Never mind; @LSLGuy already answered my question.
…and yet:
This is why I’m not so sure about @Zoobi’s comment, with which several others here agreed. No doubt there are Trump True Believers who like all cult members would go on swearing fealty to their messiah even as he pissed on their face.
But my guess is that many Trump voters are simple, anecdotally driven, self-interested and mercurial. Once something bad happens directly to them, they may turn on a dime. Love turns to hate quickly in such people, IME.
Once upon a time, I believed the same thing, but over the years I’ve seen too many MAGAts suck down heaping helpings of copium like it was Ivermectin. My sister was trying to get a work-from-home job with the federal government when Trump put a stop to it. Did she blame Trump? No. According to her, he was only doing what was reasonable since federal workers were lousy with people who simply did nothing from home.
There might be a theoretical limit to what Trump can ask them to endure while still maintaining their support. Maybe if he asked them to sacrifice their first born child they might balk. Maybe. MAGAts can’t turn against Trump for a variety of reasons. It often means turning against their friends and family. It also means admitting they were wrong.
There’s no question but that there are people like your sister and I said as much.
The question is whether there are Trump voters who are not like your sister. And the linked story seems to give an example of such.
The idea that no Trump voter is a swing voter defies history and common experience.
My parents are Trump voters. I have mentioned this before, and described how I use them to understand the “typical” ground-level supporter. They don’t watch TV news. They don’t get or read a newspaper. They occasionally talk politics very superficially with their friends, but otherwise they have no idea what’s going on. They probably don’t know who the vice president is. They definitely don’t know the deeper names like Stephen Miller or Peter Thiel. They have settled into their retirement pattern of annually migrating between their Idaho ranch and their Arizona homestead, painting rocks and fishing and hunting. They are very, very simple people.
They voted for Trump because he’s a businessman and a Republican and is therefore better for the economy. Their analysis doesn’t go any farther than that. It’s purely an article of faith that goes totally unexamined.
To whatever extent they’re aware of the chaos and stress in the world financial markets, and the negative impact on their retirement accounts, they just assume Trump knows what he’s doing and this is the effect of breaking things that needed to be broken, so they can be rebuilt better. They literally have no deeper thoughts than that, because they are flatly not paying attention to the details. They are probably dimly aware Trump is using tariffs for leverage, but nothing more than that. Canada? Mexico? China? Treasury bonds? No idea.
And yes, they’d absolutely vote for Trump again.
Edit to add: The culture of this board, and of these discussion threads especially, is to monitor the news closely and to value an informed perspective. The point of considering the example of my parents, above, is to be reminded that the culture here is not typical. Well-read, well-informed people know that Trump is an infantile sociopath, a brain-damaged chimpanzee who’s been handed a machine gun. It’s patently obvious if you’re paying attention. But not everyone is. Some people, like my parents, are totally disengaged from events. Maybe even many people. We cannot make assumptions about how they see the world based on the bias of our own experience.
I think I mentioned this in another thread, but I personally know two types of Trump voters. There are the true believers who have a cult-like devotion to the guy. If on a clear day Biden or some other Democrat said the sky was blue and Trump said it was plaid, they would believe Trump unconditionally. Those folks are pretty much unsalvageable.
But I also know Trump voters who don’t really follow politics or keep up with the news too closely. They’re not in love with the guy, but voted for him because they heard he was going to reduce inflation, or perhaps they liked that he talked tough on China, or maybe they just appreciated him flipping off the political establishment. Because they don’t take in much news, they’re not being fed the Fox News talking points, and they could very well turn against him if they see the cost of groceries or gaming gear going up.
See answer to previous post. Substitute “your parents” for “sister”.
As a matter of basic logic you cannot refute my point - namely that while there are Trump voters who will not change there are also likely to be Trump voters who will - by presenting examples of the former. Especially in the face of a link to someone who appears to fit the latter.
If you tried to talk to them about it and reason with them (perhaps you have), would they be interested in discussing it or would they completely switch off? I’d totally understand if you avoid it so as to not cause arguments.
