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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
So Trump getting his knickers in a knot (like so many before him) about an election was worse to you than my DILs elderly aunt, the thousands like her who lived in terror during the Summer of 2020, those who lost their lives, those who lost loved ones, and those who lost their businesses and livelihoods
Made evident by the fact that you voted for the ticket who was posting bail for those responsible for the summer of 2020.
The entire freakin’ Executive branch needs to be cleaned out.
Fire them all, rehire maybe a third. Maybe.
It really requires a willing suspension of disbelief. Ask Hillary.
If that is true, we need to get some tougher Secret Service guys.
Promoting debunked conspiracy theories is a COC, right?
Just amazing that the site is skating by this without redaction. You can’t call the poster a troll but you can implicate an ex-President in a conspiracy to murder. @philo, come on down.
Here’s what you said to show that I’m not “overstating “ :
That’s exactly what I said that you said and you should be suspended. But you won’t be.
I have a good deal of respect for the WSJ’s editorial board. Yet it doesn’t seem too much to ask to substantiate this claim.
I don’t waste my time on show trials without opportunity to cross- examine. Anyone should know that. See the Zoe Lofgren quote that I’ve cited a couple of times.
No reason to kick BG out. Has some good book reviews. At least the books I like. The Journal editorial was disappointing but used to them. So Trump was a narcistic jerk. Just like his predecessor. But we got economic growth, lower taxes, and 3 solid S.Ct. justices. Any democrat done that in the last 50 years? But DeSantis looks like Trump without the twitter account. Looks pretty good to me. Jan6 stuff can land with the rest of the trash.
The Constitution and US law states that the Legislative Branch is in charge of Capitol security.
I did not advocate kicking Mr. Robbins out. I still maintain that his accusation about Trump inciting a “ murderous” crowd violated the CoC, and I did subsequently mention “suspension” (not the same as kicking one out permanently IMO). The latter was said out of frustration after a spate of his inaccuracies and was not my place to say, although I stand by the inappropriateness of the “murderous” comment. The book reviews are well designed to ingratiate.
I think that I am stirring up far too much trouble far too quickly. I think that I should give this post a break for the night. It can all wait for the morning.
(This reminds me of a cartoon where a husband’s wife calls him to bed, and he says, “But honey, there is someone on the internet who is wrong and I need to point it out to him.”)
Saying my evening prayers is usually the best route to take. Tomorrow will be the Lord’s Day and a new day. While I don’t retract what I’ve said (other than “murderous” which was over-done) I regret causing such a strong reaction.
@garyrobbins
Please keep in mind the nature of confirmation bias, and the media’s very poor track record on reporting about Trump and scandals that agree with their perception. (the Steele Dossier was just as bogus as Jussie Smollet) You have had a tendency to repeat these stories. If you believe Trump is a monster, every story of him being bad sounds plausible – even if it is from a single anonymous source with no collaboration. While I tend to avoid cracking down on conspiracy theories and such (it reminds me of Big Tech) I am asking nicely for you to be skeptical of these kind of claims.
Will I need to start treating your threads like a conspiracy theorist who believes the Man is corrupting our precious bodily fluids? I hope not – there’s enough drama around here as is.
Trump requested National Guard be on stand-by in the days that led up to Jan. 6th. It is not his job, but Pelosi’s to give the authorization. The request was denied. Trump asked that the protesters protest peacefully. Many that were there, stated that there were people there to incite and were not Trump supporters, but brought in to cause mayhem?
Two-part interview of Svetlana Lokhova on Bret Stephens et. al.
Remember, they accused her of being part of the plot and being in an affair with Michael Flynn, while she had a baby to take care of. All kinds of legal crap ar PR to deal with. Total lies. The second one is about the media complicity and the timing of the Bret Stevens peace.
#2
https://audioboom.com/posts/8126326-russiagate-the-pulitzer-board-opines-svetlana-lokhova-friendsofhistorydebatingsociety
#1 https://audioboom.com/posts/8126325-russiagate-six-years-later-svetlana-lokhova-friendsofhistorydebatingsociety
Sometimes we do redact comments with radical fruitcake conspiracy theories. Sometimes it is not practical because the moderators don’t know about it until dozens of comments have been made quoting and referencing the fruitcake comment. It would make the whole thread incomprehensible to redact every mention of it. And people would be angry that their rebuttals were removed.
I know that many members believe that Gary has a special status and that other people routinely have their conspiratorial comments redacted. But there are tons of comments we have not redacted accusing Hillary Clinton of murdering Jeffrey Epstein, to use one example. There aren’t enough moderators to keep watch over every thread and enforce all the rules to the hilt.
Thanks, Randy. I think the moderators do a great job and I don’t want y’all to get involved in redacting the debate over the veracity of various news items. I don’t think people should start flagging things they don’t want to read. The answer to free speech is more free speech. If people are tired of debunking the same old disinformation, they can create a group (eg, NT-Debunkers) and then post links or copy paste the boilerplate. Me, I have a browser pluggin that hides stuff I don’t want to waste time seeing.
But who can tell anymore? So many “conspiracy theories” have turned out to be “conspiracy facts.”
OK I can’t think of any extreme conspiracies around here.
Having said that, and I I’ve said this before, the ruling class starts doing what Alex Jones babbled about a few years prior way too many times. If they think he’s a problem, they are partly to blame.
I thought the preferred terminology was “spoiler alerts.”
Pffft. You probably think birds are real too.
I can. From the Russian Collusion fraud to the January 6th Committee, the last five years have been full of them, and most of those were prominently displayed here on Ricochet. So let’s not pretend that Ricochet doesn’t traffic in conspiracy theories. It’s a source of them, especially if they involved the Hated Orange Man.
Well done. lol
I can’t understand why anybody fell for the Russia stuff.
It fit what they wanted to believe, and they basically hypnotized themselves into believing it.
Of course, given Democrats’ penchant for projection, I’m pretty sure that the Russian Hookers/Golden Showers incident actually involved Hunter Biden. I mean, we already know — as a fact, not a conspiracy — that ol’ Joe bought Russian hookers for his boy.
He has the IRS giving him a continual colonoscopy for taking that $1 billion deduction.
Surrounded by lawyers.
He’s an international criminal with contact with Putin and he’s going to run for POTUS.
Sure.
Add to that horribly uninformed by a media unwilling to tell both sides of the story and the reasons for their support. For example, was it ever pointed out that Paul Ryan, Speaker of the House under Trump and Romney’s choice for VP, worked against his president instead of supporting him. How influential was Romney in the Never movement?
Why does anyone care about that committee when there are liars in charge. “Liar” is a strong word. Watch the following video and see if it applies to Crazy Lizzy.
Dirty Liz Cheney Is Caught Openly Lying About Trump’s Request for 20,000 National Guard on January 6 (rumble.com)
LOL.
That is quite striking.
Liz PiggyMiss CheneyLiz Cheney might go a small way to rehabilitating herself were she to adopt the other image as her social media avatar for a bit. But, like most entitled, powerful, finger-wagging nanny-types, she seems utterly bereft of a sense of humor, particularly one that has shown itself to be at her own expense.Green Man Bad.
Striking. If you stand at Trump/Pepe and dig straight down, you will eventually come out at Liz Cheney / Miss Piggy.