> Sen. Bernie Sanders on Sunday chalked up the fact that some of his supporters during 2016’s Democratic primaries eventually voted for Donald Trump in the general election to “the nature of politics.” <
Trump’s supporters and Bernie’s supporters have at least two things in common: they both are against NAFTA, and they both want to see manufacturing jobs return to America.
Trump would have been wise to exploit this going forward. Exploit this crack in the Democrat party. But Trump decided to insult Sanders instead, calling him “crazy” in tweets.
For the life of me, I don’t understand why Trump did that. There’s no upside to it. No Bernie Bro is going to read Trump’s tweets and say “By golly. Trump is right. Bernie is crazy.”
But plenty of them will be turned off, and maybe drift back to the traditional Democratic party.
Side story:
Many years ago, I was talking to a colleague at work. In the course of our conversation, he said something very vulgar about Ronald Reagan. He lost me right there, as The Gipper is one of my heroes. I was no longer motivated to go out of my way to help this colleague.
My colleague made a stupid error. Trump is doing the same thing re Bernie.
That’s a colleague.
If someone four years from now was so offended by a tweet, they will in an institute and not be able to vote anyway :)
I had a very good friend, in spite of our differing political views, who made some nasty and tasteless remarks during Reagan’s funeral proceedings. It exposed a degree of hatred for conservatives I had not seen before in him.
This after a spirited defense of Bill Clinton’s disgusting behavior with a 21 yo intern in the oval office.
I lost much respect for him that I did not regain.
“For the life of me, I don’t understand why Trump did that. There’s no upside to it. No Bernie Bro is going to read Trump’s tweets and say “By golly. Trump is right. Bernie is crazy. But plenty of them will be turned off, and maybe drift back to the traditional Democratic party.”
Using that logic Trump should never have called any of his opponents names. Little Marco, Low Energy JEB, Lyin’ Ted, Crooked Hillary.
All of his primary opponents had strong supporters who might be offended by the name calling and less likely to vote for Trump in the general. Even Clinton supporters “on the fence” might be less likely to cross over due to name calling.
I’m sure the name calling backfired in some cases. But any such negative effect was likely far outweighed by a positive effect with voters who saw the name-calling as an indication that Trump was a “tell it like it is” truth teller who calls it like he sees it. People are tired of that fake BS where politicians in congress call people they hate “my good friend from Massachusetts, the honerable Ted Kennedy”. It’s refreshing to hear a politician tell the truth.
We’ll never know what would have happened if Trump had run a different campaign, but he won - and you know the old saying: “don’t fix what ain’t broke”.
Another thing to note: The severity of Trump’s name branding was proportional to how much of a threat the opponent posed. It is not that earth shattering of an insult to be called “little”, “low energy” or even “crazy” in politics. Prole get called a lot worse. Being called “Lyin’ Ted” or “Crooked Hillary” - now that leaves a mark (especially when it’s true).
I bet a lot of the GOP never Trumpers were once Cruz supporters who can’t forgive Trump for branding Cruz as a liar. Trump had to hit Cruz hard because Cruz was real competition. I bet a lot of the hatred behind the left’s resist Trump movement is due to pissed off Clinton supporters who will never forgive Trump for branding her “crooked Hillary”. Trump has chosen to make the entire MSM his enemy by calling them dishonest, fake and disgusting every chance he gets. Most politicians try to suck up to the press believing they are too powerful to challenge. Trump chose a different path and may actually wind up taking them down a notch. We’ll see.
Oh well, you have to defeat your opponent in order to win, and you have to break some eggs to make an omelet.