I Really Mostly Don't Understand This.

Donald Trump has run for president twice.  Most voters didn't want him either time.  Trump isn't subtle.  He's overwhelmingly obnoxious.  And people had no trouble seeing that.  The first time he ran, although most voters didn't want him, his minority of support was distributed in such a way that he actually got a majority of the Electoral College.  Most voters didn't want him to be president, but he won anyway.  Helluva system.

What's really weird is that most voters didn't want him, because he's really obvious, and it was painfully easy to see, or assume with very great confidence, that he was a phony, an inveterate liar, and cared about only one thing in the universe: himself.  But when he ran for re-election, having proven for four years that he was without question a phony, an inveterate liar, and completely and exclusively self-focused, he got more votes than he did the first time.  (They don't have an emoji of someone scratching his head.)  But the other guy did sufficiently better than that that we weren't saddled with Trump again.

It was after that that some of the support, like on Fox News, started to fall away.  Not all of it, but some of it.

Now, I said I "mostly" don't understand this.  I do understand part of it.  Enough people had hitched their wagons to whatever they told themselves, or feared, was Donald Trump's star, or star power, that they thought that regardless of what they really thought, or knew, they couldn't afford to admit he's a complete loser.

And even now, after all this, Trump is way ahead in surveys of Republicans, or likely Republican voters, or Republicans willing to complete surveys.  Clearly, there's room for these surveys not to be accurate.  But they're the ones that are made public.  Even broader surveys about who is more likely to get the voters' votes show that Trump and Biden are about even.  I'm not a Biden fan, either, but come on.

I have to admit that when it comes to people like the Fox crew who have fallen away, I really wish I could ask them about that.  I imagine telling them I don't think I'm any smarter than they are, and asking them why they couldn't at all detect what was screamingly obvious to me and to the majority of voters.  Assuming they weren't just saying they approved of Trump when they perhaps really didn't, but knew their base wanted that kind of statement from them.  Those people have jobs that no doubt overpay them, or violently overpay them, on condition that they please the viewers.  And I imagine asking what finally led them to recognize, and be willing to admit, what most people already and clearly knew?

But today, I saw an article about Trump's having gone after some Texas federal Representative named Chip Roy, and calling Roy a "RINO" (one of Trump's common dismissals of other Republicans).  Roy's crime against Donnie Trump was having declared Trump's past actions impeachable.  But Roy, a good (R) boy, didn't vote to impeach Trump.  How many times have I said that no one can adhere to the Rep/com agenda without being a hypocrite, dishonest, or both?

Well, Trump's response to Roy (the usual list of insults) stimulated some noteworthy blowback from Texans.  One person said it: "Trump thinks he is more important than voters...Trump is all ego and doesn't care about anyone but himself."  No information was given about this person.  Is this someone who in fact voted for Trump, once, or maybe twice?  If so, how did this person somehow fail to recognize the torturously obvious before now?  And how is s/he able to see and acknowledge it now?

Trump famously, and correctly, said that he could walk down 5th Ave in NYC, shoot someone dead, and not lose support over it.  Is the message here that he could get away with shooting one, or two, people dead, but people will start to react once it becomes more of a mass murder?  I wish I could ask these people.