You might want to take out the tiniest violin in the world to play for the sad, sad Trump-supporting Washington staffers and consultants who are getting shunned by their peers.
Take this guy:
A senior House Republican staffer who works for a committee chairman doesn’t tell his colleagues that he likes Trump or that he has informally advised the campaign.
“Basically nobody knows what I’ve done,” said the staffer, who asked for anonymity for fear of the impact his views could have on his career. “It’s not something I talk about openly at work, because there are a lot of strong feelings, still, among the staff. People talk openly against the guy.”
He worries it might harm his reputation if colleagues discover he’s a major fan of Trump.
This whole article from The Hill is constructed around similar stories of Trump lovers hiding their enthusiasm for Trump or lamenting that they’ve been treated as pariahs for being open about it.
And the story is always the same:
Another Trump loyalist to feel that divide is Jeffrey Lord, a veteran of the Reagan administration and a Trump campaign surrogate on CNN.
Home in Pennsylvania, people who’ve seen Lord on TV stop him in the grocery store and say nice things about Trump.
When Lord attended the glitzy White House Correspondents’ Dinner, however, he got a different reception.
A Republican from a prominent think tank — Lord won’t say who — attacked Lord, telling him he’d “betrayed conservatism and Ronald Reagan” by supporting Trump.
Sen. David Perdue, a freshman Trump supporter, says “the positive reactions he gets in his home state of Georgia are unrecognizable from what he hears inside the Beltway.”
As I wrote this weekend in a piece on why Trump always seems to win his pissing matches, people inside the Beltway do not understand that virtually Trump’s entire appeal is based on their lack of credibility. And they don’t realize that they earned this lack of trust and deference.
That’s why everyone keeps blaming either the people or the media.
However, that doesn’t mean Trump is the remedy, nor does it mean it’s wrong to look askew at Trump supporting staffers and consultants who surely should know better.
You shouldn’t have empathy for anyone who feels ostracized at DC cocktail parties because they express an opinion that Trump would be an acceptable president.
It’s just that if you undermine our government with disastrous wars of choice based on lies and then grind the legislative process to a halt with obstruction and fear-mongering ridiculousness, and you don’t even issue your promises in good faith before you break them, then people will stop caring what you think or deferring to your good judgment or wanting to see you continue on in your job.
Trump might not be the right or appropriate middle finger, but a middle finger is what a lot of people want delivered right now.
So, yeah, travel outside the Beltway, and suddenly it’s not a sign of mental deficiency and apostasy to support Trump.
Also, if Trump actually wins, there’s a pretty good chance that these early secret supporters will one day end up on a witness stand in the American re-enactment of the Nuremberg Trials.
There ain’t gonna be no Nuremberg Trials. What nation is both powerful enough and has a developed enough justice system to do it?
American exceptionalism came out of the closet after Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.
And Fallujah.
AG
Far earlier than that, but that may be the most public and graphic instance that was revealed within years instead of decades.
So basically the more it’s disproved the stronger it gets?
I disagree.
For 99.99% of Americans – voters, commentators, and politicians* alike – American Exceptionalism, defined as a consciously held set of beliefs, does not even exist. Rather, it is a postulate so completely internalized that they can not recognize it even when it is pointed out to them.
* Even Bernie Sanders took it for granted that, as President, he would have the authority to kill anyone he suspected of being “an important terrorist”.
American Exceptionalism is the doctrine that if the President killed someone extrajudicially and contrary to human rights law, that only the US President would not be prosecuted in international courts. Any other nation’s head of state would be subject to that sort of strict accountability but not the US.
The same exceptionalism applies to the general who has effective command of NATO forces, even though NATO is a mutual defense agreement, not a protectorate.
I don’t believe that the vast majority of Americans think of American Exceptionalism in the way that you describe it here.
that doesn’t make his description wrong.
No, it’s not wrong on the merits. But, it is a very narrow interpretation of American Exceptionalism.
However, it’s questionable to say that any other head of state would be subject to international prosecution.
We are not the only country that engages in extrajudicial killings.
Which is why people to the polls is the remedy.
The guys who are proud of people stopping them in the grocery store need the experience of losing a party completely because of their dishonesty and cynicism.
The media has already pointed out that Chris Christie is repeatedly lying.
That Pat McCrory makes charges against Roy Cooper out of whole cloth.
That McCrory pretends that information comes from the media when it comes from his campaign staff.
To rip the scab off of this, you have to say clearly and loudly “Republican Party” and “Donald Trump” and “lying”. Absent that being effective, you have to take 75 million people by the hand to the polls and ensure that they get to exercise their rights.
Or maybe those Beltway GOP staffers for Trump recognize that he is a standard issue, rightwing, modern Republican that only deviates by not using PC language. Guess the Beltway Goopers that are having hissy fits over Trump as their nominee don’t understand the swill they’ve been supplying to their rubes for all this time.
Perhaps they are that naive and dumb, but more likely they’ve been in on the con for a long time. Works best to maintain the power of the duopoly. Not likely that they cared which nominee won in the expected Clinton vs. Bush v. 2.0 (or v. 4.3 depending on how one counts these things).
