Why Trump will win another four years as US president: voters want him to finish what he started

Voters in 2016 liked Trump’s promise to stem the tide of illegal immigration, tackle trade with China and defeat Islamic State – and they still do
Unless Democrats can put up a credible candidate willing to deliver a similar agenda, they will lose

Robert Boxwell

Published: 1:00am, 11 Jan 2020

Why you can trust SCMP

Criticism of American presidents by their opponents and the press is a job requirement, but US President Donald Trump has inspired new extremes. Calling him a fascist seems especially popular, though racist, anti-Semite and misogynist aren’t far behind.

Former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton extended the criticism to his supporters in 2016 when she said, “You know, to just be grossly generalistic [sic], you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables”. Google “Trump supporter MAGA hat” and you’ll find plenty of stories of Trump supporters being attacked in the past few years.

Trump may be all the bad things he’s called and some of his supporters may be deplorable, yet millions of educated, rational, moderate Americans voted for him in 2016. And the way things are going, they’re likely to do it again in November. Why?

Many Trump voters like one or more of his policies, even if they don’t like the man. In ordinary times, his unlikeable persona might be enough to keep people at home on voting day, but these aren’t ordinary times. Trump’s opponents – a shambolic menagerie of socialists, terrorism apologists, liars, Nancy Pelosi (who prays for him, God bless her) and otherwise likeable Democrats – have attacked him so harshly and assiduously that they provide plenty of motivation to vote against them once more.

The reward for this, above four more years of Trump’s policies if he wins, includes the sheer entertainment of watching his opponents writhe on the floor, ululating, looking for somebody to blame – again. OK, they don’t really writhe on the floor. They sit in chairs around glass tables in television studios and ululate in political discussions.

US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi listens to US President Donald Trump during the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington on February 5, 2019. Photo: Abaca Press/TNS

Trump the candidate promised to stop the flow of illegal immigration, fix trade with China and eradicate Islamic State. The first two were policies many Americans found compelling after years of neglect. No other Republican candidate had Trump’s level of credibility to fix these problems because they happened on their watch.

And Hillary Clinton wasn’t the answer. She told a meeting of Goldman Sachs bankers that she wanted open borders, and her husband paved China’s path into the World Trade Organisation, making her unlikely to do much on that issue. She was the anti-Trump.

After he won, a pattern emerged. If Trump does or says something, doom is predicted. Then the doom doesn’t happen. Remember the uproar over tariffs on imports from China? Beijing had been fighting a trade war for decades – Trump was the first to fight back. His haters made a big noise and promised another Great Depression. That didn’t happen. Now many of them complain that he’s being too soft on Beijing.

A similar dynamic may have started last week with Iran. Major-General Qassem Soleimani had been directing the killing of Americans, Iraqis and others for years. Trump approved a drone strike that took him out.

While nobody wants this to lead to full-blown war, many accept it as a legitimate, overdue response. And believing politics should stop at the water’s edge, they are dismayed to see Democrats and the media criticise his decision.

On Wednesday, the Iranians responded by firing missiles into an American base in Iraq. They warned the Iraqi government before the strike; there were no casualties. They then said they “do not seek escalation or war”. If tensions continue to abate, Americans are going to watch the Democrats’ critical, doomsday comments looped endlessly in campaign videos this year.

Trump says the US took out Soleimani in response to an imminent threat. That may be, but it seems unlikely that the Iranian-backed mobs who stormed the US embassy in Baghdad last week weren’t also on Trump’s mind when he made the decision. A hostage crisis at the US embassy in Tehran in 1979-1980 doomed president Jimmy Carter’s re-election bid.

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No tweet storm or Pennsylvania rally could save Trump – or, let’s say, former vice-president and presidential candidate Joe Biden – if the same thing happened on his watch.

Removing Soleimani from the scene probably makes another go at the embassy a lot less likely. The appeasement implied by Trump not responding would have been riskier than taking out Soleimani, but his detractors will never admit that.

And then there’s impeachment, which most Trump voters believe is the farcical nadir of the extreme beating he has had to endure since even before taking office. Many feel that he’s been treated beyond the sadly ugly norm for today’s politicians. “Russia collusion” didn’t work out, so Democrats moved onto “Ukraine quid pro quo”. Most of the media rolled with them.

Voters who are inclined to support Trump’s policies are generally inclined to dismiss the impeachment as the extreme of damaging partisan politics.

They view the Democrats’ calls to impeach him to protect “our democracy” as really just cover for their own undemocratic efforts to jettison him. In this scenario, Democrats are the ones assaulting the constitution, not Trump. This provides plenty of motivation to his supporters to show up on Election Day.

Bolton, who was fired by Trump, now willing to testify

If a replacement came along who could deliver Trump’s policies and restore dignity and class to the institution of the presidency, more than a few Trump supporters would be happy to see his mouth retired early.

But since that’s unlikely to happen, those who lean conservative on economic issues and moderate on social issues will still vote for his policies, or will turn out again simply to vote against the Democrats who have savaged him.

You might not like him as a person, but you’d be foolish to bet against him being around for four more years to finish the things many voters are happy he started.

Robert Boxwell is director of the consultancy Opera Advisors

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