Trump Voters Stay Loyal Because They Feel Disrepected

Donald Trump steps off Air Force One in Harrison Charter Township, Mich., on April 28 for a rally on the same night as the White House Correspondent's Dinner. (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images) Trump voters stay loyal because they feel disrespected   BY JAMES HOHMANN with Breanne Deppisch and Joanie Greve THE BIG IDEA: Three new deep dives into Donald Trump’s strength in Midwestern counties that were previously Democratic strongholds – written by conservatives, liberals and a nonpartisan journalist – each highlight a deep craving for respect among supporters of the president and an enduring resentment toward coastal elites that buoys his popularity. Republicans and Democrats who have traveled to Macomb County in the Detroit suburbs, which Trump won by 12 points after Barack Obama carried it twice, including by 16 points in 2008, came away struck by these dynamics. -- Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, who helped orchestrate Bill Clinton’s 1992 victory, has obsessively studied the “Reagan Democrats” in Macomb for more than three decades. He went back after the 2016 election to understand how Trump won Michigan and recently returned to conduct another round of focus groups. “Trump voters complain that there is no respect for President Trump or for people like them who voted for him,” Greenberg writes in a new memo summarizing his latest findings, with Nancy Zdunkewicz of Democracy Corps. One older white working-class woman recalled that, when she first started voting, “There was so much respect for the president. And I don't care what he did, or what he said, there was always respect. It was always ‘Mr. President.’” She said she is disgusted by the way people talk about Trump. “A healthy diet of Fox News is feeding the white working-class men fending off the challenges of Trump’s opponents, including those within their own families,” Greenberg and Zdunkewicz write. “They … feel vindicated that a businessman like Trump has produced a strong macro-economy and kept his promises on immigration. They continue to appreciate how he speaks his mind, unlike a typical politician. … One white working class man shared that he ‘lost contact with [his] own daughter because of the election.’ Others complain that their children and millennial friends challenge their views and suggest the media manipulates them. … Families dividing over the 2016 election reflects just how central feelings about Trump have become to people’s identities.”