The political bubble and how it affects your opinion

[Dill]

(07-23-2019, 01:59 PM)Crazyjdawg Wrote: There is a debate to be had about whether Trump is the cause or the symptom of this whole debacle going on on the Right at the moment. I personally, in the past, have leaned towards cause simply because he came out of nowhere to become the most prominent racist politician that we've had in decades. But maybe that just means the voters have been yearning for a guy to just say what they're thinking, making Trump the symptom...

I agree that Fox News carries a large portion of the blame. But, if I remember correctly, they were against Trump for the majority of the primary season in 2015. It wasn't until he actually won the nomination that they started to change their tune. You saw that in people like Lindsay Graham and Ted Cruz as well. That tells me, at the very least, even Fox News was resistant to embracing racial stoking as a political strategy until it was essentially forced down their throats by the voters (incidentally, Trump is kind of the exact reason why Democrats have super delegates).

So maybe the cause was the perfect blend of a candidate willing to stoke the base's racism along with the bases' long held desire to be stoked XD. Which was first? The chicken or the egg?

Interesting observation, the bolded. Remember when Megan Kelly called Trump out for his misogynistic tweets? That was a moment when Fox world seemed to be teetering--could have gone for or against Trump.

Looks to me like the viewership decided that. And Fox went with them.  Megan gone.

This brings me to a point regarding what might be a blind spot in liberals' vision: they still can't imagine that millions upon millions of voters either cheer Trump's misogyny and racism or find it not ALL THAT objectionable, though they frequently say things like "Well, I wouldn't express myself that way."    I don't see how this squares with the OP's finding that "liberals" have underestimated Republican voters opposition to racism.