Trump’s supporters will stick with him, no matter what

By blaming his failures on establishment elites, Donald Trump will keep most of his supporters.

Donald Trump’s approval ratings are historically low for a president at this point in his first term. But before the Trump resistance starts dancing around the corpse of the orange one’s political career, it’s worth noting the other stunning data pollsters have collected about his supporters. In a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll, 96% of Trump voters said they would vote for him again if the election were held today, and only 2% said they regretted their vote.

These numbers are shocking to Trump’s opponents, who have a seemingly boundless ability to be surprised by the durability of his support. His overall approval ratings, which hover in the high 30s or low 40s in the aggregate, will likely prevent him from unifying Congressional republicans to pass much meaningful legislation. But his poll numbers will probably not drop much lower than that, because Trumpists are stubborn and resolute in their support for the president and their opposition to the establishment forces they have rejected so loudly.

Many in the mainstream media have made the argument that the laws of political gravity will eventually apply to Trump. They posit that his supporters will eventually peel away if coal jobs don’t return and the economic decay that has long plagued middle America continues unabated. They will react with anger when they realize that he’s governing on behalf of the very wealthy and doing nothing to aid wage earners in the Rust Belt. This conventional wisdom may have been true with past presidents, but it ignores the fact that Trump is an unprecedented figure in American politics. If the 45th president has proven anything, it’s that the old rules do not apply.

Populist demagogues are skillful at playing on the fears and resentments of voters to build an enduring base, and to manipulate those emotions to sustain their support. Take Russia as an example. The Russian economy under Putin has been stagnating for years. Between 2013 and 2015, the Russian GDP fell from $2.23 trillion to $1.33 trillion. Unemployment is sky high, and many Russians cannot pay for basic necessities. Despite this abysmal economic performance, Putin remains remarkably popular, with approval ratings consistently above 80%.

Putin maintains his support by blaming Russia’s woes on globalization and the European Union, appealing to nationalism with aggressive stances towards Ukraine and other former Soviet republics, and pandering to Russia’s cultural conservatism by attacking the LGBT community, artists, and cosmopolitanism in general.  He is viewed as a defender of Russia’s values and an everyman who the average voter identifies with. He also suppresses dissent and the free press with impunity, and controls a vast media empire that distorts, lies, and spreads misinformation that benefits him and discredits his opponents.

Trump is using a similar playbook to hold onto his base. No matter how bad the economy gets, or how wracked with dysfunction his administration becomes, there will always be someone else to blame, usually the very establishment elites his supporters despise. If a judge blocks his Muslim ban, he attacks the Judiciary as corrupt and irresponsible. If his poll numbers drop, the pollsters are biased and incompetent. If the media reports vigorously on his ties to Russia and conflicts of interests, the mainstream media is “fake news” and biased against him. They are even, dare I say, “the enemy of the American people.”

The brilliance of these tactics is that they confirm the biases that his supporters already possess. Trump supporters have been watching Fox News and right wing radio hosts attack the establishment press for decades, so they are eager to hear that bad news about Trump is fake news. They despise the professional elites that live in big cities and work as judges and pollsters, so they are more than willing to believe that they lack credibility.

And there are several major media outlets that will happily peddle Trump’s narrative to his legions of fans. Fox News, right wing talk radio, as well as Breitbart and the entire alt right internet universe, all spread the conspiracy theories, distortions, and misinformation that made Trump’s presidency possible in the first place.

Therefore, while Trump will never be a popular president, his polling numbers will never sink too far. When he said he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and his fans would still back him, he was remarkably prescient. Trumpists will be behind him to the bitter end. Its possible to see a scenario in which a terrorist attack before the election, or a weak democratic candidate who fails to drive up turnout, or some combination of the two, allows Trump to squeak through and get re-elected, a scenario that will make anyone who believes in liberal democracy shudder.