[Ioffe, via Sullivan @ digby’s place]
“Is there a way to repudiate the worst of Trump–the nativistic, racist, misogynistic elements–and appeal to people whom he brought because of economic anxiety?” [Wehner] asked. “It won’t be easy because he has loyal following. If you morally repudiate him–which has to happen–those people may decide they don’t want to be part of that.”
Yup [he said, with utter absence of symp-/empathy], it’s a quandary, this corner they’ve painted themselves into.
Of course, there’s data-driven evidence that those deplorables comprise the bulk of Trump’s support (I’d guess virtually all his enthusiastic support):
. . . in the general election, while support for Trump is correlated most strongly with party ID, the second biggest factor, per the analysis of Hamilton College political scientist Philip Klinkner, was racial resentment. Economic pessimism and income level were statistically insignificant.
Good reason to think the discriminant function Wehner seeks for distinguishing the deplorables from his hypothesized group of “other” Trump supporters likely doesn’t exist. Good luck with that!