I Hate Donald Trump – But I Understand His Appeal

Donald Trump. Love him or hate him, it’s nearly impossible to find someone today for whom Trump’s name doesn’t provoke an instant, visceral reaction. He’s been called everything from America’s savior to the next Hitler. I’m among them; I emphatically despise Donald Trump. But at the same time, I absolutely understand his appeal — and except for a select few outspoken voters, I don’t think that it has anything to do with hate or bigotry.

Americans are tired of ineffectual politicians.

Whatever you think of President Obama, it is hard to argue that he hasn’t been the most effectual President of the United States of America, and that his administration has been largely ineffectual to boot. According to Politifact, Obama has only kept about 45 percent of his campaign promises. He has only issued 235 executive orders across his presidency. The last two Congresses have been the least-productive in history. Multiple states have openly defied his administration’s policy letter on transgender bathrooms in schools, with Oklahoma introducing a motion to impeach the President, U.S. Attorney General, and U.S. Secretary of Education, according to a report from the Huffington Post.

Americans on both sides of the fence are sick and tired of politicians who are unable to effect change, and whatever faults one might find with his plans, Donald Trump’s single most consistent stance is that he doesn’t back down and doesn’t accept being told that he can’t do something. Trump’s typical response to his opponents, which mostly consists of metaphorically flipping them the bird, resonates with an awful lot of voters who would very much like to do the same to the nation’s lawmakers (or, perhaps more accurately, law-obstructionists.)

Donald Trump is, for better or for worse, doing something that we’ve all wanted to do and saying some things that we’ve all wanted to say, and that resonates.

Donald Trump’s promises are Obama’s promises.

Remember the 55 percent of unfulfilled or broken promises that President Obama made during his 2008 and 2012 campaigns, on which he won both elections? Donald Trump is, broadly speaking, making the same promises.

Don’t believe me? He wants to get Americans employed. He wants their health taken care of. He wants to end the war in the Middle East.

Trump’s methods are very different from Obama’s, and I think they’re extremely misguided. At best, his solutions to the issues facing America are childish and simplistic — or, at worst, racist and sexist. But they’re the same issues, and for the most part, he’s on the same side of them — and that makes him hard to disagree with. You’re not going to find a liberal anywhere to disagree that ending poverty, reducing unemployment, and making sure everyone has adequate healthcare are good things.

In fact…

Donald Trump is a progressive candidate in disguise.

Here we come to the crux of the issue.

Donald Trump is running under the Republican party. He’s the GOP’s presumptive nominee.

But he’s not a traditional Republican conservative candidate.

Donald Trump is a progressive who is palatable to GOP voters — and the Republican voter base is more than ready to put a progressive candidate in charge.

Time marches on. It’s 2016, and the second most popular GOP candidate was Ted Cruz, who ran on a platform of religious extremism and intolerance – something many see as traditional Republican values. But a 2014 Gallup poll shows that 55 percent of Americans now support same-sex marriage, with a further four percent having no opinion, and public support for same-sex marriage has remained above 50 percent since 2010. That’s up from only about 40 percent shortly before President Obama was elected. Public opinion on transgender bathroom rights is, according to Reuters, almost equal split.

Donald Trump supports transgender rights. He’s been evasive about his stance on same-sex marriage, but he’ll probably come out in favor of it at some point. He doesn’t believe in the gender wage gap, but he’s in favor of equal pay for equal work.

America is changing, and a lot of traditional Republicans are stuck very far in the past, and GOP voters are as tired of it as their Democratic counterparts. From a liberal standpoint, it’s very hard to argue with a lot of his positions – only his beliefs or the way he intends to address them. I despise the man, and I nearly cheered for his comments on transgender rights. And from a conservative standpoint, people across America are becoming steadily less socially-conservative.

Trump is the first appealing, charismatic, progressive Republican candidate who is at all palatable to traditional Republican voters, and to a lot of independents. His platform is seductive, his positions often compelling. He’s the candidate a lot of voters have been wanting. He says what young people who have been abused by the system and America’s failing job infrastructure want to hear.

I don’t think for one second that Donald J. Trump is the answer to America’s problems, but voters are beyond ready for a change.

[Photo by Mark Lyons/Getty Images]