In response to Tuesday’s post “Numbers Matter,” a reader commented, “Still, is it not an accomplishment of monumental proportions for Trump, against such slings and arrows, to hold even a 37 percent approval?”  If Comrade Trump had seen this response, he probably would have tweeted, “Blog agrees my approval rating is the most ‘monumental accomplishment’ in history!”  However, a serious question deserves a serious answer.

Which leads me to the title of today’s post, an obvious play on a pivotal moment in the movie Jaws.  Amity Island Sheriff Martin Brody (portrayed by Roy Scheider) realizes the great white shark, which has been snacking on residents and vacationers, represents a bigger threat than originally imagined.  (Some may say the same about the current White House occupant.)  He then tells professional shark-hunter Quint (Robert Shaw), “You’re going to need a bigger boat!”  But why substitute the word “bed” for “boat?”

In a nation as diverse as the United States, winning campaigns are built on coalitions.  And when you examine the individual segments within the coalition you realize exactly what American journalist Charles Dudley Warner meant when he famously paraphrased William Shakespeare’s “Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows” from which we get the phrase, “Politics makes strange bedfellows.”  One thing I can say with “absolute surety.” The members of the coalition bunking with Trump represent a strange lot.  Consider the following most pro-Trump voting blocs based on their Trump versus Clinton support last November. (Source: CNN Exit Poll Update 23 November 2016)

Republicans (88-8%)

There is really no need to document how the Republican establishment felt about Trump in 2016, except that it is informative to see how little soul the party has as it kisses up to His Orangeness to achieve their domestic agenda.

—A narcissist at a level I don’t think this country has ever seen. (Ted Cruz)
—The most vulgar person ever to aspire to the presidency. (Marco Rubio)
—One part unhinged and one part foolish. (Jeb Bush)
—Race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot. (Lindsey Graham)
—Playing the American people for suckers. (Mitt Romney)

But when it comes to adding to the national debt with tax cuts for the wealthiest, increased defense spending and appointing Supreme Court justices who take away rather than protect civil rights, at least Trump is “OUR narcissist, vulgar person and unhinged bigot.”

Conservatives (81-16%)

The majority of conservatives paid little, if any, heed to intellectual arguments from right leaning stalwarts like George Will, who left the Republican party pending Trump’s nomination last July, or Peggy Noonan, who admitted Trump “doesn’t have the skill set needed now.”  No problem.  Thoughtful arguments about Trump’s unfitness to hold office had no chance against lower taxes and deregulation.

White Evangelicals (80-16%)

The inclusion of white evangelicals at Trump sleepovers is just plain “kinky.”  One need only compare the principles espoused by Protestant evangelicals with Trump’s behavior and rhetoric to see they have sacrificed a majority of these tenets in return for promises of overturning Roe v. Wade.  I get the link to principle #1 “sanctity of human life.”  But how do these self-appointed apostles reconcile Trump’s agenda with:

#2: The nurturing of family life and the protection of children.
#3: Seeking justice and compassion for the poor and vulnerable.
#4: Protection of religious freedom.
#5: Seeking peace and restraining violence.

(NOTE:  Liberty University’s motto is, I kid you not, “Knowledge Aflame.”  I guess that explains Franklin Graham’s decision to invite Trump as the 2017 commencement speaker.  Trump’s march through history and science can only be compared with Atlanta’s conflagration in Gone with the Wind.)

There’s just one problem.  Such lopsided support does not come without unrealistic expectations.  Just ask former President Obama.  Some of his staunchest early supporters, e.g. Harvard professor Cornell West and liberal talk show host Bill Press, lost faith in their vision of  how an Obama administration would fulfill its promise of “hope and change.”  To some extent, we are already hearing from disaffected Trump supporters.  Barring a cataclysmic event or a “smoking Makarov (Russian manufactured pistol)” revealed by Robert Mueller, do not expect a stampede of the most loyal Trump advocates.  The defections will come in drips, not floods.

My unsolicited advice to Donald Trump.  Don’t buy an over-sized mattress for that bed.  Rent one.  Eventually, your slumber parties will be limited to family and paid-off friends.

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP