{"id":64050,"date":"2018-07-05T17:03:02","date_gmt":"2018-07-05T23:03:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/lefts-anger-may-well-hand-trump-a-second-term\/"},"modified":"2018-07-05T23:03:02","modified_gmt":"2018-07-05T23:03:02","slug":"lefts-anger-may-well-hand-trump-a-second-term","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/lefts-anger-may-well-hand-trump-a-second-term\/","title":{"rendered":"Left\u2019s anger may well hand Trump a second term"},"content":{"rendered":"
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du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Axios reports that Democrats are targeting the \u201c20 percent of Trump\u2019s voters (who) told exit pollsters they didn\u2019t like him\u201d hoping these reluctant Trump voters will help power a \u201cblue wave\u201d in the 2018 midterms and defeat President Trump in 2020.<\/p>\n

One problem with that theory: The left\u2019s nonstop, over-the-top attacks on Trump are not peeling those voters away from him; they are pushing them further into the president\u2019s camp.<\/p>\n

In recent weeks, Trump derangement syndrome on the left has reached critical mass. First, there was Robert De Niro\u2019s tirade at the Tony awards, followed by Samantha Bee\u2019s calling Ivanka Trump an obscenity on her TV show. Then the owners of the Red Hen restaurant threw out White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders because she works for the president, while chanting protesters heckled Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen at a Mexican restaurant.<\/p>\n

Then, there were the countless Trump opponents in the media, Congress and on Twitter who compared family separations at the southern border with Nazi Germany. And now come the threats to block Trump\u2019s Supreme Court nominee before he has even nominated one.<\/p>\n

How do liberals think that 20 percent of reluctant Trump voters respond to these displays of unbridled contempt? They are outraged not at Trump but at his critics. The unhinged hatred for the president makes these voters almost reflexively defend him.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t take my word for it. The New York Times recently interviewed dozens of tepid Trump voters who explained how the incessant attacks are causing them to rally around the president. \u201cGina Anders knows the feeling well by now,\u201d the Times reports. \u201cPresident Trump says or does something that triggers a spasm of outrage. She doesn\u2019t necessarily agree with how he handled the situation. She gets why people are upset.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Anders, who the Times says has \u201cnot a stitch of \u2018Make America Great Again\u2019 gear in her wardrobe, is moved to defend him anyway.\u201d When she hears the \u201coverblown\u201d attacks on Trump, she says, \u201cIt makes me angry at them, which causes me to want to defend him to them more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another reluctant Trump voter, Tony Schrantz, agrees. \u201cHe\u2019s not a perfect guy; he does some stupid stuff,\u201d he tells the Times. \u201cBut when they\u2019re hounding him all the time it just gets old.\u201d<\/p>\n

These are exactly the voters Democrats are hoping to win back. Instead, they are doing the opposite. Polls bear this out.<\/p>\n

Two weeks ago, Trump\u2019s Gallup approval rating hit 45 percent \u2013 the highest it has been since his inauguration. (It slipped slightly to 41 percent last week). Trump\u2019s approval among Republicans is at a near-record 87 percent, comparable to the levels of support for George W. Bush in the immediate aftermath of 9\/11. Think about that: The left\u2019s attacks on Trump have had the same rallying effect for GOP voters as the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.<\/p>\n

So, if appeals to civility, decency and conscience won\u2019t work, then perhaps an appeal to base political pragmatism will. Democrats are deluding themselves if they think they lost because of \u201c#NeverHillary\u201d voters who will come home when she is not on the ballot. They lost because they have become a party of coastal liberal elites who have lost touch with millions of ordinary citizens in Middle America, working-class voters who are struggling with factories closing, jobs leaving and an opioid epidemic that is destroying their families.<\/p>\n

These voters concluded in 2016 that Democrats no longer care about their problems and that Trump does.<\/p>\n

Spasms of anti-Trump outrage are not going to win them back. If anything, they are confirming these voters\u2019 conclusions that Democrats still don\u2019t get it \u2013 and don\u2019t get them. The left\u2019s miasma of contempt may feel cathartic, but it is the best thing that ever happened to Trump.<\/p>\n

Indeed, it may very well get him reelected.<\/p>\n

Marc Thiessen, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and former chief speechwriter to President George W. Bush, writes for The Washington Post \u00a9 2018. The Washington Post Writers Group<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

du1-i-syn Axios reports that Democrats are targeting the \u201c20 percent of Trump\u2019s voters (who) told exit pollsters they didn\u2019t like him\u201d hoping these reluctant Trump voters will help power a \u201cblue wave\u201d in the 2018 midterms and defeat President Trump in 2020. One problem with that theory: The left\u2019s nonstop, over-the-top attacks on Trump are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":64051,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[125],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-64050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-newsletter-opinion"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64050"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=64050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}