MAYBE TRUMP'S WORKING-CLASS FANBASE JUST LIKES THE IDEA OF LIFE WITH NO RULES

In The New York Times, Ben Rhodes has published an op-ed titled "The Thread Tying Together Everything Trump Does." What's the thread?

For Mr. Trump, the common thread weaving together so much of what he does — at home and abroad — is power. Whether he is seeking a cease-fire in Gaza or Ukraine, bombing boats off the coast of Venezuela or deploying troops to American cities, the desired result is his personal aggrandizement and the empowerment of his presidency. When he pursues peace, it is personalized — a deal made with other strongmen rarely addresses underlying causes of conflict. When he makes war, it is also personalized — there is no expectation, for instance, that Congress must authorize his actions.

But is it strange that he's the guy millions of working-class voters prefer to the Democrats? Why don't those voters find his grandiosity offputting, not to mention his policies?

I've grown tired of Ezra Klein, but he sometimes asks the right questions, as in his most recent podcast, in which he interviews Jared Abbott, the director of the Center for Working-Class Politics. At one point Klein says this to Abbott:

... Democrats are still the party that wants to raise taxes on rich people. Republicans are still the party that wants to cut them. Democrats are still the party trying to create universal health care — and under Obama, get a hell of a lot closer than we’ve ever been before. Republicans are still the party trying to repeal that, trying to cut Medicaid, which they just did in the Big Beautiful Bill.

Republicans are voting for these trade bills. George W. Bush is very pro-free trade. Republicans have proposed a lot of these bills. Republicans vote for NAFTA in the House and Senate in very, very high numbers.

There is this story that I hear — that the Democrats abandoned all of these economic policies. Biden is, I think, probably the most left president on economics of my lifetime. More aggressive on antitrust than any other president since I was born — on labor issues, on everything....

How do you make that add up?

Obviously, Democratic policies have been incremental and piecemeal, and thus haven't been enough to make many working-class voters feel their lives are significantly better as a result. Democrats don't try hard enough to remind voters that Republican policies make their lives worse, but working-class voters who vote Republican might notice that on their own, and simply conclude that neither party does them much good.

So maybe they vote for the party that's a more comfortable fit on cultural issues, or whose politicians seem more like them. That's Klein's usual argument. But does Trump seem like them when he wields power like a mad king? Does he seem like them when he covers the White House in gold and tears down the East Wing to build a massive ballroom?

I think maybe they're voting for him because they've given up on the idea that either party will make their lives materially better and they just want politics to let them live vicariously. They stick with Trump not because they necessarily want a lavish ballroom in place of the East Wing, but because rooting for him, a guy with absolute power, lets them live out the fantasy that they have absolute power -- to blow up (alleged) drug dealers in boats, to blow big buildings up, to build a fantasy mancave with no one able to intervene or object.

These people vote Republican because Republicans hate the people we hate -- but they also vote Republican because Trump lives the way I'd live if no one could stop me. If no one could stop me, I'd just do whatever the fuck I wanted to do 100% of the time.

The specifics don't matter -- I'm sure most of Trump's working-class supporters don't share his taste for swank. (Ronald Reagan was the same, in a slightly more tasteful manner.) They just like the fact that Trump, like Reagan, seems to be livin' the dream, which is to be above it all and beyond accountability. (George W. Bush, whom they also loved briefly, wasn't fond of swank, but they could see he was a low-achieving goofball who'd been handed the keys to the mansion. As I say, livin' the dream. And while neither Dubya nor Reagan was as norm-shattering or lawbreaking as Trump, both said and did things that were seen as beyond the pale.)

Maybe Democrats can beat this with a program that significantly improves workers' lives. Maybe they can beat it by finding more candidates whose flannel shirts don't seem fresh out of the packaging. But, sadly, I think the missing element might be the fantasy of power without consequence.