Resentment And Lust For Revenge Are Fueling The MAGA Grassroots— As Sane Republicans Jump Ship

Why Trump’s Depravity Strengthens His Hold On Voters

"Jumping Ship" by Nancy Ohanian

I had a brief affair with a Republican once— decades ago. Long story and I wrote about it before— somewhere in here— but the point is that today he’s one of my only sources inside the congressional GOP. He’s a top, top staffer and… not a Trump fan. He voted for Biden, though he didn’t publicize it and this cycle he’s voting for Kamala, again, quietly. He told me that not only is that relatively common among Capitol Hill staffers but that he knows “at least a dozen Members” who are going to vote for her as well… and not tell the press or their colleagues. “It would be political suicide… [and] a lot of people know he’s unfit and worse and do not want to see him back in the White House, even if that means there’s a Democrat there for a single term... He’s a treason monkey; everyone knows it.”

Unless you live in Wisconsin and pay attention to politics, you likely never heard of state Sen. Rob Cowles, the longest-serving member of the state Senate. He’s a Green Bay Republican first elected to the legislature in 1983. The last time a Democrats was elected in his district was in 1946.

In an interview yesterday, Cowles said he’ll be voting for Kamala and wishes he had announced it sooner. “I really think this is one of the most important things I’ve done. Hopefully, people will accept that and listen to me… those that have trusted me and believed in me will think about that, and if they’re undecided, that we have to make a change here. Trump has to be defeated, and we have to protect the Constitution. And the country will go on, even with some liberal things that Harris might do, or might not do… You have to have the foundation of the Constitution, to protect democracy. If you don’t have that, we will disappear.”

He added that he believes “this guy Trump is a totalitarian and very much a fascist. You know, the old adage, past is prologue, he’s indicated that in his words in deeds, especially in trying to overturn a free and fair election… The big picture that really came to me in recent days, in the last week, is thinking about thinking about fascism in World War II, and members of my own family that fought the fascists both in Japan and Germany, and all the guys that are buried all over the place of this country, in Arlington. And then you’ve got Trump saying nice things about Hitler? And sucking up to Putin? No. He is clearly our enemy, Putin— a living enemy. And we have to show the courage that the people in the World War II era had… I look back at all the people that I supported for president. I voted for a Republican for president every time… I’m not doing it this time.”

Tom Nichols noted yesterday that Trumps’ Depravity Will Not Cost Him This Election— Many Americans Know Exactly Who Trump Is, And They Like It. He wrote that “Like many of Trump’s critics, I’ve repeatedly asked one question over the years: What’s it going to take? When will Republican leaders and millions of Trump voters finally see the immorality of supporting such a man? Surely, with these latest revelations [about his hatred of the U.S. military], we’ve reached the Moment, the Turning Point, the Line in the Sand, right? Wrong. As New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu— one of the many former Trump critics now back on the Trump train— said today on CNN in response to a question about Kelly’s comments: ‘With a guy like [Trump], it’s kinda baked into the vote.’”

The belief that at some point Trump voters will have finally had enough is an ordinary human response to seeing people you care about— in this case fellow citizens— associate with someone you know to be awful. Much like watching a friend in an unhealthy relationship, you think that each new outrage is going to be the one that provokes the final split, and yet it never does: Your friend, instead of breaking off the relationship, makes excuses. He didn’t mean it. You don’t understand him like I do.

But this analogy is wrong, because it’s based on the faulty assumption that one of the people in the relationship is unhappy. Maybe the better analogy is the friend you didn’t know very well in high school, someone who perhaps was quiet and not very popular, who shows up at your 20th reunion on the arm of a loudmouthed boor— think a cross between Herb Tarlek and David Duke— who tells offensive stories and racist jokes. She thinks he’s wonderful and laughs at everything he says.

But what she really enjoys, all these years after high school, is how uncomfortable he’s making you.

And this, in brief, is the problem for Kamala Harris in this election. She and others have likely hoped that, at some point, Trump will reveal himself as such an obvious, existential threat that even many Republican voters will walk away from him. (She delivered a short statement today emphasizing Kelly’s comments.) For millions of the GOP faithful, however, Trump’s daily attempts to breach new frontiers of hideousness are not offensive but reassuring. They want Trump to be awful— precisely because the people they view as their political foes will be so appalled if he wins. If Trump’s campaign was focused on handing out tax breaks and lowering gas prices, he’d be losing, because for his base, none of that yawn-inducing policy stuff is transgressive enough to be exciting. (Just ask Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, who each in their own way tried to run as a Trump alternative.)

