The Anti-Trump Paradox

At least it pissed off liberals

Trump's supporters like him because he shares their values, because he makes all the right enemies, and because they equate his style with "strength" and "toughness."  No complaint about his antics and offensive behavior will affect them because it is precisely his antics and offensive behavior that they like.  As for warnings about how dangerous he is, Trump supporters have an obvious retort.  He hasn't harmed them any.  Trump has been President for nine months now and, for all his opponents' warnings, nothing disastrous has happened.*

Of course, the reason Trump hasn't managed to hurt his supporters any is strong resistance to his harmful actions.  Three times now intense protests have beaten back Obamacare repeals that would strip 20 to 30 million people of their health insurance and disproportionately impact older voter, rural voters, and lower-middle income but not truly poor voters -- in other words, groups that are particularly strong Trump supporters.**  Members of his cabinet have dissuaded him rash or hasty protectionist measures that would disrupt supply chains and harm supporters in agriculture or manufacturing.  The support of Democrats will be essential to avoid a debt ceiling breach with untold damage to the world economy.  And if Trump really does cancel DACA his followers will not be harmed, but the harm to many highly sympathetic people with stir a backlash, perhaps even among his supporters.

Democrats and other Trump opponents have fought him mightily on all these things, and rightly so.  Republican actions, not limited to Trump, threaten to harm numerous innocent people, and we are absolutely right to fight to keep it from happening. 

And yet in the end, the only that will ever crack his support among the hard core is if he is actually allowed to harm them.  Such is the Anti-Trump paradox.

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*I mean, except for the hurricanes, of course.  But the hurricanes strike with utter indifference to who is in the White House, and FEMA seems to have done a good job in responding.  In fact, Republicans may have learned after Katrina that, much as they may want to destroy the federal government (at least in its mommy functions), extending that to FEMA is really bad politics.
**The latest bill is an exception, going out of its way to target states that have accepted the Medicaid expansion and benefit states that have not.  But many Trump supporting states have accepted the Medicaid expansion.