Given everything that has been thrown at Trump- two impeachments, four major indictments and convictions, mass defections from establishment Republicans, widely brandished as a fascist, and a virulently hostile media- how is he still even close to victory?

This is an important question, and the answers are revealing. If one is unable to understand how any sane person can vote for the opposition you may be in a bubble, and this is true for both sides. Attributing his support to Fox News, social media, racism, misogyny, ignorance, or the unfairness and anti-democratic nature of the electoral college has a common flaw; it relieves the Democrats of accepting any responsibility for the voters rejecting them. It is like a business watching sales decline and blaming the customers.

My observations:

Most voters are rooting for a team, not a quarterback.

As Selena Zito noted in 2016, Trump supporters took him seriously but not literally. Democrats then took him literally but not seriously. They now take him seriously and literally.

Few take the fascist label seriously, perhaps because it has been used so much in the past that it has no meaning. Few who use it understand it, and those who use it most are no longer trusted.

The Founders addressed a political elite with a new republican government. With the rise of the industrial age with technology and new business forms leading to concentrations of economic power the Progressive Era addressed economic elites. In our current post-industrial age, we are addressing a new cultural elite. DEI, systemic racism, Critical Theory, and wokism in its many forms has caused a populist revolt against a cultural elite.

The Democrats may discount the radical voices of defunding the police, the radical anti-Semitism on elite campuses, and the sexual identity beliefs that allows biological males to compete in women’s sports as minority concerns, but the absence of a majority to deny or defy it means they now own it.

The voters have lost trust in our most fundamental institutions. We can argue how much this was deserved or not, but this means that in the minds of many voters the press, our universities, our courts and other institutions have lost the moral high ground.

We are amid a political transition, moving beyond the New Deal Liberalism vs Conservatism of William Buckley. The populism of Trump is driven by an elite that has become so disconnected from the populace that they no longer understand the people they impact. The Democrats have increasingly lost the rural and blue-collar voter since 2000. As long as they continued to win the high electoral college states, they paid no cost until the trend hit a wall and they lost. This trend was in place a decade before Trump.

Blaming the electoral college is like blaming the rules after the game is over. The rules will not change anytime soon, so they would be wise to just accept this and recognize that blaming the voters is a fool’s errand. Clinging to progressive purity will not win elections.

Why does January 6 not resonate the threat to the Republicans than it does with the Democrats? Because they remember the screaming campus idiots cancelling speakers while the left did nothing. They remember the protests and property damage when Trump was elected in 2016, and the Democrats did nothing. They remember the ‘mostly peaceful’ George Floyd riots of 2020 and the Democrats did nothing, even calling to cancel the police. They recall the screaming fools hauled from the Kavanaugh hearing and this was just democracy in action. They now view the anti-Semitism on college campuses and the tepid responses from the Democrats.

You may think Jan 6 was different and much worse and you may be right, but that does not change that many others do not. What you tolerate you teach.

Bill Maher on ‘Real Time’ is realistic to recognize the impact the lunacy on the left has on this election and he is doing the Democrats a great service. The Republicans can use a Bill Maher perspective as well.

The solution to Donald Trump lies on both sides of the aisle.

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