From about 14 minutes into his wonderful Politics Politics Politics podcast last night:
Donald Trump's base, in part, has elected him -- twice -- because he is not the guy to go to war. ... Donald Trump committing American troops to Iran would be, for his coalition, in my opinion, a betrayal of a core principle of why he was elected.
Is it possible that, as of 2016, a significant part of Trump's "base" had reason to believe that he was "not the guy to go to war?" Sure.
Is it possible that, by 2020 -- after the Afghanistan "surge," his quintupling of the number of US troops in Syria and firing more artillery rounds there than were fired in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, his re-booting of the US war in Somalia, his decision to start delivering weapons to Ukraine (while boasting that Obama had only sent "blankets"), etc. -- that they still had good reason to believe that? Nope.
And even less good reason to believe it in 2024, after he decided not to complete the withdrawal from Afghanistan after he negotiated the US surrender there, leaving the job of keeping the deal to Joe Biden and then whining incessantly about it.
Of course, "good reason" is not the same thing as "really, really, really, really want to believe Trump soooooooo badly that I'm willing to ignore my own lying eyes."
But even assuming antiwar voters consituted a significant portion of that cultish, gullible "base," there was only one "core principle" involved with whether he won or lost in each of those three elections. That "core principle" has zero to do with policy, domestic or foreign. It's a technical policy: Eke out a tiny margin in swing-state turnout.
In 2016, he won by about 100k votes spread across a few swing states. In 2020, he lost by about 35k votes spread across a few swing states. In 2024, he won by about 115k spread across a few swing states.
The voters who both cared deeply about foreign policy and were delusional enough to still believe, years of experience proving the contrary notwithstanding, that "he is not the guy to go to war," weren't part of that tiny last-minute Hail Mary GOTV push. They always vote and there was no doubt whatsoever that they were going to vote, or who they were going to vote for. They were already baked into both parties' "war room" projections.
The "core principle" in each of those elections was "how many of our 'meh, might bother, might not' voters, the people not already highly motivated, can we get to fill out a ballot?"
Everything else was, to grab a Bannonism, "flooding the zone with shit." Including foreign policy and war/peace.
Young is usually really, really, really good on nuts and bolts stuff. He seems to be ignoring what he knows here.
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