As I have been saying here for 14 1/2 months or longer. (From Counterpoint):
I got fairly well slammed here months ago..early March…when after a several day work/vacation drive from NYC through New Jersey, Pennsylvania and western NY from the PA border right on through Rochester and then back to NYC through Ithaca and the mid-NYS Rt. 17, I posted my feeling that Trump had huge backing in the so-called boonies.
In a comment on my post PermaFix Backfires!!! Blows Itself Up Real Good!!!, I wrote:
How dare I make unfounded allegations about Trump’s popularity!!! We’re shocked!!! Shocked, I say!!!
Later on I posted a clip from a Pittsburgh newpaper writer who had traveled through western PA/eastern West Virginia and seen/felt the same thing. That got the same reaction. “Poppycock!!! Right wing propaganda!!! Not in this country!!!”
Well, bubbas…WTFU!!! If it’s not too late, of course. it is happening in this country.
Right now.
Watch.
Or of course, turn away in true leftiness fashion and blame it alla of them damned deplorables.
As you must…
AG
As an upstate NY native let me assure you that many many people in Upstate NY are some of the most racist people you will ever come across. In some ways they may be worse than folks in the deep south, since the people in the south have at least met and interacted with some minorities. The people in Upstate have largely not so they have only their unbridled fantasy nightmares to work with. I remember folk from a small town going on and on about the problems with black people (using a different term, of course), and at the end they mentioned: except for “Jonesie”, he’s ok. “Jonsie” was their peer from the one and only black family in town. So these people had actually met only one black family in their life, liked them, but were still certain that African Americans were everything that was wrong with the world.
Anyway Trump can get 90% of Upstate and it won’t win him New York State. I suspect the its the same in Jersey. We may to worry about Trump winning, but not in NY or NJ.
:
“Anyway Trump can get 90% of Upstate and it won’t win him New York State. I suspect the its the same in Jersey. We may to worry about Trump winning, but not in NY or NJ.”
Wr shall see.
As the suburbs and the minority votes go, so goes the election in NYS. And NJ, too. If the suburbs come out heavily and tend towards Trump while the minority votes are weak?
UH oh!!!
AG
>>As the suburbs and the minority votes go, so goes the election in NYS. And NJ, too. If the suburbs come out heavily and tend towards Trump while the minority votes are weak?
yes that would be bad. That’s a scenario that would give Dems trouble. I suspect we disagree on the likelihood of this scenario.
I think Booman has mentioned that he thinks the purplish Phila suburbs are safely Hillary, Trump is dead with white women. Do you think he’s wrong? Do you think NY/NJ suburbs are that much different?
You ask;
“Do you think NY/NJ suburbs are that much different?”
Dunno. They voted for Giuliani, Bloomberg and Christie. How much worse does it get?
AG
It is going to be interesting to see what the world allows to happen in the USA. I have read numerous comments on here about the election very few mention about what the world feels about this political race.
To those that feel that this political race will only effect on USA are wrong. There are numerous countries that want no part of a Trump, GOP run USA. Trump and the GOP are going to have to work their butts off to try to repair the damage that Trump has caused in global relations. The world has seen hair trigger Trump attack with speed and relentless aggression.
Yes it is true that the USA is a very big and powerful country thus, that is a type of deterrent for the world. But when weighed against having a leader that is very untrustworthy and easily excitable having power over a huge nuclear arsenal. There comes a time when the risks are to great for others to bare. When that time comes as it has numerous times the old saying “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” comes into play.
How other countries would respond to Trump are similar to the way they responded to W. Polite distance.
Even Adolph Hitler got polite distance until the stakes were to high to avoid a war.
Blair turned out to be W’s Neville Chamberlain.
Blair was complicit. That wasn’t “polite distance”.
That’s my concern as well.
Hmm.
(1) On August 24, I drove from western Massachusetts to northern New Jersey, meaning basically through the Hudson River valley, with a stop at Hyde Park to visit the FDR presidential museum. I don’t recall seeing many Trump signs, but well, that’s an anecdotal, one-off observations, just like some others mentioned up-thread.
(2) A Trump administration would probably send a whole lot of US allies scrambling to create new alliances. I’d guess Russia and China are salivating at the prospect of a President Trump.
I think this is very common. I’m a longtime lefty in northern California, living in a very liberal town, and definitely supporting Trump, even donating to him. But I wouldn’t dream of telling anyone, even mentioning it. The Clintonites are pretty nasty, rude, abusive bullies, at least in my experience, and I don’t need their crap and never-ending insults. I’ll just quietly go ahead and do the right thing, vote for the lesser evil. I think I’ll have a lot of company.
I’m impressed by how sure you are that you are doing the right thing and that Trump is the lesser evil.
Clinton must be quite horrible if your only alternative is to vote for a fascistic demagogue.
I’m not going to go into the racism and misogyny because, as long-time lefty, you’re probably well aware of Trump’s history. It’s all good as long as you get to stick it to the Clintonites. They are so going to rue the day they messed with you.
relative tact and self-restraint you exhibited.
I could not have pulled that off (= why I avoided replying).
Please do not feed the concern troll.
what ishmael2 did, hence 2) that that’s what I did.
Why do you feel Trump is the lesser evil?