WASHINGTON – Donald J. Trump has roiled the Republican presidential nomination process like Godzilla bursting from the Pacific Ocean, exhaling atomic fireballs, terrorizing the populace and violently defying those toiling to send him back from whence he came. Along the way the bellicose, billionaire businessman has succeeded in convincing any number of people that America is well on its way to tracing the unfortunate steps of the dodo and that only he, Donald J. Trump, can make America great again.
Trump’s obvious success wooing rubes at his sideshow has led any number of observers and commentators to conclude that voters are, to paraphrase Howard Beale, mad as hell and they’re not going to take it anymore. They want, nay, demand, their country back from whoever it is that has plucked it from their grasp and they’re raring to turn the electoral process into just another episode of WWE Smack Down.
Overlooked in all this tumult is evidence that this discontent, while it exists, is found primarily in one particular, though significant, sector of the public and most folks are really just rolling with the punches, as usual.
One statistic, lost amidst the strung und drang of the Trump campaign (please don’t read anything into the German reference) displays that the angst may be a tad overstated.
Through his seven years in office President Obama has been bombarded with the sort of vitriol that no one should be required to absorb. His critics, led by Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, of Louisville, who obviously maintains a personal dislike for the current occupant of the White House, has taken every step imaginable to delegitimize the status of a man who has twice captured the presidency. Lunatics (cough, Trump, cough) have sought to prove he’s not a real American and that his Hawaii birth certificate is fake. He’s the Kenyan Pretender, a Muslim who cares more about his Islamic pals than our own, good Christian folks. A radical.
By the way, did you know the president’s a black guy?
Republicans, acting more as enemies than competitors, have stood in the way of any number of Obama initiatives, refusing to even consider bipartisanship. It has proved a long, difficult and, at times, unsatisfying haul.
Yet, after all this, recent polls established that Obama’s job performance has attracted the approval of a majority of Americans.
Despite Trump’s antics and the ongoing GOP War on the White House, Obama’s popularity is on the rise at a crucial time. Two polls released on March 16, Gallup and Rasmussan Reports, the latter a traditionally Republican survey, have Obama up over the magic 50 percent mark – Gallup has it 52 percent approve, 45 percent disapprove while Rasmussan puts it at 51-49.
Now we can all agree this is not exactly landslide territory. But it’s a surge over the past months when his approval ratings were in the mid to even low 40s. The numbers tend to show that, despite continued Republican efforts to undercut and disavow his presidency to the great detriment of the nation as a whole, Obama is likely to prevail.
Obama’s growing strength plays into a number of narratives. It is especially good news for whoever wins the Democratic presidential nomination, be it former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (the smart bet) or Sen. Bernie Sanders, of Vermont. It’s an old dictum, probably not all that accurate but a dictum nonetheless, that the candidate running for president from the incumbent’s party can’t possibly win if that incumbent’s job approval is below 50 percent.
If the nation approves of Obama’s performance and his popularity continues to rise, it renders it increasingly difficult for the GOP nominee to convert the fall election into a referendum on his administration. If the nation is falling apart, as Trump insists, why do most folks approve of the job the man leading the falling apart is doing?
To this point, those tracking the popularity of Donald J. Trump have been citing the outcomes of the various Republican primaries and caucuses to chart the degree of discontent across this great land. The problem is that very nomination process tends to exclude any number of folks – African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, single white women – from having their thoughts considered. They form the base of Obama’s support and will likely cling fervently to his Democratic successor.
Trump’s support is coming from – and here the column must apologize for regressing into a highly technical, political science term – white guys.
Exit polls have firmly established that the typical Trump supporter is a white, blue-collar male without a college degree. There are, of course, voters who don’t meet all or part of that description – one of his biggest supporters is former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. But anyone who has attended or viewed a rally promoting the Trump candidacy understands white guys are the demographic propping him up.
And they’re mad about all sorts of things – trade deals, jobs being shipped overseas, immigrants, a long list. And they witness the supreme status held by white males that has directed the nation for almost 140 years slipping away. They are siding with the infamous loudmouth in an effort to keep the keys to the kingdom in their pockets, using distaste for being “politically correct’’ as some weak sort of rationale.
The challenge facing Trump, if he should, indeed, capture the GOP nomination, is whether the white guy vote will prove sufficient in November
The challenge facing Trump, if he should, indeed, capture the GOP nomination, is whether the white guy vote will prove sufficient in November. Demographics would seem to point to no, that the growing number of Latino voters, coupled with African-Americans and other groups, will prove to be a bridge too far. Even in the Republican primaries and caucuses Trump has thus far been unable to gain support from half of the partisan voters in any of the contests, although his chances are improved with Sen. Marco Rubio, R-FL, having dropped out.
As an aside, let it be noted that this white guy rebellion that favors Trump considers itself anti-establishment, ignoring the irony that the establishment continues to this day to consist almost exclusively of white guys.
Robert P. Jones, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute and a columnist for The Atlantic who has a book coming out entitled The End of White Christian America, has characterized Trump supporters as “nostalgia voters,’’ “a culturally and economically disaffected group that is anxious to hold onto a white, conservative Christian culture that is passing from the scene.’’
Jones maintains that such nostalgia voters are looking to recapture what they consider a golden age when working class families could get by on a single pay check and Christianity was a core value, overlooking the obvious fact that, for most of its history America, failed to provide a golden age for a substantial number of its citizens – blacks, native Americans, Chinese immigrants working to build the railroads.
Jones’ institute asked respondents to a survey it distributed whether they believe American culture and way of life had changed mostly for the better or mostly for the worse since the 1950s. Seventy-two percent of self-described white, evangelical Protestants asserted things had changed for the worse.
What these Trump supporters can’t seem to digest is the genie is out of the bottle and the various movements of the latter half of the 20th Century, movements for civil rights, women’s rights and gay rights, have positioned a new set of figures at the nation’s table.
Henry Drummond, in Lawrence and Lee’s Inherit The Wind, notes at one juncture that “progress has never been a bargain – you have to pay for it.’’
“Mister, you may conquer the air,’’ Drummond notes, “but the birds will lose their wonder. And the clouds will smell of gasoline.”
Washington correspondent Bill Straub served 11 years as the Frankfort Bureau chief for The Kentucky Post. He also is the former White House/political correspondent for Scripps Howard News Service. He currently resides in Silver Spring, Maryland, and writes frequently about the federal government and politics. Email him at williamgstraub@gmail.com.