Professor - I appreciate your thoughts here. I also found Dan Drezner's piece quite disturbing. I've been a reader of his going back to the 90s. His despair seemed way out of character, which made its impact more intense for me. Like you and Dan himself - I hope he's wrong! You mention Trump's floor as being thought to be 35% now. I remember reading claims of 15-20% early in Trump 1. Is there actual data that delineates this core from the rest of the populace? Or put it another way - there's a big chunk of Americans who look at Trump and judge him to be utterly unfit for office. A third group - the smallest - voted for him but are capable of deciding he's not working out. I guess that small 3rd group needs to be understood most. But I'd like to understand if there are some measurable traits in that 35% Trump floor that explain how they came to their Trump devotion.
There are a couple of different things here. Hard-core Trump supporters isn't necessarily the same concept as people who will say they approve of him in opinion surveys, with the latter presumably a larger group. From Truman through W. the approval floor had been ~25%; even if that's higher now, that probably doesn't mean that 35% or whatever of the US are dedicated Trump fanatics. (So for example NIxon never went below ~25% but once he resigned pretty much the entire nation, including that 25%, moved on from him immediately).
Professor, I missed your reply. Just discovered it. Thanks for replying. You're right, I was equating "floor" voters as being mostly "hard-core Trump supporters". If floor voters are more susceptible to moving on from Trump, that certainly offers more hope than the true believers. I'm sure you've seen the same stories I have this week, of people in deep red areas starting to wonder what's going on. Hopefully that leads to the insight they don't have to just roll over. Watching the amazing video of the R in Alaska claiming to be helpless and the one near Atlanta lecturing his constituents for their ideological impurity...hopefully those R voters decide they can move on, too! :-)
I've been watching Don Bacon's Twitter and it looks to me he's hinting at some sort of break from Trump. He barely won a district that Harris easily carried. His very possible opponent will be Dan Osborn, who would be difficult under good circumstances. The Nebraska Cattlemen are now on record being upset about USDA cuts.
Professor - I appreciate your thoughts here. I also found Dan Drezner's piece quite disturbing. I've been a reader of his going back to the 90s. His despair seemed way out of character, which made its impact more intense for me. Like you and Dan himself - I hope he's wrong! You mention Trump's floor as being thought to be 35% now. I remember reading claims of 15-20% early in Trump 1. Is there actual data that delineates this core from the rest of the populace? Or put it another way - there's a big chunk of Americans who look at Trump and judge him to be utterly unfit for office. A third group - the smallest - voted for him but are capable of deciding he's not working out. I guess that small 3rd group needs to be understood most. But I'd like to understand if there are some measurable traits in that 35% Trump floor that explain how they came to their Trump devotion.
There are a couple of different things here. Hard-core Trump supporters isn't necessarily the same concept as people who will say they approve of him in opinion surveys, with the latter presumably a larger group. From Truman through W. the approval floor had been ~25%; even if that's higher now, that probably doesn't mean that 35% or whatever of the US are dedicated Trump fanatics. (So for example NIxon never went below ~25% but once he resigned pretty much the entire nation, including that 25%, moved on from him immediately).
Professor, I missed your reply. Just discovered it. Thanks for replying. You're right, I was equating "floor" voters as being mostly "hard-core Trump supporters". If floor voters are more susceptible to moving on from Trump, that certainly offers more hope than the true believers. I'm sure you've seen the same stories I have this week, of people in deep red areas starting to wonder what's going on. Hopefully that leads to the insight they don't have to just roll over. Watching the amazing video of the R in Alaska claiming to be helpless and the one near Atlanta lecturing his constituents for their ideological impurity...hopefully those R voters decide they can move on, too! :-)
It’s interesting that Trump wants Canada to be ONE state. Just a thought.
I've been watching Don Bacon's Twitter and it looks to me he's hinting at some sort of break from Trump. He barely won a district that Harris easily carried. His very possible opponent will be Dan Osborn, who would be difficult under good circumstances. The Nebraska Cattlemen are now on record being upset about USDA cuts.