Trego's Mountain Ear

There’s an article in the Atlantic that analyzes four types of Trump supporters – written by Daniel Yudkin and Steven Hawkins describes the fourth type as: “Finally, we have the “Rel2uctant Right”(20 percent). Members of this group, unlike the other three, are not necessarily part of Trump’s base; they voted for him, but have ambivalent feelings toward him. Only half identify as Republicans, and many picked Trump because he seemed “less bad” than the alternative.” (emphasis added) “Voted for him, have ambivalent feelings, picked because he was “less bad” than the alternative.”

Reading that description was like looking in the mirror. I can’t say I was wrong in voting for the least bad candidate. Back in 2016, I knew what Hilary Clinton would bring to the White House. The “Libertarian” party fielded a candidate (Gary Johnson) was a statist who wanted to legalize marijuana. As I read the situation, I didn’t even have an acceptable third party candidate for a protest vote. So I voted for Trump, hoping he was telling the truth about supporting the Second amendment. It turned out he was – and his appointments to the Supreme Court have the Second in the strongest position it has been in my lifetime. I recall buying black powder revolvers after the Gun Control Act of 1968 left them as the only non-regulated repeaters.

Now if Yudkin and Hawkins are right – that 20% of Trump’s voters support him as strongly as I do – the Dems big mistake has been running candidates that didn’t have much appeal to the middle. They ran Biden as a moderate, then governed from the left. Nothing personal toward the people who believed Biden – but my greatest appreciation of Dukakis was that he took Slow Joe out of the running for President back in 1988. Still, Biden did prove that he could come back after being decisively taken out.

But back to the fourth type of Trump supporters – the twenty percent that support Trump only because his opponents have been so bad – that such a group is instrumental in electing the President shows how bad the alternatives have been. The problem is that both major parties have moved to selecting candidates that ideally appeal to 50% +1 of the electorate.

I’m thinking back to when the John Birch Society (not to be confused with the Birch John Society – a group favoring wooden restrooms) were putting up billboards that said “Impeach Earl Warren!” Warren was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court at the time – and I read up on him. In 1938, running for California’s Attorney General slot, Warren won the Republican, Progressive and Democrat primaries. I can’t say that I liked his actions against Japanese Americans, in favor of forced sterilizations, etc – but we do need candidates who are less despised by the voters.

Trump, in his three elections, has been “less bad” than the alternative – to me. Elections for Senate, House and Governor have been the same – I vote for the lesser evil. As Cecil Storm frequently reminded me, “The lesser evil is still evil. And I vote for the lesser evil while recognizing that. I’d like to be able to vote for the good.