Why Do So Many People Think That Trump Is Good?

Our moral thinking is much more like a politician searching for votes than a scientist searching for truth.

The many analysts, including me, who had argued that Trump could not win the general election were relying on pre-Babel intuitions, which said that scandals such as the Access Hollywood tape (in which Trump boasted about committing sexual assault) are fatal to a presidential campaign. But after Babel, nothing really means anything anymore––at least... See more

Once the fog of political warfare that surrounds an election has cleared, we could discover that most of our fellow citizens are not irredeemably indifferent to Trump’s evident vices; that whatever explains their attachment to the president, it is not that they repudiate the values he does not respect. Our tribal prejudices are at their worst in mo

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On Sunday, I wrote about a remarkable CBS/YouGov poll that helped me understand why Trump is both politically resilient and politically vulnerable. In short, a majority of Americans like many of Trump’s objectives, but they don’t like his methods. Democrats win when they contest Trump’s methods, but they lose when they contest at least some of his ... See more