The failure of the anti-Trump movement has its roots in the failure to recognize the social imbalance that got President Donald Trump elected in the first place, vocal anti-Trumper David Brooks writes in a column for The New York Times.
Brooks and others set out to "expose the harm President Trump is doing, weaken his support and prevent him from doing worse," he wrote.
"And by that standard, the anti-Trump movement is a failure," Brooks writes.
"A lot of us never-Trumpers assumed momentum would be on our side as his scandals and incompetences mounted," Brooks writes. "I almost never meet a Trump supporter who has become disillusioned. I often meet Republicans who were once ambivalent but who have now joined the Trump train."
Why? Part of it is tribalism, Brooks writes.
"In any tribal war people tend to bury individual concerns and rally to their leader and the party line. As late as 2015, Republican voters overwhelmingly supported free trade. Now they overwhelmingly oppose it. The shift didn't happen because of some mass reappraisal of the evidence; it's just that tribal orthodoxy shifted and everyone followed," Brooks writes.
But instead, focus in on the reason Trump was elected president in the first place, Brooks writes.
"The main reason Trump won the presidency is that tens of millions of Americans rightly feel that their local economies are under attack, their communities are dissolving and their religious liberties are under threat," Brooks writes. "Trump understood the problems of large parts of America better than anyone else. He has been able to strengthen his grip on power over the past year because he has governed as he campaigned.
"Voters are willing to put up with a lot of nonsense for a president they think is basically on their side," Brooks writes.
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