President Trump, whether or not he wears that title past Inauguration Day, managed to do something we hadn’t expected before election day: He brought in more voters than in 2016.
It’s not that anyone predicted a Biden landslide. But the former vice president’s supporters, most Californians included, had expected a more decisive repudiation of a president who has lied repeatedly, pandered to conspiracy theorists and far-right hooligans, undermined science and botched the response to the COVID-19 pandemic in myriad ways. There were indeed people who abandoned Trump ― he did worse with white males than in 2016, for example ― but also those who, if they didn’t flock to him, at least saw him as the better option.
Many presidential elections have been won by thin margins, as this one apparently will be. But a presidential campaign with Trump is not a normal presidential election with typical political disagreements. It’s not just a matter of one side believing in lower taxes, less regulation and smaller government, while the other favors tougher regulation, better social services and more activism from Washington.
We can always debate those issues. But how do we debate whether facts are facts? How do we discuss rationally whether public insults and patently false statements by our president are acceptable?
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-11-06/the-enduring-support-for-donald-j-trump