Trump's secret weapon isn't the working class, it's this

There are those who say that Donald Trump and his Republican allies have done a better job connecting with working-class voters than their Democratic counterparts. These analysts suggest that it’s all about class warfare, and that Democrats — who once offered voters favors and even got them jobs in exchange for votes — have lost touch with this group.

Indeed, there’s something to be said for this.

Trump looks very much like an old-school corrupt “party machine” Democrat, doling out favors to loyalists and economic incentives to red states that supported him. Today’s Democrats, meanwhile, try to portray themselves as above all that. Unfortunately, they come off looking like they’re above the problems of real people, and their policy ideas seem both condescending and too meager to be of any real help.

Democrats haven’t delivered the help they’ve promised (thanks in part to Republican obstructionism), and they’ve been conditioned to distrust it as “socialism” anyway. Republicans have succeeded in branding any Democratic help as socialist, because it requires new taxes. In contrast, led by Trump, they’ve promised essentially “free money” by running up deficits, something they railed against when Democrats were in power.

Hypocrisy hits hyperdrive

Hypocrisy? It doesn’t matter. If you tell people what they want to hear, they’ll give you an audience — and their votes. It worked for the Democratic machine, and it works for Trump. That’s why he decried  $600 coronavirus relief checks included in the latest stimulus package to pass Congress, saying they’re too paltry and pushing for $2,000 payouts instead.

He’s actually right about them being too small, but here’s where the hypocrisy hits warp speed: It was Trump’s own economic guy, Steve Mnuchin, who helped negotiated the deal, and it was congressional Republicans like Sen. Ron Johnson, a staunch Trump ally, stood in the way of larger checks, not Democrats.

What’s going on here? The answer is obvious: Trump and Johnson/Mnuchin are playing “good cop, bad cop” so Trump will get credit for any larger stimulus that passes. And credit is all that matters to Trump, because it 1) boosts his political capital and 2) strokes his massive ego. If you doubt that, recall that he insisted on putting his name on last year’s $1,200 stimulus checks.

So, yes, there’s something too the claim that Republicans are doing a better job of connecting with working-class people who need help but get scared by buzzwords like taxes and socialism. And the fact that they get scared by those words leads to the real reason Republicans are doing better than Democrats: They appeal to emotion, not reason.

Logic comes up short

Reason will tell you we already have socialism in this country: Medicaid, Social Security, public schools, police and fire protection, roads and bridges, the post office — they’re all socialist programs. And many of them were once opposed as vigorously as Obamacare is today. Before 1926, for example, America’s first highways were privately run, poorly maintained, cobbled-together dirt, gravel, and only occasionally concrete/asphalt roads. Too many people didn’t want the government to pay for them.

Reason will tell you that the bulk of the big 2019 Republican benefitted corporate execs far more than working-class Americans.

And reason will also tell you there’s no such thing as free money. In fact, Republicans long ran on this idea. They decried big budget deficits, especially if they were used to fund social safety net programs. These, of course, were “socialism,” but they also encouraged layabouts to sit back and receive government checks without working. Or so the narrative went.

They’ve conveniently abandoned it in favor of the old Democratic machine approach.

Appeal to emotion

Reason will tell you a lot of things about Donald Trump and the Republicans. It will tell you they make promises they can't keep and accusations they can't prove. But reason isn't what's driving Trump supporters, or they'd be wearing masks and laughing him out of office. Something else is. It's more primal, and it's connecting, and that should scare Democrats.

None of what Trump’s been saying is remotely reasonable. It’s not meant to evoke rational thought; it’s an appeal to raw emotion.

To see that it works, all you have to do is look at the fervor behind those fighting to keep Trump in office. There’s nothing rational about that, either. Reason will tell you that, if Republicans gained seats in the House and did better than expected in the Senate, voter fraud wasn’t the reason Trump lost the election. The obvious conclusion is that voters, as a whole, liked down-ballot Republican candidates more than they liked Trump.

Joe Biden has been confirmed as the winner by the Electoral College, and courts have repeatedly denied — even scoffed at — the Trump’s legal challenges. There’s simply no legal or rational basis for contending he won.

But there is an emotional basis for it, and that’s what’s playing out in the pro-Trump “stop the steal” rallies around the country. It doesn’t matter that nothing’s been stolen. That the store’s inventory has been checked and rechecked, and there’s nothing missing. That there’s noting on the store’s video monitor showing any theft. What matters is that the owner says he’s been robbed, and his customer friends are pissed about it.

Like a 1980s televangelist, Trump appeals not to reason, but to emotion. His “crusades” are packed, and the dollars keep rolling in.

Bad boy Republicans

The simple fact is, emotions like fear and hope are more powerful than the logic we use to solve complex problems. According to one psychologist, emotions drive 80% of our choices, compared to just 20% that result from practical issues and objectivity. So, if Republicans are focused on emotion, they have a huge advantage right out of the gate.

It’s the same advantage that big-city Democratic machines once used, and now Republicans are using it to reach rural Americans instead. Emotions and the desire for instant gratification go together, so a $2,000 stimulus check now with no new taxes sounds a lot better than a vague promise of better health care, which may or may not come to pass 10, 20, or 30 years down the road. And which is (gasp) socialism!

So, Democrats find themselves in a huge hole. They can’t match Trump’s corrupt appeal to emotion, because, well, they don’t want to be corrupt. They’ve lost the messaging war by allowing, and in some cases encouraging, the socialism label. And they appear to be government elitists controlling the purse strings and, therefore the lives, of working Americans, while Republicans appear willing to give them what they want, when they want.

Trump has lost, but if the Republican Party continues to use this approach after he’s out of office, the Democrats are in real trouble — not because they don’t care about the working class, but because they can’t connect with them emotionally.

They’re like the clean-cut guy with the good job who loses the girl to the bad-boy biker. Barack Obama was the quintessential honorable, well-spoken guy. Donald Trump is a bad boy through and through, breaking rules to suit his own purposes, regardless of who he hurts in the process. Besides, Obama’s Black, and Trump is white.

Choices like these have nothing to do with anything logical, and everything to do with emotion.