
It is astonishing to me that it has seemed to help him almost.
To see Isaacson say that, click here.
Isaacson said he was astonished, indeed amazed, by Trump's ongoing amount of support. At that point, his interlocutor asked a very important question—made an important appeal:
SCARBOROUGH (continuing directly): So Walter, let's discuss this because, obviously, you're from the Deep South. I'm from the Deep South.
You know a lot of people that voted for Trump. You know a lot of people that are still with Trump. Same here.
What's your best answer to why—
For people who have lived on the upper West Side their entire life—God bless them!—what's your best explanation for why [those voters] are still with Donald Trump?
Why are so many millions of people "still with Donald J. Trump?"
For the record, most Trump voters don't live in the Deep South. But Scarborough was asking a very important question—a question our own blue tribe's thought leaders are strongly inclined not to ask.
Why are so many millions of people still with Donald J. Trump? Within our tribe, we tend to denigrate journalists who ask that question.
For one thing, we have a preferred tribal Storyline concerning that basic question. It explains why people are still with Trump—and it's a Storyline our failing tribe is strongly inclined to like.
We know why tens of millions of voters are still with Donald J. Trump! As with human tribes through the annals of time, our blue tribe has an established memorized answer to all such questions as that.
Still, Isaacson proceeded to answer Scarborough's question. "There's a lot of reasons," he said as his answer began.
He referred to "legitimate resentments" among the voters in question. At this point, Scarborough jumped in—and he took this very rare discussion back a full fifty years.
Tomorrow, we'll show you what Isaacson said, with Scarborough joining in. We may even be ready to answer the riddle of the Sphinx—the question with which we began this week.
God must love Trump voters, he made so many of them! For ourselves, we disagree with those tens of millions of voters, but we think what Isaacson and Scarborough said involved some important points.
Beyond that, we think their comments point the way toward solving the riddle of the Sphinx. Pace Norman O. Brown, what new mystery must be discovered to save our failing civilization?
We're almost ready to divulge that secret! Tomorrow, what Issacson said.
Tomorrow: "Legitimate," Isaacson said
I have a better question. Why did people support him in the first place? The media needs to stop acting like there is a ratinal reason for people to vote for Trump. Once and for all, "No, there isn't"
ReplyDelete"Why do people still support Trump?"
ReplyDeleteBecause who else do working class people ("the common people" in your lingo) have?
Biden, duh! Biden walked the UAW picket line. Trump is busy hoarding his money.
DeleteHow adorable.
DeleteWho else but Trump can the common people give their hard earned money to so that he can use it for personal stuff, (he’s a billionaire, but still needs your money, friend!) and then turn around and prove his devotion to the common man’s economic anxiety by enacting tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations and tanking the economy, not to mention promising better and cheaper healthcare and never delivering it.
DeleteYes: more jobs, higher wages, lower taxes. Less dumb ideological bullshit. The usual.
Delete""God must love the common people, he made so many of them."
ReplyDeleteThe statement is often attributed to Abraham Lincoln."
It is also a line from Fiddler on the Roof (substitute poor for common), which is based on the stories of Sholem Aleichem, a very famous Yiddish writer:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sholem_Aleichem
"God made a large number of Trump voters too!"
ReplyDeleteIt hardly seems fair to blame God for human mistakes. Trump voters are not an act of nature. They each chose to vote for a moron. That's on them, not some deity.
God made more Biden and Clinton voters, so he must like us better!
Delete"His biography of Einstein is wonderfully cogent—until he makes the mistake of trying to describe what Einstein established or discovered in his scientific career."
ReplyDeleteThe failure to understand Einstein is Somerby's fault, not Issacson's (or Einstein's). But the larger question is why Somerby veers off topic to slime a biographer like this?
Does it somehow make Somerby feel big to have obstinately refused to understand what is clear to other people, just so he can take a biographer down a peg? What does Somerby gain from his motivated stupidity? And why is this so important to Somerby that he returns to it in the middle of an essay on an entirely unrelated topic?