Some Trump voters may believe his lies. But plenty more want Trump to be terrifying and stomach-turning so that reelecting him will be a fully realized act of social revenge. Harris cannot propose any policy, offer any benefit, or adopt any position that competes with that feeling.

Exactly why so many Americans feel this way is a complicated story— I wrote an entire book about it— but a toxic combination of social resentment, entitlement, and racial insecurity drives many Trump voters to believe not only that other Americans are looking down on them but that they are doing so while living an undeservedly good life. These others must be punished or at least brought down to a common level of misery to balance the scales, and Trump is the guy to do it.

This unfocused rage is an addiction fed by Trump and conservative media, and the MAGA base wants it stoked continuously. If Trump were suddenly to become a sensible person who started talking coherently about trade policy and defense budgets, they would feel betrayed, like hard drinkers in a tavern who suspect that the bartender is watering down the high-proof stuff. My friend Jonathan Last— the editor of The Bulwark— has been wondering about this same problem, and says that some Trump supporters “are not (yet) comfortable with admitting this truth to themselves.”

He believes that most of them are either caught in a comforting blanket of denial or the fog of detached nihilism. I’m not so sure. I am struck by how often Trump voters— and I am speaking here of rank-and-file voters, not crass opportunists such as Sununu or wealthy wingmen such as Elon Musk— are almost incapable of articulating support for Trump without reference to what Trump will will do to other people or without descending into “whataboutism” about Harris. (Yes, Trump said bad things, but what about Harris’s position on gender-affirming medical care for federal prisoners, as if liberal policies are no different from, say, threats to use the military against American citizens.)

Where all of this leaves us is that Harris could lose the election, not because she didn’t offer the right policies, or give enough interviews, or inspire enough people. She could lose because just enough people in four or five states flatly don’t care about any of that.

Some voters, to be sure, have bought into the mindless tropes that Democrats are communists or Marxists or some other term they don’t understand. But the truly loyal Trump voters are people who are burning with humiliation. They can’t get over the trauma of losing in 2020, the shame of buying Trump’s lie about rigged elections, and the shock of seeing each of their champions— Tucker Carlson, Rudy Giuliani, Steve Bannon, and others— turn out to be liars and charlatans who have been fired, financially imperiled, or even imprisoned.

Rather than reckoning with the greatest mistake they’ve ever made at the ballot box, they have decided that their only recourse is to put Trump back in the Oval Office. For them, restoring Trump would be both vindication and vengeance. It would prove that 2016 was not a fluke, and horrify people both they and Trump hate.

In the same issue of The Atlantic, George Packer noted that “Race is only part of the reason for Trump’s persistent base of support, and one that’s grown less significant. The starkest division in American politics is class, as defined by education— the wide gap between voters with and without a college degree— which explains why more working-class Latino and Black citizens have begun to vote Republican. But in a more complex way, political behavior in the Trump era is determined by how class and race interact. The most convincing accounts of the 2016 presidential election found that the leading determinant of support for Trump was residence in a declining white community that had recently seen the arrival of nonwhite immigrants, which brought rapid cultural change and created a sense that the country was becoming unrecognizable.”

Between the two what picture do we have of Trump supporters? Hateful and uneducated. The sobering reality is that figures like Cowles— conservative, long-serving Republicans who have put country over party— are rare exceptions. For every Cowles who recognizes Trump as a threat to the very foundation of democracy, there are many more Trump loyalists who refuse to confront the enormity of his betrayal. Instead of reckoning with the damage Trump has wrought, they cling to him as a weapon of spite and vengeance.

This election, Kamala Harris faces not just a political opponent but an electorate that sees Trump as a symbol of their defiance against the changing world around them. Their support for Trump is not about policy but about power—specifically, the power to inflict pain and humiliation on those they blame for their own sense of decline. And that’s a force even a Constitution-loving Republican like Rob Cowles struggles to counter.

As long as Trump’s followers remain more motivated by resentment than reason, they’ll keep overlooking his crimes, cruelties, and fascist tendencies. The question, then, isn’t whether Harris can win on her merits, but whether the rest of the country can summon the same courage Cowles has shown to reject a future defined by hate and vindictive authoritarianism.