The 4%

The 4%

Do the math. I have finally done it and it makes me more curious rather than satisfy my curiosity. The latest Times/Siena poll says very clearly that the Trump MAGA base represents 37% of the Republican Party. That is the core that gives Trump his dominant lead in the Republican Primary discussions (it’s barely an official campaign yet since there hasn’t even been a debate yet…not that he will likely partake of such a spectacle). From that core, the survey says that while 25% of Republicans are not open to Trump as the candidate, that leaves another 37% that are persuadable. Of those waffling 37%, 17% lean towards Trump, which is what gives him his 54% commanding lead over his closest competitor, which is still Ron DeSantis, who can lay claim to only 17% all-in support. It is that 37% lead (too many similar numbers, so that means 54% minus 17% equals 37%) that is so overwhelming to pollsters that they suggest that no other primary candidate with a lead over 20% against the field has ever NOT been nominated by their party. It is that dominance that amazes people about the persistence of Donald Trump even in the face of 91 criminal counts in four criminal indictments.

I think it is fair to say that the Trump phenomenon is baffling political analysts, sociologists and the global population of thinking people of the world (this amazement goes well beyond the shores of America given the leadership that America still enjoys in the world). The freedom-minded people of Europe, Asia, Latin America and elsewhere are aghast at this reality while the authoritarian-minded of the world chuckle that it is a sign of the decadence and demise of liberal democracy as the governance model of choice in the world. The truly dangerous messages imbedded in the Times/Siena poll highlight that 80% of this MAGA base feel that America is in danger of failing (only 37% of never-Trump Republicans feel that). This furthermore runs to 71% policy support against immigration (not surprising), 64% support for not continuing support for Ukraine, and even 43% support for punishing “woke” businesses like Disney. All of those policy issues have some support amongst the never-Trump crowd, but it is mostly in the 20-30% range. It trends higher in those persuadable about Trump, but is markedly below the statistics for the MAGA crowd.

This MAGA base is decidedly blue-collar, but not necessarily union members. They come from families with household incomes of less than $100,000 (70%) and only 26% have a college degree. That paints a relatively clear picture that this core Trump base is a populist’s dream. They are the “Descamisados” or shirt-less people of Evita Peron. We have often called them the silent majority referred to by Richard Nixon in 1968 and yet they have been given voice by Donald Trump and especially social media, and once set loose from their silence, they have decided that they are “mad as hell and they’re not going to take it any more”. This is about the human condition and its outrage at the state of the world, howling at the moon the way the madman anchorman Howard Beale did in the 1976 film Network.

I think it is a contest these days as to where the loudest howls come from. Clearly the MAGA Republicans get most of the headlines, mostly because they seem to have fewer guardrails on them. They make overt threats against politicians, judges, prosecutors, witnesses and jury members. They brandish their AR-15s and suggest that the Second Amendment was specifically written for them to protect them against the very government under whose protection and beneficence they have always chosen to live. I suppose their intention is not just to howl at the moon, but to bark like a junkyard mad dog to very specifically scare the rest of us to do what? To just leave them alone, or to become like them and promote anarchy by breaking down the structure of modern society that prevents life from being one big natural free-for-all? For every brash howl from a MAGA Republican reactionary, there are two other cries that rise to the heavens. One is clearly the cry of the true radical left that has never trusted the System and has always been ready to dismantle the status quo in favor of an ideological utopia. It’s goals may seem similar to the MAGA wishes but its motivation is as ideological as the MAGA motivation in primal and basic. But there is also another cry in the wilderness that is less reported but no less present and heard every night during the evening news. That is the cry of the genuinely peace-loving center of the political spectrum. These are the people like my fair Kim that cry for the devastation in Maui, cry for the battered pets on the ASPCA ads, cry for the victims of mass shootings and want nothing more from life than for people to love one another and live in peace and harmony. Kim does not fly derogatory flags on her car or truck. She does not march in protest against authoritarian rule (though she did go to the Women’s Day March in Washington a few years ago). Mostly she weeps in silence in the comfort of our home every evening as she asks me to turn off the day’s news.

The world is filled with a lot of upset people these days and few of us can figure out why the other feels as strongly as they do. This galvanization of views is ripping us apart at the seams and has been building gradually but now very perceptively over the past forty years especially. Billy Joel said with his usual rhythmic harmony that “We didn’t start the fire, its been always burning since the world’s been turning”. But while that may be true, the world does move in waves and for every crest of activity (usually accompanied with great violence and devastation), there is also a trough of calm when people are just on damn tired to fight and hate and they default to more or less peaceful coexistence. Several years ago I saw a National Geographic fold-out that showed the history of war over the course of human existence. Our memories of warfare in the modern age go back to the Roman Empire, but the amazing thing about that chart was the history of war and the extent of the human toll and devastation in all prior wars of which we have simply been largely unaware. The millions and millions of people killed in China and Russia alone that are not part of named conflicts like WWI or WWII are simply astounding. And the worst part of it all is that those waves of horror are most often perpetrated by so very few that end up leading the masses in these destructive purges.

Donald Trump will certainly go down in history as a leader, despite what any of us think of his personal qualities. But here is the strange thing that makes me so curious. When you distill down his following, that 37% core of Republicans translates into a mere 13,500,000 people (there are 36.4 million registered Republicans). That cadre represents just 4% of the American population (8% of the voting population). We know from the same poll that 54% of the entire voting population (approximately 170 million voters), do not want Donald Trump for president. That means there are 92 million Americans that don’t want anything to do with Donald Trump. So, here is my howl at the moon for this morning…why are we all being held captive to this story in the news cycle about a man who has accomplished so little of value in his life, just because that 4% of the population are so unhappy and scared that they are prepared to ignore all the norms and rock-solid conventions (The FBI, the DOJ, the military, the mainstream media, etc.) that have made our country great for 247 years?