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Bret Stephens: ‘I Was Wrong About Trump Voters’
Thursday, there was a remarkable sight on the New York Times Opinion Page. Eight different columnists remark on how they were wrong about different issues. Paul Krugman admits that he was wrong about inflation. Thomas Friedman admits that he was wrong about the extent of Chinese censorship. Gail Collins admits that she was wrong about Mitt Romney. And Brett Stephens admits that he was wrong about Trump voters. It is a great column and can be found here. While the New York Times columns are behind a paywall, I think that you can read ten columns a month for free. This should be one of them.
Bret Stephens was a great columnist for the Wall Street Journal. Reportedly he left the Journal after concluding that they were being too easy on Trump, and he joined the New York Times. I ended my subscription to the Wall Street Journal about the same time, for about the same reason. So, Stephens and I have a long history of antipathy towards Trump. However, he admits that he has been wrong about Trump voters, and I generally think that I have been too. Stephen’s column begins, “The worst line I ever wrote as a pundit — yes, I know, it’s a crowded field — was the first line I ever wrote about the man who would become the 45th president: ‘If by now you don’t find Donald Trump appalling, you’re appalling.’”
I agree. What a way to make and influence people. Stephens continues,
This opening salvo, from August 2015, was the first in what would become dozens of columns denouncing Trump as a unique threat to American life, democratic ideals and the world itself. I regret almost nothing of what I said about the man and his close minions. But the broad swipe at his voters caricatured them and blinkered me.
It also probably did more to help than hinder Trump’s candidacy. Telling voters they are moral ignoramuses is a bad way of getting them to change their minds.
I agree with Stephens. This is so well stated. Stephens then states,
… Though I had spent the years of Barack Obama’s presidency denouncing his policies, my objections were more abstract than personal. I belonged to a social class that my friend Peggy Noonan called ‘the protected.’ My family lived in a safe and pleasant neighborhood. Our kids went to an excellent public school. I was well paid, fully insured, insulated against life’s harsh edges.
Trump’s appeal, according to Noonan, was largely to people she called ‘the unprotected.’ Their neighborhoods weren’t so safe and pleasant. Their schools weren’t so excellent. Their livelihoods weren’t so secure. Their experience of America was often one of cultural and economic decline, sometimes felt in the most personal of ways.
Ouch. I am part of the ‘protected class.’ I live in my beautiful mountain and university town with a population of only 100,000 with all of the amenities of a city five times as large. I live in a nice neighborhood with nonexistent crime, surrounded by a golf course. I have Medicare for health insurance. I am my own boss and run my office as I see fit. My judges know and like me. Life is pretty good for me.
Stephens continues,
It was an experience compounded by the insult of being treated as losers and racists —clinging, in Obama’s notorious 2008 phrase, to ‘guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them.’
I remember having lunch with a major Democrat figure who told me that he was convinced that opposition to Obama was primarily racist. Grrrr.
Then Stephens says,
Trump voters had a powerful case to make that they had been thrice betrayed by the nation’s elites. First, after 9/11, when they had borne much of the brunt of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, only to see Washington fumble and then abandon the efforts. Second, after the financial crisis of 2008, when so many were being laid off, even as the financial class was being bailed out. Third, in the post-crisis recovery, in which years of ultralow interest rates were a bonanza for those with investable assets and brutal for those without.
Oh, and then came the great American cultural revolution of the 2010s, in which traditional practices and beliefs — regarding same-sex marriage, sex-segregated bathrooms, personal pronouns, meritocratic ideals, race-blind rules, reverence for patriotic symbols, the rules of romance, the presumption of innocence and the distinction between equality of opportunity and outcome — became, more and more, not just passé, but taboo.
It’s one thing for social mores to evolve over time, aided by respect for differences of opinion. It’s another for them to be abruptly imposed by one side on another, with little democratic input but a great deal of moral bullying.
I share this anger about the above things. But again, I am protected. For better or worse, lawyers are pretty protected. The best book about the evils of the transgenderism, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, was written by a lawyer with strong First Amendment protections. If a Psychologist or Counselor were to have written this book, they would be facing an ethics charge by their licensing board. But the State Bar would laugh at such an ethics charge.
Stephens then states,
For every in-your-face MAGA warrior there were plenty of ambivalent Trump supporters, doubtful of his ability and dismayed by his manner, who were willing to take their chances on him because he had the nerve to defy deeply flawed conventional pieties.
I have faced my share of MAGA warriors. But far more Trump voters are ambivalent, doubtful, and dismayed by Trump than I give them credit.
Then Stephens hits home with this paragraph:
Nor were they impressed by Trump critics who had their own penchant for hypocrisy and outright slander. To this day, precious few anti-Trumpers have been honest with themselves about the elaborate hoax — there’s just no other word for it — that was the Steele dossier and all the bogus allegations, credulously parroted in the mainstream media, that flowed from it.
