How to Unravel Trump's Support

Here it is May 9th and maybe you're thinking about November 8th. Maybe you're wondering how the teaming mass of Donald Trump supporters can best be scattered before election day. What campaign year strategy would erode what is serving as their common ground?

What could make Trump lose 50 states? 

Well, it won't be happen because liberal Democrats do their level best to brand Trump's supporters as “lowbrows.” It should be noted that projecting know-it-all smugness – whether intended, or not – is an irritating trait that some liberals should work on toning down during this campaign year.

My take is that what bundles Trump's fans and enthusiastic supporters together might be best unraveled by fear. Fear rubbed raw. Two basic reasons why:

• Too much of what Trump has said on the campaign trail has been alarming. His talk about renegotiating government debt raised a few eyebrows. Having such a loose cannon as a president is already scaring America's friends and enemies, alike, out there in the rest of the real world. Blowing off his dangerous and hate-mongering statements as mere “showmanship” is profoundly unwise.

• Still, the most important reason fear will work like a charm to un-cluster the Trump flock is that today's conservatives are fraidy cats. Trump knows their angers well and has played to them. But the other side of that populist coin is fear. And, generally speaking, the most chock-full-of-fear people I know are also extreme right-wingers. It's no coincidence.

Make today's wall-loving, gun-toting, paranoid Republicans tremble with fear about what a President Trump might do and they'll drop him like a hot potato. Jokes about how Trump sees the threat of using nuclear weapons as one of his foreign policy tools might get some traction.

But what will probably work best would be to sell the idea that the untold number of legions of America-haters, from all over the world, will feel compelled to come here to torture every one of us, should we be foolish enough to elect Donald Trump to speak for the USA.

A vote for Trump is a vote to get yourself waterboarded.

And, speaking of fear, a bunch of Republican office-holders and wannabes have got good reason to be feeling anxious about a decision they must make. If Trump wins the election, even by the thinnest of margins, they had better have endorsed him, early and often. 

The later the endorsement came the less it will probably be worth. With no endorsement having been tendered, it's hard to imagine Trump will not punish those he sees as having it coming to them. 

If Trump loses the election, and he could lose big, those cowed Republicans who jumped on his bandwagon before the convention are going to look like fools who didn't see the obvious debacle coming. Make the wrong call on this endorsement business and it could easily be a career-killer.  

Watching how the most frightened Republicans twist and turn trying to avoid making the wrong choice should be entertaining in the months to come.