I think the pattern is now pretty clear. There are 6 groups – broadly speaking.
- The "liberals" who hate Trump so much that nothing else really matters. To the extent that they consider policy at all they either think Trump's policies are wrong or they think that anything good that happened during his term is something that just happened and would have happened regardless of who was in the WH, or that they were the result of Obama's actions. Many in this group spend their time perseverating on Trump's utterances and missteps and pouring their nervous energy into caricaturing and mocking him to their endless satisfying amusement - an easy target.
- The woke “liberals” (progressives, socialists and left-wing fascists) who want to remake (aka destroy) the free-enterprise, capitalist system and the Western culture that made it. This group includes the antifa types who believe there are no limits to the means that can be used to achieve their revolutionary ends – they are fanatics every bit as dangerous as the right-wing variety and right now more numerous and they regard the liberal majority as useful idiots to be manipulated for the worthy cause.
- The Republicans who like Trump's policies but whose aversion to the man is so great that they cannot vote for him. This includes those who are afraid of what he might do that could be fundamentally damaging to the body politic - though my efforts to extract anything specific along these lines has so far failed.
- The independents who voted for Trump last time, but who have soured on him for one reason or another – perhaps because they did not realize just how toxic his personality actually is. Why not, one wonders? What did they expect? So because of their newly found aversion and fear of him they have switched their vote. It is this group – many of whom voted against Hillary Clinton – who will determine the outcome of the election.
- Two kinds of Trump supporters. One, those who will vote for him in spite of his toxic personality because they value the policies that have resulted during his first term and believe these are likely to continue and extend into his second term – though how these policies actually resulted is both unclear and not very relevant. The point is they benefitted tens of millions of people, many of them poor – and on foreign policy achieved unprecedented breakthroughs. This group, of which I am a part, lives in fear of how a Biden/Harris administration will squander all of these achievements and then plunge further into the Obama regulatory agenda – on steroids provided by the ever more influential woke elements in the remade Democratic party.
- The second group of Republicans (“conservatives”), those who can see nothing bad in Trump and wax apoplectic at any criticism of him. They include the “deplorables,” the right wing racists and fascists as well as decent folk who just want to believe, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, that Trump is a savvy, down-to-earth regular guy who instinctively knows what to do and deep-down cares about them and about America.
Because of group number 4, I believe that Trump will lose the election – even though I hope for a miracle that he won’t.
I am deeply disappointed that the Trump campaign has not been able to make the conversation about policy – domestic and foreign – that Trump has not been willing and able to lay out systematically the facts on the ground in a manner that would appeal to those who want to hear an analysis without rancor and rage. “This is what I am about, this is what has happened, this is what I promise, regardless of what he says or promises, think about what is better for the American people and vote for me”. But, clearly that is naïve.
If Reagan was the swing back from Carter (a low point in America), and Trump was the swing back from Obama and Hillary, who will be the swing back from Biden/Harris? That will have to be my focus.