1/ Alright folks, let's get real. The Atlantic story is damaging. It may cost him a few of the confounded knuckleheads who are still, somehow, undecided. But it is not going to meaningfully affect his core support. They'll still stick with him because fear.
2/ The 42% are, above all, what conservatives always are: pants-peeing afraid of change. And credit to where due, the one thing conservatives have always been better at than liberals is seeing where the change they fear will lead, even as moderates and liberals scoff.
3/ Conservatives feared that the agitation against the Stamp Act and molasses taxes were the prelude to revolution. They feared that the ability of northern states to elect presidents without them presaged the total domination of the abolitionist faction.
4/ They feared votes for women would inevitably lead to the breakdown of the traditional family. they feared that women taking jobs and becoming economically independent of men, would lead to spiraling divorce as women were able to leave men who were abusive or just assholes.
5/ They feared equal rights for African Americans would lead not simply to competition with them for jobs, but to "race-mixing," "miscegenation," "mongrelization" of the white race. God how I remember their voices trembling with anger and hate and fear as said those awful words.
6/ They feared that decriminalizing gay sex would lead to straights and gays sharing showers, to gay teachers and, inconceivably, gay marriage, even gay couples having or adopting children! Even to transvestites and transsexuals being treated as human beings.
7/ They feared that the pill would lead to just a whole lot of fucking. (Okay, pretty sure liberals foresaw that one too).
8/ And, except for the pill, in every case liberals and moderates pooh-poohed and temporized, most truly not able take the absurdities conservative dooomsayers predicted seriously. But when they all did happen we saw that yesterday's unimaginable horrors were good.
9/ The people clinging to Trump no matter how vile, treasonous, how awful he is, buying the idiot paintings that show Trump playing Jarts with Jesus, don't do it because they don't know who he is. They do it because they fear he's the only thing standing between them and change.
10/ They fear an America where they have to compete evenly with people of all races for jobs, public and private goods, unisex toilets, gun registration, hell maybe even confiscation. And we're not helping it by, for once, saying "yeah, and so . . .?" instead of scoffing.
11/ We cannot make Trump's supporters turn against him by convincing him that he's a loathesome, narcissistic pig. We can only turn them against him by convincing them to stop being afraid, and that's a tall order.
