It’s important to understand the fundamental appeal of Trump to his base.
White, under-educated men, mostly over 40, who live in rural areas and the suburbs individually and collectively have come to the realization that they are no longer the cool kids. In every cultural outlet – TV, music, movies, and literature – it’s other members of society, the nerds, the urban hipsters, the black boundary pushers, the Latino chic, all of them are ascendant.
And that makes Joe, living a relatively secure, but anonymous life outside of Indianapolis or in rural Ohio pissed. And that anger needs an outlet. Trump doesn’t appeal to his base because he’s actually going to make things better. He can’t and they know that. What he can do is try and make things worse for those “other” groups. They didn’t flock to Trump because they saw him as a savior. They flocked to him because they believed he would give them permission to hate and strike out against those groups of people that had surpassed them in relevance.
Trumper’s are almost universally zero-sum: they can’t win unless the “others” lose and winning really means remaining the dominate and most relevant group and pushing the other groups down.
But they couldn’t do that themselves. Hell, in the very deep recesses of their brains they knew the truth: they were becoming irrelevant because they deserved to be. Their skills were atrophied, their ideas were stale and their work ethic had been dulled. They knew that among their ranks the next Mark Zuckerberg, Jay-Z, Lin-Manuel Miranda or Satya Nadella simply didn’t exist. They were beat. Progress and diversity and sheer talent had passed them by. They knew they were headed to irrelevancy and they knew that didn’t have the industriousness nor skill to reverse that trend. The needed an accelerant. Some force that would do the heavy lifting for them. Some zeitgeist-whisperer who could sell them the dream that he and he alone could hurt those talented and hardworking “others” so that they would go back to being marginalized and fearful.
In many ways, Trump is like Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys and his base are like the millions who follow the team. The Cowboys are – in terms of actual football success – a kind of league-wide laughing stock. They haven’t won a meaningful playoff game since they last appeared in a Super Bowl more than 23-years ago. Yet, the Cowboys are still one of the most relevant (and profitable) teams in all of professional sports. Year in and year out, they go 6-10, or 8-8 or 9-7 and leave millions of fans disappointed. From a purely football perspective, the Cowboys are the Arizona Cardinals, yet the Cardinals are imminently forgettable and the Cowboys are still one of the top draws every season. Why?
Because Jones, like Trump, is a master at selling the illusion of relevance. Jones, like Trump, is a savant at selling sizzle over steak. Trump has always been a pretty bad businessman and Jones has always been a pretty bad general manager. Yet, Trump has built the artifice of “Trump: Master Dealmaker” like Jones has built the artifice of the “Dallas Cowboys: America’s Team.” To their hardcore supporters, the bankruptcies, the massive debt, the unpaid bills and all the hallmarks of Trump’s besmirched business career don’t matter, just like the decades without winning, the endless poor personnel decisions, the revolving door of coaches and all the similar hallmarks of Jones’ besmirched team-building career don’t matter to fans and haters alike who watch the Cowboys on TV.
Jerry Jones, like Donald Trump has a kind of idiot savant quality where they are stupid in one thing and brilliant in another. Both men are actually pretty bad at what makes them famous, where Jones owns a professional football team that doesn’t win and Trump is a business dealmaker who’s been taken to the cleaners on multiple occasions. Yet Jones has built a brand that is unequaled in sports and Trump has created a brand that millions of people equate with ultimate success.
Like a nation that still pays outsized attention to a football team that doesn’t win, Trumpers voted for the man in 2016 because to many “deplorables” around the country, he mattered. He was relevant. And his racism, misogyny and rage against “the other” was like a hit of pure OxyContin. It felt so good to hear this master huckster say he was going to make them top-dogs once again. And he was going to do it in a mean and cruel way. He wasn’t just going to restore their relevance, he was going to kick those liberal, ethnic, educated, urban elites in the crotch.
“Make America Great Again,” is and was always going to be a dog whistle. Trump never had the talent, skill or even desire to truly make the nation as a whole better and more prosperous. What he could deliver – at least in the minds of his supporters – was the promise of cutting the “others” down to size.
And in the end, that fact helps explain the cult of Trump. To his fans and supporters – who when they are alone and look in the mirror and see staring back at them a reduced or even failed man – The Donald offers them the only hope left: the ability to drag those people who’ve surpassed them back down to their level.
