Trump's Fixation on Pleasing His Base May Torpedo 2020 Chances

As a former Republican I have been complaining for years that the GOP seemingly has no long term plan for survival as it increasingly focuses on the hatreds and bigotries of a shrinking base of aging, religiously extreme, low education whites. Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer, is taking this losing approach no new levels as he ignores the House results in the 2018 midterm elections, his toxicity among Millennials and the increasing revulsion with which he is viewed by the college educated and suburbanites.  And that doesn't even consider the Midwest voters who are now facing a collapse in the soybean market or workers losing their jobs due to steel and aluminum tariffs and might not give Trump his 70,000 vote margin spread over three rust belt states that gave him his Electoral College win (the failure of the Electors to do their duty as envisioned by the Founding Fathers and reject Trump is a topic for another post).   A piece in the Washington Post looks at Trump's hopefully failing focus.  Here are highlights:

President Trump’s headstrong refusal to reopen the federal government without new border wall funding has set him on a risky and defiant path for 2019, relying on brazen brinkmanship to shore up his base support and protect him ahead of a challenging year for his administration.

The latest overtures in the wake of the midterm elections, which brought about sweeping Democratic gains and the end of GOP control of Congress, stand in stark contrast to the historical behavior of modern presidents, who have moved at least briefly toward the political center after being humbled at the ballot box.

But Trump — counseled by a cadre of hard-line lawmakers and sensitive to criticism from his allies in the conservative media — has instead focused on reassuring his most ardent supporters of his commitment to the signature border pledge that electrified his followers during his 2016 presidential run even though it is opposed by a majority of voters.

Trump’s fervent appeals to his supporters — not just on the wall but in his sharpening criticism of Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome H. Powell, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and Democrats — leave him both emboldened and hamstrung heading into the new year, according to top Republicans and Democrats. While he is galvanizing his base amid political and economic uncertainty, he is also making it difficult to work with Democrats or recast his own presidency.

Republican critics, such as veteran strategist Mike Murphy, say Trump is threatening the GOP by “learning nothing from November and playing to the third of the country that he already has.”

“He’s trapped,” Murphy said. “He’s playing poker holding two threes and suddenly putting all of his chips in. It’s pure emotion, the mark of a panicking amateur.”

Democrats see a president unready for the siege coming in the new year from empowered House Democrats and developments in the special counsel probe of Russia’s role in the 2016 election — and flailing as the financial markets endure a roller-coaster of highs and lows.

Democrats have also pointed to another recent online poll by Morning Consult showing a six-point decrease in Trump’s approval rating since mid-November as evidence that their position remains strong even as the effects of the shutdown become more severe. . . . . “Talking only to your base while alienating the rest of the entire country is not a recipe for success.”

Pelosi, in a recent interview with USA Today, mocked Trump’s ultimatum as the battle cry of a weakened executive searching for a legislative fig leaf: “Now he’s down to, I think, a beaded curtain or something, I’m not sure where he is.”

Some Republican pollsters have also been watching the president’s tactics with concern, noting that there is little evidence he has grown his electoral coalition after the 2016 election, when he won the White House despite losing the popular vote.

“The problem is that the base is nowhere close to a majority of the nation,” GOP pollster Whit Ayres said. “In a government of the people, for the people and by the people, it sure helps to have a majority of the people behind what you are trying to do.”

As Trump has rallied [while at al-Asad Air Base in Iraq], House Democrats say they believe their leverage has only increased. They have repeatedly highlighted Trump’s claim this month that he would be “proud to shut down the government for border security,” which was made in a televised meeting with congressional leaders where Trump expressed dismay with Democrats by acting as an avatar for his base voters.

One longtime Trump adviser, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, said Trump has been “spooked” not by the midterms but by a brewing rebellion on the right earlier this month when he was considering accepting a deal from Democrats to fund the government through early February.

“He’s spooked by what the world would be like for him if the base wasn’t there” for whatever comes from the Mueller probe or House investigations, the Trump adviser said, adding that the volatility of Wall Street has increased Trump’s private frustrations to include not just Democrats and the media but the Federal Reserve.

Trump’s current border stance has polled poorly. A Quinnipiac University poll in mid-December found that 62 percent of the country, including 65 percent of self-identified independents and one in three Republicans, oppose shutting down the government over wall funding. The same poll found that Americans oppose building a wall on the Mexican border by a margin of 54 to 43 percent.

Trump’s 2016 victory was dependent on winning over white voters in the Midwest who did not attend college by using populist and nativist pitches, and some officials and allies continue to believe he can repeat the same success.

In a 2018 study of the nation’s changing demographics, Brookings Institution political scientist Ruy Teixeira concluded with his colleagues that increasing margins and maintaining turnout among this group provided Republicans the greatest opportunity to continue to win the White House. . . . “It’s the way to finesse the structure of the electoral college,” Teixeira said. “White non-college, in the center of the country.”

