The spreading miasma of Trump voter remorse

We are a week into Donald Trump’s America and we are seeing a lot of the things we expected.  The newly sworn in 45th President wasted no time in commencing the execution of his agenda.  Much of it he did the first day and the rest followed in the first week.  Among the things he had done thus far include ordered a federal hiring freeze, withdrew the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, moved forward with the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines, reinstated the “Mexico City policy” barring federal monies from going to foreign non-profits performing abortions, ordered Executive branch agencies to prepare for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, reversed a planned cut on mortgage insurance for first time homebuyers, ended federal funding to “sanctuary cities” which opt out of federal reporting of undocumented immigrants and as of the last day of his first week in office has been snubbed by President Pena Nieto of Mexico who insists his country will neither pay for a wall nor will he attend a meeting with Mr. Trump scheduled for next week.  The cherry on top of this first week of Mr. Trump’s Administration is his approval rating has slipped a point from the 37% he started at just before inauguration.

For a man who loves being loved as much as President Trump, what will it take to get his approval rating trending upward?  I don’t think anyone can say they didn’t see any of this coming.  This is one of the pitfalls of a narcissistic leader, a leader who three weeks before Election Day was hedging his bets against what he called a “rigged election” that he honestly did not expect to win.  He is suddenly the proverbial barking dog that finally caught the bus.  What does he do now?  He is sticking with strategies that succeeded during the campaign much of which included ample amounts of hyperbole and bombast.  For all the speculation I heard from Trump supporters in the weeks after the election that the man would change and begin to look Presidential and at very least appear more “adult,” well, we are still waiting.  A majority of voters did not approve of the way he handled the transition.

I am going to venture a guess here and say that a significant segment of Trump voters were not so much voting for Trump as much as they were voting against Clinton.  In addition to the nearly three million popular votes Secretary Clinton received, around seven million popular votes went to two other candidates.  Since the election there have been a number of Trump voters second guessing their support for a man who they saw and heard say just about anything he thought they wanted to hear for the purpose of getting their vote (and excellent con job for a novice politician, but I digress).  This I do know, there is a lot of Trump voter remorse that is contributing to his low approval rating.  Indeed, there is a TrumpRemorseMovement on Twitter that began in November after the election.  It was most apparent at the inauguration.  According to one reporter from The Nation, “If it wasn’t for the thousands of protesters, the day would’ve had no life at all.”

Here is a very telling excerpt from Dave Zirin’s above linked article from The Nation:

<<Walter, a Trump supporter from Virginia, said to me, ‘This isn’t what I thought it would be. I thought this was going to be like our version of Woodstock. Instead I’m just cold.’ Susan from West Virginia said to me, ‘On the plus side I guess it can’t get worse. And I’m still glad we’re going to get the Supreme Court. But today—this is sad.>>

It must be intimidating that the largest protest march of its kind took place the day after President Trump’s inauguration.  It was not confined solely to the Nation’s Capitol.  It took the Tea Party over a year to get organized into a seemingly unified movement.  Unlike the artificial veneer sported the Tea Party, the newly founded Resistance Movement appears a lot more firm and resolute.  Saturday’s Women’s March was the start of a much bigger movement as events supporting it took place around the nation and around the world.  Attendees of Saturday’s event in Washington most certainly outnumbered all the Trump supporters, a non-alternative fact of the matter which I’m sure upset the fragile ego of the President.

Unless something changes soon with President Trump’s management and leadership style, look for his support to continue to wane.  Failing to be specific about certain campaign promises is now not fostering confidence in the man who awed and seduced so many with all manner of wild and seemingly far fetched promises.  Sure, there will be hard core supporters who identify with him who will stand by him to the end and beyond but the voters who decided on him in the voting booth or soon before Election Day who he swayed with his extreme and lofty rhetoric will continue their disenchantment with the pig-in-a-poke they now feel stuck with.  Trump voter remorse is a very real thing, like a brown cloud of smog-like  gas with a sulfuric stench that reminds everyone that a vote for anyone but Hillary Clinton was a vote for Trump.