My experience (so anecdotal) is MAGA has no interest in a serious debate. There is a reason most of them have left the SDMB.
Indeed, I think they see a liberal arguing as proof of “wokeness” and “eliteness.” And it just rubs them the wrong way. They have their feels. Anyone who brings facts to the discussion and challenges them to defend their position is just calling them stupid. I have a MAGA friend who is well educated, has a very good job and she shuts down in a second as soon as I press her about any facts.
I have not found a way to get through to them at all. Working on it.
They get irritated and switch off. They feel like I’m throwing the fact that I’m actually well informed into their face as an insult. They retreat to the old saw “why can’t we just get along, it’s just politics” because they see loyalty to parties like loyalty to sports teams. And for people of their generation who saw decades of relative stability, it’s basically true. Just like it doesn’t matter who’s last year’s Superbowl winner, it makes no difference to them who’s president; things just keep ticking along, same as always. They are fundamentally low-information voters.
Right; it’s pretty telling that sites like this, that aspire to having correct facts and data, tend to repel Maga supporters.
I’ve also seen, on trump-friendly sites, that even true believers get rapidly ostracized if they try to correct a piece of disinformation.
Yeah, that’s my brother. He’s decided that no information can be trusted unless it’s telling him what he wants to hear.
So he gets all his information from YouTube bloggers, who mostly don’t actually lie but leave out lots of important details.
Nothing I say gets through because my information is fundamentally tainted by my sources.
And he’s a lawyer, FFS.
Cross out “lawyer”, substitute “doctor”, and that’s us. Oh, and one of the few times I decided to argue with him, he sent me a Xitter post from Ian Miles Cheong (if you know, you know), so I guess he also goes there for “news”.
You can’t move 'em.
ETA: he and my mom are both full-on MAGA, and you’re right about YouTube as well. The fact that he listens to whackdoodle doctors should be a surprise, but I’ve long since reached the conclusion that education for many doctors has very little other than the very specific science of medicine - they only learn the math needed to perform specific tasks, and there’s no need for example to learn how to read a study AFAICT.
Yes he would have “considered other options” for a day and then voted for Trump anyway.
MAGA isn’t about economic policy, it’s the culture war (and in MAGA eyes this is a real war that we’ll have casualties and they are willing to accept them). They care a hell of a lot more about this than I think people here recognize.
One of my coworkers has two Masters Degrees - one in Social Work and one in Business Administration and she is all in for the Maga lies. It’s insane.
There are more than a few examples of doctors (medical doctors) ignoring what they presumably learned to become a doctor. Doctor Oz is one that leaps to mind. I am sure I can come up with more (Dr. Ben Carson, neurosurgeon would be another one). And in case anyone wants to say he’s just some crank Dr. Oz is now, currently, the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
This board runs older. I am sure there are more than a few who rely on those agencies for healthcare. It’s worth caring about.
Right; a lot of people in my feed are obsessed with the trans issue despite virtually all of them never having any personal contact with this issue whatsoever.
Im almost curious what they think is happening; do they think someone is going to put a hood on them one day, bundle them into the back of a van and when they wake up they’ve had their sex changed? This is the level of concern people seem to have about this.
And of course they believe it’s the left that’s obsessed with this issue.
Well, Trump has told them that their kids might get a sex-change operation one day at school–little Johnny comes home one day but now little Jane.
Trump made the claim again last week while discussing education policy during a New York City barbershop discussion filmed by Fox News: “No transgender, no operations — you know, they take your kid — there are some places, your boy leaves for school, comes back a girl. Okay? Without parental consent.” He added, “At first, when I was told that was actually happening, I said, you know, it’s an exaggeration. No: it happens. It happens. There are areas where it happens.”
Now, is MAGA going to believe someone who says that’s ridiculous, or Donald Trump?
The whole Trump experience defies history and common experience. When it comes to MAGA, I’ve pretty much given up on common sense. Given Trump’s behavior over the years, if MAGA was going to turn against Trump they would have done so already. I’m sure there are a few swing voters but I don’t think they amount to much.