If Trump ends up causing a recession in the middle of the country, all bets will be off.  And that assumes he doesn't get indicted or impeached. 

Making America Unemployed Again

Red denotes counties to be hardest hit.  The darker the red, the greater the harm. 

The last time the United States got itself embroiled in a worldwide trade war was in 1930.  It did not end well for the American economy or for the world economy.  It's one of the lessons of history that the mental midget occupying the White House likely knows nothing about. Ditto for most of his staff and cabinet members who are little more than boot licking sycophants. The irony of the trade war Der Trumpenführer has ignited will fall disproportionately on his base.  China and other countries responding with retaliatory tariffs are targeting Trump supporting counties and states with laser precision. As the Wall Street Journal (read the entire piece) reports:

The [Chinese] retaliatory tariffs will fall especially hard—affecting more than 25% of a county’s economy—in nearly 20% of the counties that voted for Trump, affecting eight million people. Only 3% of the counties that voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton, with a total population of 1.1 million, would be so heavily hit.

The piece has an interactive map where one can check the impact on every county in the United States. In Virginia, Southwest Virginia - Trump country - will be hit the hardest. Do I have any sympathy for the victims of Trump's idiocy?  For the adults, none whatsoever.  But I do feel sadness for children and youths who be harmed by the consequences of those who answered Trump's calls to racism and bigotry. One can only hope that they will come to realize their misfortune tracks to their parents and Trump.  

Among the industries likely brutalized as a result of Trump's peevish, narcissistic desire to "win" are the auto industry and Midwest agriculture concerns.  Many farmers in Iowa who sold their souls to Trump's racist appeals may find themselves losing their farms or at minimum in dire financial straights. Again, I feel little sympathy inasmuch as the harm was self-induced.  A lengthy piece in the New York Times looks at the harm and job loses likely coming to the auto industry - plus the increased costs every American consumer will suffer - all so Trump's ego can be satiated.  May the suffering of his base be swift and extremely painful.  Here are article excerpts:

It used to be a refrain of the Republican faithful that the government shouldn’t be in the business of picking winners and losers where industry and technology are concerned.

As President Trump’s global trade war escalates, with the latest round of tariffs going into effect on Friday, his administration is doing just that. The new wrinkle is that it is no longer clear who is being set up to triumph or fail. Tariffs directed at products from one country — whether that’s steel from Canada and China or cars from Italy — are just as likely to affect American companies and hurt their workers.

The global auto industry relies on supply chains that were built on the free movement of parts and goods. Suppliers, dealers and car manufacturers in the United States and other countries are petrified by the damage that the tariffs could do to their businesses.

The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a trade group for domestic and foreign automakers with operations in the United States, predicts that a 25 percent tariff on imported cars, the high end of what has been proposed, could increase the average price of a new imported vehicle by $5,800. . . . . increased vehicle costs will lead to fewer sales and less tax receipts, fewer sales will lead to fewer jobs, and those fewer jobs will significantly impact many communities and families across the country,” the alliance warned in its June 27 comments to the Commerce Department.

One of America’s Big Three automakers, Fiat Chrysler, which operates 23 plants and employs 56,000 people in the United States, is an Italian-American company incorporated in the Netherlands with headquarters in Britain. It builds its strong-selling Jeep Renegade model in Italy, China and Brazil. The company stands to lose as much as $866 million in profit, according to one estimate, if a 25 percent tariff on cars from the European Union goes into effect.

Foreign carmakers with factories in America, including BMW and Volvo in South Carolina, Mercedes and Hyundai in Alabama, Subaru in Indiana, plus Toyota and Honda, which operate plants in several states, also stand to suffer, along with all of their suppliers. A study by the Peterson Institute found that 195,000 jobs will be lost if the tariffs are enacted and 624,000 lost if retaliatory tariffs follow.

The prospect of tariff-induced job losses, however, is not just hypothetical. Harley-Davidson, the Wisconsin-based motorcycle maker, could be a bellwether.

Harley sales have been in decline in the United States for years. Its bikes are big, fat, noisy and technologically backward, and the company has been too slow to make the lighter, more modern motorcycles that appeal to younger, more technically sophisticated American buyers. Japanese and European motorcycle makers have excelled at this.

Yet, ironically, sales for Harley-Davidson have been steady in Europe, the company’s second-biggest market, while dropping 8.5 percent in the United States in 2017. Those European sales were helping to support hundreds of workers in the United States, along with assembly plants in Australia, Brazil, India and Thailand.

One of Harley’s rivals, the Iowa-based Polaris, is also considering moving some production to Poland in response to the retaliatory European levies.

Tariffs are like a long train of boxcars; each one is filled with unintended consequences that can knock into the next with devastating consequences. The names on the factories may be foreign, but the workers who stand to lose their jobs are right here in America.