When Trump stood on the balcony of the White House & took off that mask, any elite, like me, saw a ludicrous display. Any elite, like me, studying the dictator's playbook, also saw it for what it was: a miraculous death-defying resurrection symbol suggesting immortality. 
Trump told us Covid was nothing. His diagnosis, treatment and apparently rapid recovery gave the appearance of having proven his claim. This is again from the dictator's playbook: the leader's words alone are greater than science or medicine and routinely defy mere human wisdom.
How has Trump done so well? His appeal is not to sense and reason. It cuts directly to an instinctive need within the human psyche to be dominated and soothed by simple strong gestures and overwhelming force, which after all reminds us of our parental relationship in infancy.
We see this most vividly illustrated in the electioneering trope of politicians kissing babies. We are the baby, safe in his hands, and loved. But we are rational, they can't fool us that easily, you object. The corollary to that is if it didn't work, they wouldn't do it.
Trump has instinctively played to such deep emotional connections, cutting through the intellectual ambiguities and convolutions beloved of political science and the "college" educated. This rubric is why he was elected in the first place and it is why he is still clinging on.
The "elites" of political science and journalism will say it was the ground game, the Republicans out door-knocking, defying Covid, when Democrats were being safe. They will cite Trump's pandemic defying rallies. True, but folks have to want to vote and they have for Trump.
@threadreaderapp Unroll please
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