I first heard about the Politico Jeff Sessions story that included a bit about how Trump hates Sessions' southern accent, on Wednesday evening on either Maddow's show or The Last Word. I instantly understood what that meant, what was behind it. This could be a lot bigger than all the previous things everyone thought would "bring Trump down." First a little background. On Thursday, one of the Cook Report analysts reported that "according to 2016 exit polls, Trump carried white, college-educated voters with 48% of the vote. Today, his approval rating among these voters is just 37%. More ominously, after voting narrowly for Trump in 2016, these voters overwhelmingly prefer a Democrat for Congress over a Republican (54% to 39%)." Keep that in the back of your mind.Buried in the Politico report: "Seized by paroxysms of anger, Trump has intermittently pushed to fire his attorney general since March 2017, when Sessions announced his recusal from the Russia investigation. If Sessions’ recusal was his original sin, Trump has come to resent him for other reasons, griping to aides and lawmakers that the attorney general doesn’t have the Ivy League pedigree the president prefers, that he can’t stand his Southern accent and that Sessions isn’t a capable defender of the president on television-- in part because he 'talks like he has marbles in his mouth,' the president has told aides.In the safe space of "his" White House, Trump imagined he could jump out of character without any consequences. This is what I snarkily tweeted while it was blaring out of MSNBC in the other room:Then the next morning I noticed that Jonathan Chait had picked up on it as well-- Trump Is a Snob Who Secretly Despises His Own Supporters. BOOM! I hope that seeps down into the dregs of Trumpist support.
Conservatives have spent decades depicting liberals as coastal snobs. Entire campaigns were built from this theme, from Michael Dukakis’s “Harvard Yard boutique” to various Democrats failing to display the requisite enthusiasm for Nascar. Every image of Barack Obama in the right-wing media cast him gazing downward imperiously, a pose that conservatives seemed to think captured his contempt for the good people of the heartland.Given the attention they have lavished on such picayune details as John Kerry’s failure to properly order cheesesteak properly, it’s not even possible to imagine what they would do with direct evidence of a president disdaining his attorney general’s University of Alabama law degree and regional accent. Imagine one of those scenes from a ’90s action movie where the bad guys are wearing night-vision goggles in the dark, and then suddenly faced with blinding light.But as is so often the case, the accusation that was made falsely against Democrats turns out to be true of Trump. For all his vaunted populism, he is filled with contempt for average people in general and his own supporters in particular.Trump has touted the mindless loyalty of his base, and when he marveled that he would not lose any support if he shot somebody on Fifth Avenue, he was not complimenting the discernment of his supporters. He has tried to turn that into a positive-- “I love the poorly educated!”-- but the association with low socioeconomic strata has grated on him. Trump is the ultimate snob. He has no sense that working-class people may have equal latent talent that they have been denied the chance to develop. He considers wealthy and successful people a genetic aristocracy, frequently attributing his own success to good genes.Attempting to explain his penchant for appointing plutocrats to his Cabinet, Trump has said, “I love all people, rich or poor, but in those particular positions I just don’t want a poor person. Does that make sense?” It makes sense if you assume a person’s wealth perfectly reflects their innate intelligence. Trump has repeatedly boasted about his Ivy League pedigree and that of his relatives, which he believes reflects well on his own genetic stock. He has fixated on the Ivy League pedigree of his Supreme Court appointments, even rejecting the credentials of the lower Ivys as too proletarian.Trump has built a brand on attracting working-class strivers. But the relationship he cultivates is unidirectional admiration. Trump gives his supporters a lifestyle they can enjoy vicariously. He views them as suckers. The Trump University scam was premised directly on exploiting the misplaced trust of his fan base. The internal guidance for salespeople trying to drain the savings accounts of their targets explained, “Don’t ask people what they think about something you’ve said. Instead, always ask them how they feel about it. People buy emotionally and justify it logically.”The declassé image of his fan base has rubbed off on Trump, to his evident frustration. He regularly proclaims that his supporters are the true elite, but his unconvincing attempts to make the case usually devolve into boasts that Trump himself is the elite. Here is a typical passage, from a rally in West Virginia:We’re the smart ones, remember. I say it all the time. You hear the elite. They’re not elite, we’re elite. You’re smarter than they are, you have more money than they do, you have better jobs than they do, you’re the elite. So let them have the word elite. You’re the super elite. That’s what it is.I always hate-- I always hate when they say, well the elite decided not to go to something I’m doing, right, the elite. I said, “Well, I have a lot more money than they do. I have a much better education than they have. I’m smarter than they are. I have many much more beautiful homes than they do. I have a better apartment at the top of Fifth Avenue.” Why the hell are they the elite? Tell me.Obviously, the most elemental feature of populist politics is to associate one’s opponents with “elite.” But Trump is unable to maintain the pose because he cannot stand the stink of the people upon him.
Trump's "southern strategy" is greasier that Nixon's-- and, like everything Trump-related, more personal and self-centered... more about him. If Chait's narrative takes hold and doesn't get dismissed in Mississippi and the Florida Panhandle as "fake news," 2020 will see Bernie running up big majorities across the Solid South-- except in the gated golf communities, Trump's actual natural constituency.
