I can assure you there is. I live in a blue state, and there’s definitely different camps. I’ve been very surprised at what otherwise pleasant, tolerant people end up Trump supporters.
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I hope you’re right and that they are the kind of people who felt that they were making a difficult decision with very little latitude (I, personally had a very hard time voting for Hillary).
Having said that, it is very hard for me to reconcile what I saw and heard in my youth with all of the denialism I hear from “moderate” trump supporters. From the article:
“McCabe looked momentarily wary. He laughed a little. “I don’t remember saying that,” he said unconvincingly.
“Schilling was having none of it. “You’re the one that told me, liar,” she said.
“She looked at me.
“The NFL?
“Niggers for life,” Schilling said.
“For life,” McCabe added.”
This is just one of many instances that reflect the America I know is there and am currently privileged to be abstracted from living in a liberal pocket of upstate New York. If you scratch hard enough, I bet you’ll find this shit under damn near every seemingly reasonable trump voter. Bigotry and fear got him elected and it’s what his “base” is clinging to in their heart of hearts.
But I hope you’re right and that those moderate supporters wise up and speak out.
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As long as it doesn’t cost them anything, yes, they will believe a total fabrication. They will believe whatever makes them feel better. In many cases, after all, these are people who are unable to make smart life choices. They have demonstrated that they don’t have the skills to make good decisions after considering all the facts.
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FTFY 
(nine characters!)
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Trump supporters will punch themselves in the face if there’s a liberal behind them
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That’s not new though - politics has been about tribal/cultural identity for a long time now. I think maybe what’s new is the widespread recognition that politicians and their politics don’t have any meaningful relationship to our lived experience. They are rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, as the saying goes.
Once the hope that politicians can change our lives is gone, all that’s left is yet another form of brand loyalty. Like for a sports team or a pop star. We don’t stay loyal to brands because they’re objectively good, but rather because the brand helps us express something about ourselves. That’s the purpose of brands for the consumer, and in this context arbitrary loyalty is what gives them meaning. It doesn’t matter if your team sucks, they’re your team.
This revised understanding of what politicians are for might be depressing, but it’s not a “devolution”. In fact it may actually be a progressive development in the bigger picture, since it leaves room for actually viable strategies for changing our lives. Celebrities are politicians, politicians are celebrities, and only the most naive think that celebrities will change the world.
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what are you talking about, they love him because of the way he makes them feel.
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Obligatory reminder that the majority of Trump’s base are not impoverished coal miners.
The core of the Trumpist base are middle-class white suburbanites.
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I’m pretty sure “elite” refers to a class of people who have been in a position to say, “We’re the experts, we know what’s right no matter how you feel about it” and who used that position to secure power for their class instead of to actually make things better.
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I encounter what I feel are two different but closely related archetypes.
One is the otherwise reasonable and polite Trump voter. They may have been more anti-Hillary, but they seem to have a strong authoritarian streak and/or deep-seated fear of change and outsiders. I’ve seen that Trump being an authority figure is very successful in his attempts to discredit the press, as many of these live in an information bubble with Fox or worse and their only source of news. Willingly ignorant essentially, but that doesn’t give them a free pass.
The second is the Trump-train passenger like you mentioned, the bigots lurking just beneath the surface and especially the sort who only care that the ‘enemy’ (liberals, foriengers, RINOs, whomever) suffer no matter the cost to them. Heck, some of them won’t pay much, as it wasn’t just Joe Backwoods the Unemployed Miner who voted for him. The Young Republicans seem filled with trollish assholes at best, and Spencer acolytes at worst. If the GOP seems bad now, give it another decade or so when the /pol/ and r/T_D generation start showing up on the ballot.
What I feel is worse than Trump is the normalization of such behaviors and the radicalization of ‘normal’ people into the first and then second. None of this started with Trump, but I think the 2016 election poured gas onto the balkanization fire.
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this drawing pleases me in ways I cannot describe.
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So… Trump then…
(at least if you take their crap at face value)
Trump is the opposite. He’s “My feelings are right and I don’t need experts to tell me what’s what.” He thinks “people have been saying” is a reliable source of information.
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Lots of “economic distress” going on there. Better keep catering to them.
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“I love the poorly educated.” And they love him right back.
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Nah. He doesn’t even think that I’m sure. He just claims, “people have been saying” to sound like someone is backing up his point. Its non-truth and difficulty in proving it are probably what makes it appeal as a tactic.
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My issue is that by actions Trump is subtle compared to Pence. A lot of Pence’s junk is currently being pushed as “Trump told him to” when it comes to, say, stage a walk out of an NFL game - but if Pence was craftier he would have put up a better show than literally informing security he would be leaving early and expect the (likely majority Trump supporter) officers to not mention it to anyone - or for anyone to check flight logs.
The fear of Pence is that he would somehow get the congress to unite better, but the congress is already voting mostly with Trump and there’s no reason to think that Pence’s identical healthcare plan with identical secret room meetings would be better. The only real concern with Pence is that the MSM won’t pick his positions apart, but people already don’t like Pence and he is a creep who thinks anyone white thinks like he does - it would just get worse.
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Who don’t live in places like California or New York. There are millions of middle-class white suburbanites in those states who despise Trump. There’s got to be more to it than “middle-class white suburbanites”. And MCWS are certainly capable of making poor life choices.
There are people who despise Trump, but like Pence. And there are people who love Trump, but regard Pence as the establishment. I don’t know if they would offset.
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Excellent descriptions of the spectrum of Trump voters, but to be honest, I don’t see the first group you describe as terribly different from the second. Sure, they may be more reserved in their language, but the core motivations are the same: bigotry and fear (fear adores the resolute nature of authoritarianism).
Just as with the Nazis in Charlottesville, those who walk among Nazi flags, chants and salutes are, for all intents and purposes, fucking Nazis. You don’t get to vote for a white supremacist, philandering rapist and draft dodger and claim that you only voted for him because of “border security” or some other innocuous sounding, yet gravely consequential lie.
To your last point, this has been a steady GOP tendline since at least Gingrich. As they become more vocal, they are simply revealing more truth in their agenda. The only hope is that the misread of their recent successes emboldens them to say what’s really on their minds and the majority of America sees them for what they really are and takes stock of their own complicity.
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