Maybe most Trump supporters are too embarrassed to admit their support in public
Here's a Zogby poll, which indicates 44% support for Trump -- but 40% of respondents say they tell people they disapprove of him even though they secretly agree with him
https://zogbyanalytics.com/news/816-the-zogby-poll-trump-approval-steady-at-44-two-in-five-voters-are-silent-trump-supporters
I've been puzzling over what this means
And it seems plausible to me there's just a very simple and obvious meaning: a lot of Americans live in fear; Trump plays to that fear and does nothing to reduce the fear, because the fear itself is helping him politically
His base may largely consist of people so fearful they will not even express their own opinions in public
The silly border wall and the heartless rollback of DACA play to a fear of foreigners. Ramping up the threat of nuclear war with North Korea plays to a similar fear
People who are fearful all the time are likely to lash out in anger. This is what we see with our little neo-nazi resurgence, with its minions dressed in permanent press khaki shorts and carrying garden-party tiki torches that simultaneously reinforce their vision of themselves as nice people who suffer night-terrors when they remember that not everyone looks exactly like they do -- and thus become strangely compelled to drive cars or fire bullets into crowds
There may be a larger cynical strategy here, not originating with Trump but rather with a whole collective of conservative strategists who believe that their policy objectives will best be served by exacerbating fears: more guns and more mass shootings; less health care and more economic anxiety ...
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