People didn’t vote for Donald Trump. People voted for their
ideal vision of Donald Trump.
Between Election Day and Inauguration Day, we have
consistently heard Trump voters explain they voted for Trump despite what he said. Nothing hit me
harder than the woman alive thanks to Obamacare who did
not believe Donald Trump would repeal Obamacare, despite saying that for 18
months.
But that was Trump’s secret to success – he was a political
outsider without a history. He could say whatever he wanted and it didn't
matter because Donald
Trump was a cartoon character, propped up by a willing media, running
against an actual politician.
Guess what? People tend to like just about any type of
person over a career politician. That’s just how it works.
In practice, it gave Trump an out about everything. Look at
the Iraq War. We know Hillary was for the war because she was a Senator and her
opinion actually mattered. We don’t truly know what Trump thought of the war
because he was a D-list New York City celebrity and the only person asking him was
Howard Stern.
Did it really matter if Trump was or was not for the War in
2003? There were a thousand more troubling aspects to his campaign than his
supposed views on that war.
And that essentially was the problem – all Trump had were
views. He didn’t have any positions. Hillary posted thousands upon
thousands of words of policy to her website, so the world knew exactly where
she stood on every issue.
Trump’s positions changed by the day. Without a track
record, none of his words mattered. It became a “Who do you hate less?” contest
and Middle America chose the white man over the white woman. It’s annoying to
think, in retrospect, that I was surprised.
Starting now, Trump’s ability to be all things to all people
stops. He can no longer say that he wants health care for
everyone and the repeal of the
Affordable Care Act. He can no longer say that Mexico will pay for the wall
without getting Mexico to pay for the wall.
There is plenty of blame to go around for Donald Trump, but
the ultimate truth is that he did indeed provide people with hope. The problem is
that it was false hope.
His voters superimposed their own thoughts, their own
feelings, their own hopes, their own dreams and their own beliefs on the man
who promised them change. He didn’t say how, he just said he would. And they
believed him.
The Donald Trump that conservatives voted for is an entirely fictitious person they invented in their minds. pic.twitter.com/837VJd1H0o— Jeremy Wilcox ❄️ (@jwilcox79) January 19, 2017
Now, the façade is slowly being revealed. Carrier workers still
lost their jobs. GM factory workers will still
lose their jobs. I imagine these people feel what those Trump University
students felt when they realized Trump University wasn't a university at all.
This week, Trump “unveiled” his 2020
campaign slogan in a desperate attempt to keep campaigning because that’s
what he’s good at. He’s been a master at manipulating the media for attention
for the past 30 years. He never goes away.
But a good President needs to go away and do their job. They
need to read security briefings. They need to attend Cabinet meetings. They
need to make hard decisions based on fact, intelligence and intuition.
It’s sadly poetic that George H.W. Bush has been in the news
this week because he provides a window into Trump’s future. The elder Bush was
our last one-term President because he made a campaign promise he couldn’t
keep.
The phrase “Read my lips” may not sound
jarring anymore, but it was the 1988 equivalent of a fire tweet that went
viral. I was six at the time and it’s literally my only memory of that campaign
as a child.
He couldn’t keep that promise because taxes needed to be
raised to fight a recession. He, unfortunately, had lied to the American people
and they took it out on him in 1992.
Now, the malleability of Donald Trump ends and the accountability
of Donald Trump begins. There is no more gray area. He must begin to make ‘yes
or no’ choices that makes his positions abundantly clear. Do you repeal ACA or
do you provide health care? Do we pay for the Wall or does Mexico? Does he ban
all Muslims or does he not?
People have been waiting and pontificating about Donald
Trump’s demise for two years to no avail. It’s not his detractors that will
take him down. It will be his supporters, when they find out they’ve been lied
to. We all mush keep him accountable for what he said over the past 18 months.
Donald Trump, you do not want to mess with a scorned
electorate.
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