I was talking with an acquaintance of mine who is solidly progressive. She is surrounded by people who are equally progressive. Her worldview is completely reinforced by the opinions of her circle and details about the people on the other side of the political divide are pretty sketchy for her as it turns out.
She was telling me that her friends were excited about a senate race where moderate (translate as RINO) Republicans are trying to primary an extremist (translate as conservative) Republican out of office. My comment was that the definition of someone as moderate or extreme was very much in the eye of the beholder and different factions in the Republican party were almost as different from each other as if they were in completely different parties. Her answer was that the extremists were clearly the outliers from the party and that they resembled Trump.
So that made me laugh and I thought about whether I should bother clarifying a few things. I said the “extremists” and Trump are outliers from the Republicans that were around a generation ago. But those older politicians no longer have more than a minority of the Republican voters behind them. The “extremists” are the true representatives of the majority of the present constituency and in fact most of the “extremists” are rather on the moderate side of where some of the party finds itself.
And then I decided to elaborate, “In fact anyone who considers Donald Trump an extremist is deluding himself. A part of the political right considers Trump too moderate and tame and wishes he really was extreme on many points. And that proportion of the party is still growing.”
And then I provided my opinion of Trump, “You think Trump is some kind of fascist madman. Actually, he’s a shrewd salesman who realized that a huge market was not being serviced and that if he provided it with at least a modicum of what they were being deprived of they’d make him the most important man on Earth. He’s not a dictator or any kind of extremist. He’s a New York City Democrat from forty years ago. He’s selling the same thing Bill Clinton was selling in 1992. It’s just that the Democrats have drifted so far away from that ideology that it seems alien to them now.”
And then I finished off my spiel, “And if Donald Trump doesn’t win this year, the next Republican probably will be an extremist. That is if he’s a Republican at all. There is a large and growing population that is completely dissatisfied with what is going on in this country and no matter what the people in charge say or do they aren’t going away.”
Things got quiet after that. I wonder if what I said was believed and whether it made any impression at all. Actually, I’m pretty sure it did. I think the original discussion was meant as a way for me to embrace the “moderate” wing of the Republican party and show that I was one of the “good” Republicans. I didn’t do that, so I didn’t provide comfort. I provided the opposite; distress.
And that is a message that needs to penetrate into that bubble.