The Absolution Solution

Ezra Klein arrives at the correct conclusion that both Barack Obama, in his speech yesterday, and conservative loudmouth Ben Shapiro, in his response to Obama, both made a massive mistake by absolving Trump voters of their sins.

Where Obama and Shapiro differ sharply in their explanation is in the attribution of blame. Obama blames Trump — and others in the Republican Party and conservative media — for demagogically preying on Americans’ fears and anxieties. Shapiro blames Obama for adopting a lecturing tone that alienated a critical mass of Americans.

Over email, I asked Shapiro to unpack this point for me. “Obama suggested that his political opponents were badly-motivated ignoramuses, routinely ignored the rule of law, and utilized identity politics to divide the country,” he replied. “He savaged McCain and Romney in scurrilous ways. Many in the Republican base felt angered and slighted, and raged at the supposed nice guys in the party who were allegedly too weak to fight back. They supported the most aggressive candidate on the stage.”

Some of this strikes me as, well, strange. John McCain just had Obama speak at his funeral. The idea that the 2008 campaign was uniquely scurrilous is provably wrong. The rest of it is the usual Rorschach test of American politics; I think Obama treated issues of identity with unusual care and caution and, particularly early in his presidency, was unusually willing to believe the best of his political opponents, but I doubt I’ll change any minds on that in this column. Indeed, the deep division over how identity politics was wielded in the Obama era, and who was really acting outside the norms of American politics, is exactly what you’d expect if you believe this broader story of demographic, political, and cultural upheaval.

More interesting, I think, is the way both Obama and Shapiro implicitly absolve voters of responsibility for the choices they made. Obama’s basic argument is that too much change, too fast, made right-leaning voters susceptible to a demagogue’s charms; Shapiro’s basic argument is that too much of Obama’s liberal provocations, for too long, made right-leaning voters long for a strongman of their own.

The term “white fragility” is overused in politics right now, but it is relevant here: The unwillingness to state the obvious — a critical proportion of Republican primary voters enthusiastically supported the candidate who promised to turn back the demographic clock — might be politically wise, but it’s analytically disastrous. Black voters who supported Louis Farrakhan would never be treated with such delicacy.

Trump, for all his flaws, ran a campaign based on clear positions and aspirations. He promised to build a wall; he said that our country was being weakened by louche, violent, parasitic immigrants; he said Obama was an illegitimate president with a forged birth certificate; he vowed to stop Muslims from traveling to the country; and in every speech, at every turn, he promised to turn back the clock, to make America great again.

That a crucial portion of the Republican electorate agreed with him in all of this is undeniable. What it says about them is often treated as if it is unspeakable — either because to state their beliefs clearly is insulting or because it just makes a bad political situation worse.

Trump did not create these voters. They long predated him — they were present in both Pat Buchanan’s and Ross Perot’s candidacies — but they were homeless in American politics, suppressed by the two parties for reasons of both principle and political expediency.

Trump, with his money, celebrity, and media-savvy, taking advantage of new communication technologies, a weakened Republican Party, and the rage that grew on the right amid the daily affront of Obama’s presidency, was able to break through the cartel and offer those voters the choice they actually wanted, and in the Republican primary, enough of them took it to make him the nominee. (The general election, it should be said, had more complex dynamics, with a lot of voters unhappily choosing Trump over Clinton, which is why I think the primary was the real pivot here.)

So yes, Republican voters enraged by the feeling that they were being lectured by the first black president is a big part of how we got Trump. This idea is popular in some quarters of the right because it’s understood as somehow absolving them of blame for Trump, but it’s just another way of saying that Obama’s presidency — and the broader demographic and cultural changes it both revealed and represented — activated ugly sentiments in the Republican Party, those fears and resentments were amplified by conservative media, and Republican voters turned to the candidate who championed those sentiments most clearly.

Which is all to say Trump’s voters made a rational choice based on their beliefs about, and preferences for, the country they live in. There’s a powerful impulse to absolve them of that choice, to blame it on someone or something else, but doing so obscures the reasons it was made and confuses our attempts to move forward.

This is not only correct, but clear-headed and sobering to boot.

The reason we have Trump in the White House is that 63 million Americans made the choice to vote for him.  

You know what?

Those 63 million Americans are the problem. 

Oh I know, "But Zandar, you can't blame the voters, that's playing right into the hands of the politics of resentment".

Horseshit.

Take responsibility for what you did.  Fix it in November by throwing out the Republicans at the ballot box.