Donald Trump's rising popularity only confounding to elites

Editor: Vlad Rothstein | Tactical Investor

Donald Trump’s rising popularity

President Donald Trump’s approval numbers have just jumped, and according to newly released Associated Press and CNN polls, he’s up 7 percentage points from last month.

And it’s not that difficult to see why. This is the direct fallout of positive White House economic moves coupled with rebound resistance to the overreach of the media and political left to paint Trump as all that ails the world.

Not only is Trump’s economy working. But the constant barrage against Trump has cast him a victim. And how the base does rally about a victim. Right?

By the CNN numbers, Trump’s at a 42 per cent approval rating with Americans, up 7 percentage points from February — and that’s despite Robert Mueller and the left’s ongoing Russia attacks, the left’s characterization of White House personnel changes as evidence of chaos and poor leadership and, of late, the whole pornographic Stormy Daniels takeover of the media cycle.

But there’s something more going on with Americans that has contributed to Trump’s popularity boost, too, and it goes like this: Conservatives are sick and tired of being whipped by elites. The scandals surrounding Trump aren’t sticking. And part of the reason is the left has overreached on taking down Trump.

The Maxine Waters of the country, the Antifa and Black Lives Matter of the nation, the Women’s March types who’ve been calling for Trump’s head on a plate since the days before he even physically took over the White House have had their day. The Russia collusion, the revelations of anti-Trump FBI agents’ texts — and now, the all-courts press of students-slash-political operatives to condemn the Second Amendment and all conservatives who support it — all these things have been stirring the Trump-supporters’ pot.

It’s not that Trump is scandal-free, or even completely innocent of all of which he’s accused. It’s that it’s too much, too frequently, with all the attacks. Full Story

Donald Trump’s rising popularity Confounds the Left

The elites have no one to blame but themselves for Trump’s rise

The key to understanding the Donald Trump phenomenon is to recognize that he is neither a disease nor a symptom – he is instead for many Americans the beta-test of a cure. He represents the breakdown of the post-Cold War left-right politics of the nation, a breakdown that has been happening in slow motion for the past two decades, fueled by a dramatic decline of trust in America’s elites.

The list is familiar to you by now: 9/11. Iraq. Katrina. Congressional corruption. Financial Meltdown. Bank bailouts. Failed stimulus. A healthcare mess. Stagnant wages. Rising distrust. Diminished hopes. 16 years of promises from Republicans and Democrats alike that failed to live up to what people wanted. This distrust was earned.

Through it all, the elites were looking out for the interests of people other than those they were elected to serve. It is no accident that Donald Trump broke with the elite bipartisan consensus on the issues of immigration, trade, and foreign policy. In each of these arenas, elite consensus views were favoured by the donor class, by big business, and by party leadership to the exclusion of others.

By writing off right-wing Americans as deleterious to the ethical integrity of the country, left-wing Americans increasingly demonstrated that they hardly saw a place for the Republican Party in 21st century America at all. The ragtag nature of Trump’s campaign—delivering him to the forefront of the Republican Party while simultaneously dismantling it—only validated liberals’ righteousness. Recall that right up to election, the popular meme in the media was the conservative movement was in a state of collapse, and the liberals were dominant.

“The left has done very well in the cultural wars in the last couple of decades,” says Dalton Conley, an American sociologist and professor at Princeton University, “but there’s often a backlash.”

What’s Behind Donald Trump’s rising popularity?

And when a golden-haired man comes on TV, a man who represents a version of what you might hope your life could be like – a man who defies the elites, who is rich and successful, who comes from the world of the elites but is strong enough to reject them and their lies – and he tells you it’s not your fault your life is the way it is. He tells you it’s the fault of immigrants and bad trade deals and wasteful pointless wars based on lies. He tells you the problem with elites is not that they are too conservative or too liberal, but that they are stupid and don’t care about you. He tells you, with confidence, that he alone can make everything great again. And you listen.

Donald Trump’s rising popularity only confounding to elites