"Deplorables" on the march

Congratulations to all of the ”DEPLORABLES” and the millions of people who gave us a MASSIVE (304-227) Electoral College landslide victory! pic.twitter.com/7ifv5gT7Ur

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 8, 2017

Trump's response from Asia to Tuesday's election results

Charlie Pierce writes about the Politico Magazine piece about Trump supporters and misses the point entirely. He gives two long excerpts (which you can pause and go read) and ends with this observation:

These people are not reachable. I wish they were. There’s no point in getting angry about it anymore. There’s also no point in wondering why they feel the way they do, why they fell for the snake oil, and why they consistently vote against their own interests, or don’t vote at all. Reading what they told Kruse about where they are a year after voting for Trump is like listening to someone in the throes of a hangover talk about a bar fight they were in the night before.

"These people" were never any more reachable than Louie Gohmert or Paul Ryan or Steve King.  To act like they are average Americans representing the heartland or the forgotten working class or the proletariat of 1984 about to rumble and move and shake off the ruling class, is farcical and always has been.  Donald Trump didn't awaken a sleeping giant in 2016, Hillary Clinton put too much of the rest of the country to sleep.  Hell, we all went to sleep, convinced there was no way a boob like Trump could win, that the "system" would stop him, would save us, and what did we have to worry about?  No one was gonna vote for him, or at least not enough "no ones" to matter!  And in the strictest sense of mattering to a body politic, these people identified as Trump supporters, as his base which will never abandon him, are no ones, and deserve to be abandoned by the body politic, because they themselves have abandoned that body first:

What I heard from Schilling is overwhelmingly what I heard in my follow-up conversations with people here who I talked to last year as well. Over the course of three rainy, dreary days last week, I revisited and shook hands with the president’s base—that thirtysomething percent of the electorate who resolutely approve of the job he is doing, the segment of voters who share his view that the Russia investigation is a “witch hunt” that “has nothing to do with him,” and who applaud his judicial nominees and his determination to gut the federal regulatory apparatus. But what I wasn’t prepared for was how readily these same people had abandoned the contract he had made with them. Their satisfaction with Trump now seems untethered to the things they once said mattered to them the most.

"Electorate" is an interesting term.  Does it mean those eligible to vote?  Or those who actually voted last?  Because quite a different "electorate" seems to have spoken yesterday.  But we can't hold that against Politico; after all, these people are die-hard Trump supporters, that's gotta mean something, right?

When I asked Del Signore about the past year here, he said he “didn’t see any change because we got a new president.” He nonetheless remains an ardent proponent. “He’s our answer.”

I asked Schilling what would happen if the next three years go the way the past one has.

“I’m not going to blame him,” Schilling said. “Absolutely not.”

Is there anything that could change her mind about Trump?

“Nope,” she said.

Yup; unreachable.  But that's only the start, even though that's where Piece leaves it:

More than anything, what seemed to upset the people I spoke with was the National Football League players who have knelt during the national anthem to protest police brutality and racial inequality.

“As far as I’m concerned,” Frear told me, “if I was the boss of these teams, I would tell ’em, ‘You get your asses out there and you play, or you’re not here anymore.’ They’re paying their salaries, for God’s sake.”

“Shame on them,” Del Signore said over his alfredo. “These clowns are out there, making millions of dollars a year, and they’re using some stupid excuse that they want equality—so I’ll kneel against the flag and the national anthem?”

“You’re not a fan of equality?” I asked.

“For people who deserve it and earn it,” he said. “All my ancestors, Italian, 100 percent Italian, the Irish, Germans, Polish, whatever—they all came over here, settled in places like this, they worked hard and they earned the respect. They earned the success that they got. Some people don’t want to do that. They just want it handed to them.”

“Like NFL players?” I said.

“Well,” Del Signore responded, “I hate to say what the majority of them are …” He stopped himself short of what I thought he was about to say.

Wait for it; it's coming.  It's not the rich snotty players disrespecting the flag and Mom and apple pie by kneeling on a football field.  No, it's not that at all; scratch that surface, and see what you reveal.  Wait for it, because this is something even beyond being "mulishly immune to processing empirical facts in the world around them."  As Marvel comics used to say:  "Face front, kiddies!  Here it comes!"

Schilling and her husband, however, did not restrain themselves.

“The thing that irritates me to no end is this NFL shit,” Schilling told me in her living room. “I’m about ready to go over the top with this shit. We do not watch no NFL now.” They’re Dallas Cowboys fans. “We banned ’em. We don’t watch it.”

Schilling looked at her husband, Dave McCabe, who’s 67 and a retired high school basketball coach. She nodded at me. “Tell him,” she said to McCabe, “what you said the NFL is …”

McCabe looked momentarily wary. He laughed a little. “I don’t remember saying that,” he said unconvincingly.

Schilling was having none of it. “You’re the one that told me, liar,” she said.

She looked at me.

The NFL?

“Niggers for life,” Schilling said.

“For life,” McCabe added.

It probably is 30% of the electorate, after all.  I grew up with people talking about painting the football green so players wouldn't drop it, and how their "n---ers were beating up on our black boys!" and other such jests.  I've heard the "NFL" line, too; but not in 40 years.  Tell me again these are people I need to pay any political attention to.  Still doesn't mean they swing the most weight because their guy is President.  Mostly because he doesn't know how to swing his weight as President.  GOP donors are threatening to cut the GOP off if they can't pass tax reform, and what is Trump going to do to see that happens?

President Donald Trump called 12 Senate Democrats Tuesday, hoping to sway them in favor of the Republican tax cut bill, and told them he would personally "get killed" financially by the GOP bill. He said the wealthy need a repeal of the estate tax, according to multiple people who were present.

"My accountant called me and said 'you're going to get killed in this bill,'" the president said during a phone call from his trip in South Korea. He was apparently trying to increase Democratic support by claiming the bill would hurt wealthy taxpayers like himself, making the point that only the repeal of the estate tax would provide him any benefit.

Yeah, that's what I expected.  The GOP's answer to LBJ, right?  Tell me again why I should even care about the political clout of Trump's "base".  "Unreachable"?  Like a friend of mine used to say, I wouldn't touch 'em with a club.