Wrong Bottle

MAGA turns on Trump!

Oh, really now? I must have missed that. Because if Congress is any indication, Donald Trump still has a very secure voter base that he can use as a weapon against any Republican legislator that dares to disagree with him.

Sure, there are people who were positive that the alleged "Epstein Files" were going to prove their suspicions that prior Democratic administrations colluded with the "Deep State" and an international secret society of wealthy pedophiles to do damage to the United States. And once the cat was out of the bag, they'd all be marched off to prison and/or a firing squad and all would be right with the world. And they're a bit miffed that there doesn't seem to be a cat, or a bag, for that matter.

And, okay. So what? These people may not be as enthusiastic about President Trump as they were a few months ago, but that's not the President's problem. Okay, they can agitate for someone whose thinking is more to their liking to mount a primary challenge against Republicans in Congress who aren't being vocal enough about getting the "evidence" out there, but the rest of the Trump electorate isn't likely to go along with them.

And so the (left leaning) media stories that have come out recently, purporting to explain how this time, President Trump may have actually alienated voters his coalition depends on seem like just so much more wishful thinking. The hoping that President Trump has finally made one misstep too many is understandable. The President is playing the role of Culture Warrior in Chief, and he's willing to go to great lengths to punish organizations he deems as being opposed to him and the people who support him. If something doesn't change, and relatively soon, he's going to inflict irreparable harm on a lot of people. And given the fact that Republicans in Congress have no real reason to pick a fight with him (after all, if things blow up, he'll be a convenient target for the blame) and the current Supreme Court may as well be on his payroll, mass defections by Republican voters are pretty much the only chance they have.

But I don't think that there's a djinni here to grant that wish. The President's core voters don't have anywhere else to go... non-Trumpist Republicans have pretty much been run out of the party and they're certainly not going to vote Democratic, so if they want to have any hope of Washington D. C., continuing to privilege their interests, then Trump it is. Abandoning this project simply has no upside for the majority of people who identify with the MAGA movement. While it's unlikely that a change of control in Congress would result in President Trump being removed from office, it would certainly remove any momentum his administration has left, and leave him a lame duck.

Given this, I don't see President Trump being in any real jeopardy, at least at the moment. There's simply no-one he could cross that his base holds in higher esteem than Mr. Trump himself. Of course, that can change; anything can change, so I should likely decline to make predictions about how this is going to turn out. But for the time being, wishes are what the President's detractors have. But it's a means of making them come true that they need.