Donald Trump may have just jumped through the Overton Window. If that term is new to you, it means “a model for understanding how ideas in society change over time and influence politics. The core concept is that politicians are limited in what policy ideas they can support — they generally only pursue policies that are widely accepted throughout society as legitimate policy options. These policies lie inside the Overton Window. Other policy ideas exist, but politicians risk losing popular support if they champion these ideas. These policies lie outside the Overton Window.”
Trump got famous expanding the Overton Window. His loud mouthed, broad brushed, buffonish take on politics is what won him his vaunted base and alienated everybody else. If there is a single person in modern history responsible for expanding the cultural divide to the breaking point, it is Trump. We’ve had the same issues that we deal with today for quite some time, but the level of throat-biting, crotch kicking tribalism never existed before Trump broke the mold, while trying to break the back of democracy itself.
Neither did the rancor and distrust which Trump amplified by creating distrust in how reality itself is reported. He began the cry “fake news,” ironic in the extreme since the only fairy tale version of facts was the one coming out of his mouth.
Trump did a profound pivot just last week and this is a seminal moment in politics going forward into the 2022 midterms. Trump went pro-vaxx. The right-wing commentators, or at least some of them, went bonkers. So the question now becomes, will the base adopt this new philosophy and get themselves vaccinated and healed, or will they dump Trump?
You know my prediction was that Trump’s new posture will be Trump the Healer, “take these vaccines that I made for you, my children. Take them and be well.” Will the base do a 180 and do that? Can they? The Week:
Trump has held on to his support by never apologizing, never letting anybody else on the political stage appear more ferocious, more ready to fight, more alpha than him. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) once articulated the phenomenon to the Washington Examiner. Right-wing voters who supported Massie and similar politicians like Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) “weren’t voting for libertarian ideas — they were voting for the craziest son of a bitch in the race. And Donald Trump won best in class, as we had up until he came along.
Encouraging people to get vaccinated while opposing mandates, though, is pretty normal. Trump joins Democratic governors like Laura Kelly of Kansas, Jared Polis of Colorado, and Gretchen Whitmer is rejecting Biden’s mandate. They’ve clearly calculated that their constituents are exhausted after two years of the pandemic, and that they’ll lose more support than they gain by fighting that particular battle.
It’s possible Trump has sincerely come to a similar conclusion, oddly enough. The former president is a genius at pandering to Republican conservatives; it’s unlikely he has suddenly lost his touch. And while it’s true that Republicans are much more likely than Democrats to be unvaccinated, it’s also the case that a lot of Republicans, especially more mainstream Republicans, have gotten their shots. One November poll — taken before the Omicron variant emerged later in the month — indicated that two thirds of GOP voters already had or probably would receive their booster shots.
The anti-vaxxers might be the loudest part of the Trump electorate, in other words, but most Republican voters are already doing what it takes to stay healthy. Maybe the GOP isn’t entirely a death cult. What this means, though, is that for all the anguish of extremist pundits, Trump is once again aligning himself with the base, especially the sort of suburban, centrist voters who recently propelled Republican Glenn Youngkin to a surprise gubernatorial win in Virginia.
Another thought that occurred to me, very simply, is how many people does Trump want to kill? We know that people in deep red rural communities are dying at six times the rate from COVID because they won’t get vaccinated. Every single day there is a headline about an anti-vaxxer who died or is now on a ventilator. Maybe Trump decided to stop dissing the pharmaceutical communities for requiring a third shot as a money making gimmick, which he did, and start taking the pandemic seriously. I don’t know.
Trump has made a political career out of stretching the Overton Window to its breaking point. It was the source of his appeal to MAGA Republicans and the reason most everybody else disliked him. It’s also why demagogic loudmouths like him usually burn out: Their shtick loses its novelty, and the crowd wanders off, either bored and ready for something less intense, or numbed to the usual outrages and needing ever-higher doses of vitriol to maintain their enthusiasm. With his new vaccine pitch, it’s possible Trump is finally becoming a victim of the second dynamic.
Al Sharpton made it clear that Trump is dropping the fringe. Now the question is, whether Marjorie Taylor Greene was right that she doesn’t represent the fringe, her loony ideas are “70% of the GOP.”
This is what we’re going to know when the dust settles from the 2022 election, who is who and in what proportion. Trump will either still be viable and crafting a new approach for 2024 or he may be toast. He may have finally burned out enough of the base and they’ll go look for a new amusement, something other than politics. Or, stay engaged in politics with someone other than Trump. We’ll see.
Bonus: short clip on the Overton Window
My question is, how many of the republican conservative centrists will overlook the rest of his lunacy and go ahead and support him? Hopefully, not very many.
I don’t think anybody knows what’s going on right now. Trump threw a curve ball, everybody is trying to figure out what to do next, where the chips are going to fall.
In truth, the majority of the GOP (with some exceptions, like Rand Paul) were never “anti-vax.” That crusade was led by right-wing media, who were determined to derail Biden’s vaccination goals. They knew that doing so would prolong the pandemic and hurt the economy. Clearly, they didn’t care that thousands would die as a result.
To my mind it is sheer evil to play with life and death this way. If Dante was alive I think he would put in an extra circle in Hell for the anti-vaxx conspiracy theorists.
Um, Karen, the right-wing media were fighting against ALL sensible actions to help slow down or stop COVID WHILE TRUMP WAS IN OFFICE. They were taking their lead from Trump from Day One. Trump was accusing Democrats (especially Democratic governors who were imposing lockdowns and issuing stay-at-home orders) of politicizing COVID, mostly to attack HIM–and right-wing media went right along with the lie.
All the way through his own bout of COVID, and getting vaccinated, Trump was pushing the lie that COVID wasn’t all that serious and that it was little more than a “bad cold or flu” and that a “natural” herd immunity (by everyone getting COVID) was infinitely better than any vaccination. And even after contracting COVID (and getting the kind of treatment that was COMPLETELY unavailable to anyone who wasn’t President and having all their medical care covered by the taxpayers), Trump was downplaying any need for vaccinations.
Trump was ALWAYS an anti-vaxxer–until just this past week. And, that turn only seemed to emerge after Biden said something nice about Trump.
I think Trump finally recognized that “his vaccine” is about the only positive thing he can lay claim to, something he can brag about at his hillbilly rallies and on Fox. All else he spouts is just lies and fables in defence of his lost election in 2020. Okay, it will cause added brain damage amongst his rabid base and he may even lose some cred there, but he’s figuring he’ll gain more from less stupid Repugnicans, the ones who’ve accepted vaccines. He can even take credit for the vaccines while berating Biden for not using them properly to stop the death toll.
Sorry, but Traitor Tot had zip, zero, nada, NOTHING to do with the development of the Covid vaccines no matter what he claims. You have to remember how to tell when the Orange Monster is lying…when his mouth is moving!