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Why They Hate
I hear this question over and over. What was it about Trump that makes him such a source of anger and indignation? It’s hard to understand the depths of this antipathy. It’s more than anger, more than ire. The Democrats hated Nixon, but he was hardly an inspiring Republican leader and no conservative. They hated him because he defeated them, twice. Remarkable for his lack of charisma, his victories demonstrated a profound rejection of liberalism, of Leftism, and they hated him for it.
Jimmy Carter rode Nixon’s paranoia, Watergate incarnate, into the White House, but Carter’s form of liberalism as a theology of pacifism, redistribution, and retreat failed on all fronts to inspire the electorate. Reagan thumped him after one term.
And of course, the Left hated Reagan for it. Worse yet, Reagan was a cold warrior bent on the defeat of the Soviet Union. He was no Pacifist. And he was a staunch Conservative. His economic policies of low taxation, deregulation, and individual liberty brought decades of economic prosperity. The Soviet Union failed and Reagan won re-election in a landslide. Reagan, despite tepid initial support, even opposition from the moderate (read: liberal) core of the Republican Party, moved the entire party right with the help of William F. Buckley Jr, and National Review.
Where did this lead? To an even hotter hatred on the Left and unending investigations. Reagan’s second term was hijacked. Attempts to taint his legacy were largely ineffective, but they were effective in interrupting his inspired conservative renaissance.
Bush 1 was never a committed conservative and his presidency was no extension of the Reagan Revolution. Instead, it allowed the milquetoast Republican establishment back into the public policy business. The charismatic, centrist Bill Clinton, with the help of third-party kook Ross Perot, the deficit hawk, capitalized on Bush’s failed no new tax pledge and peeled away enough of Reagan’s supporters to launch the glib Clinton to victory. Clinton was clever and never really embraced the Liberal agenda. He rode the remains of the Reagan economic wave, extended by the dot-com boom, to a second victory.
W. Bush squeaked out a narrow victory over Clinton’s doppelganger VP, Al Gore. This was before Gore invented Global Warming. The Democrats hated the younger Bush for this. The country was already fractured at this point, with the coasts and big cities entrenched in liberalism and the rest of the country, conservative. The fact that Gore won the popular vote allowed many on the Left to deny the Bush electoral victory. The hatred for W was palpable and galvanized the Democrats and the Left. 9-11 changed everything and for a brief time, including W’s re-election, the country was unified. But when the war in Afghanistan dragged on and when victory in Iraq proved far simpler than dealing with post-war chaos, W lost support. Hatred of W on the left turned hot, and the press piled on, leading to the elevation of Obama, a virtual unknown, as a Democrat savior.
Obama was clever. He knew where the line on the Left was, and he danced on it. The old Lefties knew he was one of them; in fact, he was further to the left than they were, but for all outward appearances, he was not. He favored traditional marriage. He was biracial and raised by his white family. He was Hawaiian. He was a constitutional scholar.
He conned his way into the White House. Twice. But after eight years of Obama, the country was not thriving. The economy was floundering. The world was suffering from waves of Islamic radicalism. The US was half-involved in wars around the world, leading from behind. China was on the move. North Korea was threatening, as was Iran despite US attempts to buy Iranian contrition with planeloads of cash. Inside the US, old racial grievances were reanimated. Conservatives were crushed, denigrated, and frustrated whenever possible. The country’s Leftward lurch with Obama was hardly inspirational. It was depressing. And yet, the press loved him.
Along came Trump. He entered politics without reservation and with his libidinous, flamboyant past in full view. He always was and remained a public man. He had no real friends in Washington, no favors to be returned, no alliances to be maintained. And he didn’t need money. He was, in a word, inscrutable. And as a result, he was also unpredictable. This bothered many Republicans in Washington. Trump spoke his mind without a filter and sometimes, his words were shocking. This was heresy in Washington circles where there were lines that one dared not cross, but Trump crossed them with impunity. National Review and establishment Republicans were flummoxed. Despite their opposition, Trump won the nomination and won the Presidency. And they never forgave him for it.
But their antipathy for Trump was nothing compared to the ire Trump inspired on the Left. It started with his antipathy for the mainstream press. He called them out for their blatant liberal advocacy, yet another line that could not be crossed, a tendency that could not be outed. And yet, Trump did it. Trump said it. Every day. Over and over. They reacted poorly. Advocacy and anti-Trumpism became their calling, objective reporting be damned. It suffused everything, sports, movies, everything in print and on the air.
The Democrats’ initial hatred of Trump was reflexive. He, like Reagan, proved that Leftism was antithetical to an American constitutional republic. And, like W, he failed to garner a majority of the popular vote. The pre-election antipathy was different. Trump was a phenomenon, much like Obama was when he ran his first presidential primary campaign. Hillary had been stung before. She and the Democrat party knew the threat that Trump might represent. They had to marshal whatever forces necessary to neutralize him, the Never Trumpers, the Press, their fellow Leftists. Obama had to protect his legacy. Hillary had to secure hers. Both failed
It’s taken them more than four years to get their revenge and they’re not done.
I sense, however, a change in the tone of the war on Trump. He’s been defeated, so why press on so vehemently? I didn’t understand this tack until I saw the Democrat leadership’s reaction to the so-called Capitol insurrection. They hid in closets, under desks. The Democrats showed their true colors and feelings. Yes, they still hate him, but it’s more than that. They are afraid. They fear Trump and his supporters. Perhaps they fear them because of what Durham may divulge. Perhaps they fear them because of the continued calls for investigation of election fraud and changes in election accountability. Perhaps they fear them because his supporters have not abandoned Donald Trump. Perhaps…
Biden is 78. Trump will be 78 at the end of Biden’s first term.
Time flies when you’re having fun; ask Obama.
Democrats: afraid; very afraid.
Published in General
Then there’s all the people who benefit from the way illegal immigration drives down wages, as well as the people who hope to make Democrat voters out of illegal immigrants.
Maybe, but I doubt they had anything to fear.
When Euro-American settlers near the frontier happened to see a drunken Indian among their neighbors, they’d get all scared and worried about it. They thought something had to be done about Indians and whiskey–something along the lines of stopping their supply of whiskey, exterminating them, or at least removing them further west. But when their own people got drunk it wasn’t such a big deal. And there was a lot of drunkenness among their own people in those days. A few generations later they did something about that, too (Prohibition) but it wasn’t such an existential threat in their eyes.
Guilt probably played a role in their fear of drunken Indians. That, plus the fact that Indians were “other.”
We’re seeing something similar, now. Some Trumpists got out of hand and the left is all hysterical, wanting to subjugate them if not exterminate them. Guilt plays a role, as does the fact that Trumpists are “other.” When their own get riotous, they may tut-tut a little if they aren’t egging them on, but either way they aren’t nearly as upset.
That’s a subjective assessment, and, as I said, I’ll wait for further info. I never underestimate the ability of any politician to generate sympathy for themselves, so we shall see. Judging by the killing of Ashli Babbitt with no politicians in sight, it seems at least possible that the police were on the job.
How much of people claiming to have been in fear of their lives when the Capitol was breached was anything other than theatrics ? That whole fiasco was fishy.
Hard to put a percentage figure on it. It would be an interesting research project for someone, though.
Mm-hmm. The leftists rioting and destroying things may be excessively enthusiastic and sloppy, but they’re anti-capitalist, which gives them a numinous red glow. I mean, they’re against injustice ‘n’ stuff, and they world they want would be more equitable, whereas the right, root and branch, wants all the isms enforced by an army of Mike Pence clones, speaking in tongues as they crack the whip.
This quote is from Dennis Prager’s column today reproduced on Townhall. The column is about the 2019 election and why he has no confidence in it. I agree with everything he wrote about his doubts. But most importantly, he says this:
Given what they have been told about Donald Trump, is it any wonder that the Democrats are so ferociously anti-Trump?
When I have looked at the mainstream media front pages over the past four years, I’ve been truly shocked at how incendiary their language is. And when I read the Democrats’ platform this year, I couldn’t believe what I was reading. They accused Trump of being responsible for thousands of covid-19 deaths.
The hatred from the bottom of the Democrat pyramid is not caused by the same dynamic that exists at the top. The hatred at the bottom is pretty understandable given what they have been told.
I will never know if the Democrats at the top really care about anything more than just getting control of the federal government. It is huge. We have a country within a country now. It’s really wild.
Oh, and, by the way, we will all be branded “domestic terrorists” if we object.
No, they hated him long before he beat them even once. They hated him because he was Anti_communist.
They were treated to 4 years of false press. All of the media spoke in unison and most people just believe it and believed each other and the little they read. Had there been real press it would have been different, but probably not much and were there real press now some would wake up, but most simply do not want to wake up. That is how we will lose the rest of our freedom. Folks think we’ll come back but if we lost when we held the White House and Senate do folks really believe they’ll let us back in. These guys are inept, really stupid, harmful and destructive, but they understand power. By the way, I don’t know whose in charge, but it isn’t Biden.
I can’t “like” the comment, because it’s so depressing. But I agree with it. What’s our best strategy now ?
If you want to know why the uniparty hates Trump follow the money.
A postscript to my comment 37:
This headline just appeared on the Yahoo news feed (I have an old Yahoo mail account, and I still use it for a few things, and that’s the only reason I saw it–otherwise, I wouldn’t give Yahoo the time of day):
“Spike Lee Says Donald Trump ‘Will Go Down in History with the Likes of Hitler’ in New York Film Critics Speech.”
The things that are said about Trump are so ridiculous it is frankly scary. His actions in office have only benefited people. He has hurt fewer people in terms of costing them money they don’t have, making them do things they don’t want to do, or punishing them somehow for some stupid reason, than any other president in my memory. It’s been like a vacation from the federal government.
It’s very frustrating.
And I do not know how Republicans can ever combat the grip the destructive, manipulative, deceptive Left has on the mass media and therefore half of the country.
We have to find a few very wealthy people to create a really good, brand-new news-gathering and news-reporting entity.
Oh, I think they care about other things. Some of them do, anyway. It’s just that those other things are subordinate to political control of the system that supports their socio-economic status.
Well, Bush will be 78 too. We had 20 years of Presidents who were born within months of each other. Clinton, Bush, and Trump were born in August, July, and June of 1946.
Yes, I think so. Reagan and Trump both rebuilt the military, but Trump brought troops home and changed the nature of our foreign involvement. A lot of powerful folks are heavily invested in American overseas adventuring.
Both were popular conservatives, but Reagan’s time wasn’t as polarized. The left more or less openly lives now on mandated transfers and non-productive “work”, and openly expects productive people to support them. They’ve always been like that, but never more than in our times. PDT threatened their paradigm of support, and they can’t see how to do without it.
Oh the hell they weren’t polarized. It’s just that the media had a scrap of responsibility left.