Don’t Let Her Down Mr. Trump

Don’t let her down, Mr. Trump. I listened to my wife talk to a very hardworking bright woman about her views on the nation. It was not an education, statistics could have given me a good guess about what would be said, but it was a revelation.

You could know a thing, but it is different to hear a truth with all the feelings behind that truth.

Traveling lets me talk to people I would not meet otherwise. Quite a few of the working men and women I meet back in coach on a plane did what I could not: voted for Donald J. Trump for President.  When they talk about this election, they fit what polling says about voters. In that sense, I could just look at the numbers and draw conclusions, but I hope Mr. Trump gets to hear from most of his voters that never went to a rally or bought a hat.

The voters I have met, like the witty woman we spoke to today, have had one thing in common: they voted with low expectations and more out of hope than anything else. As she said: “I knew what Mrs. Clinton would do. Maybe Mr. Trump will do better.” She added: “He needs to get off Twitter.”

I hear that a lot!

What do I hear? People are not so much mad as tired and cynical. An amazing percentage of the Trump voters, especially the conservative ones, say they could never have voted for Bernie Sanders (socialism!), but that on one thing he made a lot of sense. Sanders was angry at the super rich and so are the Trump voters. If that seems odd, recall that these voters don’t trust Trump. They just think he is their SOB to take on the other bad guys.

Again, that is what the data shows, but when you hear a woman bemoan his marriages, his crudity, and then hope that he turns that ego on his rich friends . . . you know the data is right. People are not as mad as hell, but as tired as hell. The middleclass, especially the upper middleclass one meets on a plane, feels like the economy is a rich man’s party and the middle class’s bill.

They think the system is rigged, they know the system is crooked, and they want Trump to clean things up. They know he will probably loot the system for himself, but if he leaves it cleaner for everyone else, I think they might let the lion have his meat.

An amazing number of them have met celebrities, on planes or in autograph lines, and they have a simple way of describing them. Some are “friendly” and “act like regular people” and others are “aloof” and “snotty.” One person described a plutocrat complaining loudly about being stuck in Business Class instead of being able to take his private jet and saying (roughly): You people don’t understand that you work for us and owe us your jobs.

He was a jerk and one gets the impression that more celebrities are jerks than not. Nobody likes the jerks. The universal impression people have of Trump is that they would not want to be his wife, but he is not a jerk to the rest of us. He is an ego maniac, people laugh at his gilded chairs, but he is perceived as a gracious man to regular people.

This may not be true, but an amazing number of people have friends who have friends who met Trump and were shocked to discover “he is quiet, humble, and so kind.” Don’t shoot the messenger, I am telling you what I hear.

They know the problems, don’t like the problems, but they think he likes them. In this sense, his food choices (KFC!) come up as often as his Tweets. Donald J. Trump was born with a silver spoon that he chose to use to eat KFC coleslaw. They suspect the real elite, the snobs, don’t like Donald J. Trump any more than they like them and I think they are right.

Democrats and my own “#neverTrump” conservatives must be careful. I think the millions who voted for him don’t think he is going to be a great President, but that he might make a few things better. They figure he is a crook. People bring up his taxes without a prompt. They figure he is a blowhard about his money.

Yet millions of them think he might do a few things nobody else will do, just a few. These voters bring up jobs, the border, and their disgust with jerks.

These voters want a controlled border, the Wall, even if many of these same folks do not care if the kids are already here to stay. Forget national stats, many of these voters are from areas (Texas border, rural California) where the quality of life has declined due to the border. Truth is that people I meet who voted for Trump want two things that are hard to do: secure the border and let the good illegal immigrants stay or come back.

They think Trump agrees and nobody else does.

Nobody is a “protectionist” . . . nobody talks up tariffs, but they want jobs, American jobs. They tell me stories of companies where the boss comes in and says that “they” cannot compete with workers in China, India, or Vietnam. Whatever the boss intended to say, they heard something like this: “We don’t care about America, but about making money and our global friends who are winners like we are.”

This is nearly verbatim to what more than one reluctant Trump voter has said to me. They see a global wealthy, “educated” culture, but they don’t see those people as better or brighter. In fact, they experience most of them as jerks. Oddly, they concede a celebrity favored status. They don’t mind first class . . . they mind the loud demands for a different newspaper from first class.

The perception is that Trump is a hellacious man, but (generally) a jerk to people that need taking down a notch or two. He isn’t a snob. He says (you don’t know how often I have heard this): please and thank you to the help. The help knows they are the help. They just want a “thank you” and not a finger in the face with demands for ever better service.

These Americans want the perks for rich, celebrities, and the “educated,” cut down. They also want a “thank you” and not further blame for the evils of American history. They don’t hate social justice, they just do not want to always be hectored by people who plainly despise them.

For the sake of these very good people, I hope they are right about Mr. Trump. Don’t let them down, Mr. President.