Ouch. Oh, all the hours I wasted watching MSNBC’s evening shows! All of the energy that I wasted hoping that Trump would be caught! I was not until I read Bill Barr’s book One Damn Thing After Another that I realized that I had been wrong and wrote about it here.
The book is very well done. And it changed my mind. After the Mueller Report came out, I posted both the Introduction and Executive Summary on Collusion and Obstruction. (See here.) Barr does a deep dive into the Mueller Report and how Mueller both over-read and under-read his remit. My mind had been marinated in the MSNBC and my own TDS. But now reading Barr’s account led me to the conclusion that the Mueller investigation was a search for not all that much, and was a general waste of time and money. I was stunned. But I changed my mind.
To the credit of my fellow Ricochetti, there was almost no “I told you so.” Incredible.
Stephens ends his piece,
… I would also approach these [Trump] voters in a much different spirit than I did the last time. ‘A drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall,’ noted Abraham Lincoln early in his political career. ‘If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend.’ Words to live by, particularly for those of us in the business of persuasion.
Words to live by when posting and commenting at Ricochet.
Published in General
He can always upvote himself. ☺️
Aren’t there laws against doing that in public?
And on Zoom.
Which office do the Trump supporters go to, to get their reputations back?`
If he’d sent the national guard they’d be claiming he was trying to use the military to seize the Capitol
I almost added that myself.
Compromise with the gOpE is what got us here. You are deaf, dumb and blind if you think the base is still ready for gOpE compromise!!
With, or without, President Trump.
Do you get it yet?!!
Biden had no such issue.
Unlike Biden …
HYPOCRITES!!!
I guess someone could buy a bunch of Ricochet accounts and upvote themselves many times.
What I do not understand about the never Trump is where is the same level of anger at Biden?
His is a big a demagogue as Trump. He is a habitual liar. He and his family is involved in a lot of influence peddling with shady countries and business around the world. His energy polices, economic policies and foreign policies are all horrible. He is pushing ESG agenda. He is making the military – one of the last good organizations in the US into a joke.
Where is the outrage? I don’t see it
It’s because Biden doesn’t represent “their” party and thus it has no reflection on them and their supposed virtue. I think they actually believe Republicans are, or ‘should’ be better people. For them their representatives- especially a President- is supposed to be someone who is impeccably admirable. It matters much less if he goes back on his promises or doesn’t really try to advance the cause as long as he looks good doing it. It means something about them personally if a GOP guy isn’t a Romneyesque nice clean guy with good taste.
Many of the never Trump pushed Biden in 2020 -he was their guy
i.e. https://twitter.com/Principles_1st?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
Scammers. There’s a lot of money to be had being fake conservatives. Possibly more than being an honest leftist.
We need a deep investigation into these people.
Actually, they don’t charge a lot of money, yet. Heath Mayo got $90,000 from somewhere to start it.
The sort of scam is, it gives a platform for people in the orbit of The Bulwark. I think when they have their conventions 3/4 of the people on stage get money from Omidyar etc.
Wouldn’t the fact that Trump is still promoting Operation Warp Speed in his rallies, while his supporters boo the vaccines, some evidence against him being a demagogue?
It’s certainly evidence — good evidence — against this idea of Trump being some cult leader and his supporters being part of a cult of personality.
But that won’t stop the Frenches, Goldbergs, Noonans, or other fake conservatives from continuing to deploy that smear.
Just find out who Pierre Omidyar sent money to. 2020’s top “dark money” spender.
Success!
Trump and Pence squared off in the desert. It was one-sided. – POLITICO
These are great questions. Here are my answers.
The Code of Conduct prohibits the one word comment of “Liar.” Drew, if I called you a ”liar,” that would also be redacted.
For the record Drew, I believe that you are a honest man. I disagree with you a lot, but I can’t ever remember you lying. Ricochet is lucky to have you as a member.
187 minutes refers to the time period from when Trump ended his speech to when he released his Rose Garden testimony. 3 hours and 7 minutes of not only refusing to protect Congress, but whipping up the rioters by saying that Mike Pence let us down.
The Thursday night testimony shows what happened during those 187 minutes.
You will consider this a minor detail, but you are wrong. The word he used was “disinfectant”. You may ask why the distinction is important. Here’s why. Hydrogen peroxide is a disinfectant and believe it or not — I checked — decades ago it was used intravenously in small amounts. Someone at ricochet said a while back that while it was used, it was never effective. Effectiveness was not the point. It was in fact used, and Trump was speculating, not directing.
The President of the United States takes an oath to faithfully preserve and protect the Constitution and laws of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Trump failed to do that, and in fact,whipped up the murderous crowd by saying that Mike Pence let us down.
I care both about your Daughter-In-Law’s elderly aunt, and about the Constitution of the United States.