Published at 21:44 on 26 July 2024
Simply put, they don’t realize how extreme they are.
Some time ago, I wrote that the big problem with the American Left is that it is an inward-looking subculture and not an outward-looking movement. Its rhetoric is geared more to individuals competing for in-group status than competing for the hearts and minds of the general public (and unless the latter is achieved, the wished-for revolution will never materialize).
Well, now, so is the American Right. Its rhetoric and its issues are geared more to pursuit of in-group status than anything.
All the bleating about Harris being the “DEI candidate” is a case in point. Yes, she was selected in part because she is female and Black. And so what? Running mates are commonly selected for reasons other than their intrinsic ability. Obama, a liberal junior Senator, chose Biden, a centrist senior one, not because of Biden’s ability (he is a gaffe-prone stutterer, and thus awful at public speaking), but because Biden helped round out his ticket. He needed a senior White centrist, and in Biden, he got one.
All sitting presidents have been male, and with one exception, all have been White as well. You can’t convince me that this is simply because all the most talented candidates have almost always been White and male. Surely over the course of US history, there have to be a few more nonwhites and at least a few females who happened to be the most qualified individuals of the day.
Trump had exactly zero political experience when he first ran. (Even Ronald Reagan, the previous actor to run for the presidency, had past political experience as Governor of California.) Yet somehow Trump is not a “DEI candidate.” Only the Black woman is. But of course.
If you look at the background of past vice presidents, Senator is by far the most common one. In the last 50 years alone, all but 3 vice presidents were previously Senators (two of the exceptions were state governors, and one was CIA director). And that was Harris’ background. Bog-standard.
And, having served as vice-president, she now wishes to run for president. Again, bog-standard. In the last 50 years, four vice presidents have gone on to serve as president.
Yet Republicans can’t stop talking about how Harris is neither white nor male and implying that means she therefore is not qualified to serve. This, despite their running an orange felon who is clearly the least fit for office of just about any major party candidate ever.
And here’s the rub: they can’t even perceive the disconnect here. I know, I’ve interacted with a number of Trumpers online. They just can’t process these facts. Those facts lie too far out of the realm of what their subculture believes. She is not a white male, she is the other, therefore she is a “DEI candidate” who has no business being in high government office. This is what the Trump base believes, and the Trump base does not care what anyone else believes. And they are in a media bubble (talk radio, Fox News, social media algorithmic timelines) that insulates them from the larger world and prevents them from accurately perceiving how divergent their beliefs have become.
The Trump campaign is now running mostly on the basis of what that hardcore MAGA base wants to hear, and that is not what they need to do to get enough votes from low-information fence-straddlers to win.
And the vice president’s ethnicity is hardly the only example. Pick an extreme part of Trump’s plank (abortion, the Federal civil service, immigration, etc.), and the Trumpers are doubling down on it.
This is an extreme vulnerability for Trump, because unless his campaign corrects it (which, given how inward-looking their political culture is, would not be easy), the natural course of events is for them to expose by their own chosen words just what a bunch of extremists and racists and misogynists they are. And that will in turn likely alienate the middle and cause them to lose.
