Part Four: The Case for Trump. He is harmless, relax

Hillary Supporters should relax.  Trump might well win.  So what?  We will all get by just fine.

[Again, I am gong to note that I personally voted for Hillary, not Trump. But I am attempting to be objective and not persuasive.  I recognize about half the nation will vote for Trump, and they have their reasons.   This series of posts is an attempt to explain why Trump's support goes beyond the widely discussed Archie Bunker vote.]

About half the country will vote for Donald Trump on Tuesday.  Some readers will be among them.  Other readers will think a Trump vote is not simply a mistake, but incomprehensible madness, a vote for a person manifestly unfit for office and that a Trump presidency is a disaster for our nation.   Indeed, that is the single most powerful message of the Hillary Clinton campaign.  Trump is crazy-unfit.

For a great many Americans that argument is not a description of objective fact.  It is simply a partisan campaign smear, one quickly discounted.

Some of Trump's support comes from people who not only disagree with Hillary's assessment, but resent it.   Many people who traditionally vote Republican like the Republican brand and are sticking with it even as the product inside the Republican box changes.  They liked Dole, then they liked McCain, then they liked McCain-Palin, then Romney, and now it is Trump's turn.  Each of those people were a little different, but so what?  

Trump now fits the general boundaries of being a Republican. Trump has a big brand with lots of features but Trump is not way outside the GOP brand box.  Trump is a businessman, not a politician.  Romney, too, was a businessman, who, like Trump became a politician.   Trump is in show business and has a gift for communication, just like Reagan.  Trump has adopted some conspicuous GOP policy markers:  he says he is pro gun and anti abortion.  He says he will cut taxes.  He says he hates Obamacare and Hillary Clinton.  Trump has reversed decades of Republican policy on the size of government, government's relation to business, plus trade policy, plus plus immigration policy, plus foreign policy, but he is changing those policies in a direction that the GOP voters generally like.   In short, to a Republican voter (as contrasted with a Republican policy think tank writer) Trump isn't destroying the Republican Party.  He is maybe energizing it a little and giving it a little more of the Palin pizazz, which isn't all bad.

Hillary's campaign theme attempts to shame Republicans from thinking and believing what they actually think and believe.  So they resent it and are drifting back to support for Trump in approximately the same percentage that Democrats are supporting Hillary: 90%.

Besides, Trump isn't being elected dictator, voters recognize.   He is being elected president.  Voters have observed that presidents have power but the power is checked and balanced, especially when the president attempts to do something daring or controversial or unpopular, e.g. Obamacare.   A voter could very logically think that, yes, Trump has said and done some bad things but he is no where near as dangerous as Hillary says in her over-the-top denunciations because Trump will be able to shake things up a little, at most.  The Democrats will dig in and stop him from doing anything too crazy, plus the Republicans are far, far from in agreement with Trump.   Bottom line, Trump won't be able to do much, and certainly nothing unpopular.

Conclusion by some Trump voters:   Trump will try to shake things up but there is an enormous amount of inertia  and resistance to change, and Trump will be harmless, and he might be some interesting fresh blood.  Hillary's bull in a china shop message is just partisan exaggeration.  Trump is not that bad, and Trump's extreme talk is just a ploy to back off and get to a happy middle.   Trump won't really build a 50 foot wall, but maybe something will get done.   Sure he will end Obamacare but he will try to put something good in its place.  He will enforce the immigration laws a little more strictly than Obama, but nothing crazy.  

And if the Hillary supporters are all upset about a Trump victory it just shows how crazy and out of the mainstream they are.