Opinion by Hal Brown
Democrats, never-Trump Republicans, and independents have painted Trump as the Devil incarnate, that is as an embodiment of evil. By and large this characterization has been accurate.
A sizable portion of Trump’s base see Joe Biden in the same way. At the lunatic fringe of QAnon they see him more or less literally as a demon from Hell. More towards the sane contingent of the Trump cult they see him as a socialist. Even though they have no idea what socialism is they are convinced it is a dire threat to their cherished rights from carrying assault rifles to being able to use the white’s only bathroom while everyone with darker skin has to use the outhouse.
While these people aren’t closely following President Biden’s executive orders, memorandums, and proclamations (as of yesterday the key ones are listed here) if they were I am sure they would be alarmed by a few of them, especially those which are cited with alarm as proof Biden is turning us into a Communist country by Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and others on the pro-Trump media.
I think this will work for a period of months. They will both hate and fear President Biden.
Over time very few if any of the hysterical predictions that Biden and the Democrats will have turned the country into a place where white people are having their homes raided by US Army Rangers and deputized ANTIFA storm troopers who will confiscate their guns. They will discover that their neighborhoods haven’t been overrun by hoards of angry vengeful dark skinned people who are also exercising their Second Amendment rights, breaking into their houses and dragging their women off by the hair.
On the plus side they will also have received their Covid checks.
By the fall they will have seen that Biden was able to do what Trump promised but never could do: end the pandemic. They will be able to hang out at their favorite bars and engage in their favorite pastimes of (insert your own politically incorrect stereotype here).
Along the way more and more of them will have contracted Covid or know people who did, and some of them will have gotten seriously ill or died proving Trump wrong and Dr. Fauci right.
It doesn’t entirely matter what happens to Trump. Few of his hardcore supporters will conclude that they were conned by him. It is very difficult for cult members to give up worshipping their leader no matter how far he has fallen from grace. A few may be influenced if Fox News starts reporting accurately about his illegal activities as he and his company are tried in New York, but most of his base will forgive him, and many will admire him, for his transgressions.
What will happen is that the dire predictions of what would happen to the MAGA people, those who truly believe they are the only patriotic Americans, simple won’t come to pass.
Why?
Because President Biden really cares about everyone, and because he isn’t really a demon.
Whether enough of them realize this to make a difference when it comes to influencing elections in the future remains to be seen. It is possible that the numbers of ardent Trump supporters will remain unchanged. However, because of who President Biden is, and who the Democrats are, and of course what they want for the majority of the country is really positive, added to the fracturing of the Republican Party itself (see the lead story in my blog), we could be watching the beginning of the end of the power of the right wing of the GOP.