In this behavior, Somerby is very much like Trump himself, inserting some emotional grievance into a speech where it doesn't belong, has no relevance. Is it narcissism, the affront to Somerby's ego, that he cannot understand what others get, largely because he didn't take the basic science class needed as a foundation? Somerby is a dunce in many fields because of his neglect of them while at Harvard, but most people don't care when they can't understand physics. Why does Somerby have to blame Isaacson for his own failure to understand Einstein's achievements, returning to blame him again and again? Freud would have had a field day with Somerby's repetition compulsions.
So that's why working-class voters support a corrupt plutocrat: because Walter Isaacson can't explain relativity.
DeleteWorking class voters don't support Trump. White working class voters support Trump. Probably, for the exact same two things every Republican voter supports Trump.
DeleteWell, at least he wasn't ignorantly trashing mathematical logicians.
DeleteSad but obvious answers to Bob’s question
ReplyDeleteabound, including the media malpractice
Bob was once interested in. The Demons
of “want” and “ignorance” the ghost warned
Scrooge about take us part of the way.
Fear of the other, and racism are obvious
factors Bob never wants to hear about,
let alone confront. There is a dopey,
snow flaked arrogance among middle
class whites that is kinda hard to
miss.
It’s also hard to miss, through
commentaries from Bob, Bill Maher
and others, that in our time right wing
people have been infantilized, always
told their mistakes, bigotries and
failures are solely the lefts fault.
Listen to people blaming the
fall of Kevin on Dems and tell
me I’m wrong! Have you heard
Bob try to pin Hunter Biden’s drug
addiction on Republicans? Given the
the stuff he has tried to pass of here
for years, that reverse angle is not a
reach.
"Why are so many millions of people still with Donald J. Trump? Within our tribe, we tend to denigrate journalists who ask that question. "
ReplyDeleteNo, we on the left are not denigrating journalists who ask this. Somerby is the one who denigrates journalists. We wish journalists would interview Biden voters every once in a while.
But the answer to why so many people still support Trump with all of his legal problems and other obvious liabilities (the rape, the incompetence, the Putin-loving treason, the grifting) is that Trump allows those millions of people to express their white supremacist and racist beliefs without condemnation. He has made it OK to put the white sheet on again, to let it all hang out racially speaking. Trump lets the haters hate, because if you feel downtrodden and blame others, hating them feels so damn good.
Are those legitimate resentments? Why not hate the rich instead? Those millions won't do that because they want to BE rich themselves. Trump helps people fantasize that they can be like him -- even though he was born rich and his only been able to keep his money via theft, often from the poor who support him ("Here, buy another MAGA hat.") In America, we don't spit on the rich because we hope to be rich. We spit on the poor because they remind us of our roots.
God didn't make Trump voters. The Republicans did that, for their own benefit. Now they are suffering the consequences. But so is our nation, because those who seek political power at all costs generally don't give a shit about the needs of their constituents. That's why those Trump-loving red states have the worst figures on everything from covid to health care to education to mortality rates, to average wages, to divorce, out-of-wedlock births, and obesity. Like their hero, Trump (except for the wages, since he has never worked a day in his life).
"Trump lets the haters hate"
DeleteTrump has "made it OK" for "millions of people" "to put the white sheet on again"
In my view, your calling "millions of people" white supremacists and racists sounds a tad like hating to me.
Who do you think the union fought in the civil war?
DeleteLove the sinner, hate the sin. Jesus, that woke pussy, said that.
DeleteTrump voters are created by stupidity, not God.
ReplyDelete74 million people - 73,998,000 of whom you've never met - are, every one of them, stupid.
DeleteIn my view, that seems like a less-than-intelligent statement.
Stupid or criminal.
DeleteSomeone has to be below average, by definition.
DeleteI find it hard to believe 74 million Trump voters are stupid. OTOH, I can easily believe 74 million Trump voters are bigots. I haven't spoken to all 74 million, but I have been taking Bob's advice and have listened to as many as I can, which is why it's easy for me to believe.
DeleteThe people who follow Trump tend to be our country's losers. They follow Trump because he tells them they are winners. There, problem solved.
ReplyDeleteWhen things go wrong with God's creation, it's always his creatures' fault. It's never his own fault.
ReplyDeleteGod must be a Republican.
A lot of those Hillary and Biden voters are quite obviously “common people” too. That just isn’t the narrative the media wants to present.
ReplyDeleteI can’t fathom why there are people who harbor opinions that differ with mine.
ReplyDeleteMetaphorical references to a supreme being are entirely out of place as to this phenomenon.
BTW: they are the devil.
Nobby knows.
ReplyDeleteIs Nobby kin to Brown Knows?
DeleteEvery 12 year old knows that Nobby is a Harry Potter character. Your attempted pun makes no sense in this context. Lame, as the 12 year olds would say.
DeleteAnonymouse 4:41pm, I defer to your pre-adolescent knowledge of such matters.
DeleteI’m sure you’re current on all the new apps too.
Everyone has read Harry Potter.
DeleteI'll go with Scott Adams's explanation. Trump is incredibly talented in the field of persuasion. That explains 2016. For 2020, Trump policies had been pretty effective. We rightfully feared Biden's policies. E.g., Biden finally discovered that a wall would help deter illegal immigration. under Trump, Russia didn't attempt to take over part of Ukraine. Under Trump, Israel signed treaties with several neighbors.
ReplyDeleteToday, Trump is substantially tarnished by his ridiculous efforts to not lose the 2092 election. Still, he is so much more persuasive than his Republican opponents that none of them are capable of gaining traction.
All have won elections except Ramaswamy, who voters should see as a mini version of Trump with all of his deficiencies.
Delete"Trump is incredibly talented in the field of persuasion."
DeleteHe's also been found liable for one fraud and he's currently on trial for another. I'm not sure he's playing by the rules in "the field of persuasion."
mh, Bob wants media discussion on Trump being both criminal and DERANGED in order to cover all the voter bases, including those people who aren’t MAGA, but may vote for him because they don’t think gender is a frame of mind and they are doubtful about the utility of EVs and do think Biden is too old, and that the prosecutions may be politically motivated.
ReplyDeleteBelieve or not, they’re out there. They don’t all dress like Buffalo man.
Bob thinks Trump is batshite and wants these people to hear that too.
Cecelia, Somerby has never said what you attribute to him. He has never favored prosecution of Trump's crimes, nor has he called him a criminal. He has also never used your snarky terms (gender is a frame of mind). Somerby has said he worried that Biden is too old, but to my knowledge, never talked about EVs and he has not said the prosecutions are politically motivated -- just that Republicans think so.
ReplyDeleteIt is annoying to those of us who can read for ourselves to hear you put words into Somerby's mouth and ideas into his head, that he has never expressed. You are not the Somerby whisperer.
These are clearly your own ideas and beliefs. That's fine, but you should own them and not pawn them off on Somerby, who speaks for himself.
Anonymouse 4:01pm, it’s not that Somerby doesn’t favor prosecution for any crime that Trump may have committed, Bob doesn’t assume that DT’s legal problems will all be judged as crimes and thinks that the most pertinent- in the sense of being obvious indisputable..in your face…,is the disordered behavior the world sees right now.
ReplyDeleteThat behavior may not sell as many ads on tv or give audience goose pimples as does Trump..,Trump..,jail, but it’s the bird in the hand now and it may be more convincing to independent voters than the cable news sideshow that is mainly for the already decided folks.
You have no idea what Somerby thinks.
ReplyDelete"We know why tens of millions of voters are still with Donald J. Trump! As with human tribes through the annals of time, our blue tribe has an established memorized answer to all such questions as that."
ReplyDeleteI shouldn't have skipped the last few Blue Tribe powwows, I guess. I'm stumped as to what our preferred answer is supposed to be.
Cornel West is leaving the Green Party to run as an independent.
ReplyDeleteI just hope he takes more votes from Trump than from Biden.
DeleteYes, I saw that West didn't want to share in the grift with the Green Party.
Delete