Wesley Easterling took him at his word. Like so many of his neighbors, Easterling relies on Medicaid and food stamps to provide for his wife and daughter. His Kentucky county is among the poorest in the country. When he cast his ballot for Donald Trump in the 2016 election, he never imagined the president would gut essential federal assistance programs.

“He had a kind of charisma about him, something different,” Easterling told CNN. “He played me for a fool.”

Fellow Trump voters, particularly those in rural counties where his proposed budget cuts would wreak the most havoc, increasingly feel the same. As of May 31, the president’s approval rating sits at 39.1 percent against a disapproval rating of 54.9 percent, according to FiveThirtyEight. If he was profoundly unpopular in March, Trump is now plumbing new depths.

More revealing is new data suggesting the president’s bedrock of support is beginning to crumble. Nate Silver argues that his base is shrinking, citing a weighted average of several polls indicating that the percentage of American voters who strongly support the president has dipped from 30 in February to 21 or 22 in late May. At this juncture in his presidency, Barack Obama had the firm backing of 45 percent of the electorate. Meanwhile, the percentage of voters who strongly disapprove of Trump’s performance has surged from the mid-30s to 44.1 percent over the same timespan. “If you look beneath the surface of Trump’s approval ratings,” Silver writes, “you find not hidden strength but greater weakness than the topline numbers imply.”

Just ask Krista Shockey of Waverly, Ohio. It wasn’t until the administration announced its latest budget plan that the Trump voter and retiree understood all she had to lose—and the magnitude of her error. Shockey receives $700 monthly in disability payments through Supplemental Security Income; it is her lone financial stream. Under Trump’s proposal, the program would be dramatically scaled back. “There’s no way I could go back to work,” she told CNN. “I’ve got a lot of problems. I’m crippled in my knees, feet, back and hands.”

Like Shockey, Trump supporter and Union County mayor Michael Williams was stunned by the president’s about-face on social services and the severity of his proposed cuts. Williams’ Tennessee constituency has a median income of $37,000 and they rely on programs like the Appalachian Regional Commission to help stay afloat. If federal dollars dry up, the state is unlikely to provide necessary grants for public works. In an interview with Politico, Williams confessed that when he first learned of the Trump team’s latest budget, “[he thought] ‘Oh my God, I don’t know if they really thought this through.'”

Yet for every Wesley Easterling, Krista Shockey and Michael Williams, there’s a Scott Seitz of McDonald, Ohio. A two-time Obama voter, he claims he switched parties because Trump spoke to the one issue that mattered most to Seitz: jobs. Seitz’s family has succumbed to the white working-class plagues of heroin addiction, unemployment and single parenthood. While he insists he would have “voted for Bernie Sanders in a heartbeat,” he’s still willing to give the country’s scandal-plagued president a chance. “We put him in, and we will hold him accountable,” he told Vanity Fair.

Until Trump proves an unequivocal liability to the Republican Party, such a promise seems unlikely to be kept any time soon.

Jacob Sugarman is a managing editor at AlterNet.


ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers.

Donate
Donate

2 Comments

  1. Philip Mayall on

    It has to be said that people who believe the words of politicians (especially right-wing ones) in an election campaign rather than looking at their actual deeds and are then “stunned” that things turn out differently are, well, stupid. In the current UK election campaign many people are watching/reading the media because they’re unsure yet whether to vote Conservative or not. You would think 337 years of Tory Party history would give them a clue.

    • Yes, succinctly stated. What other word can one use but “stupid”?

      I never fail to have my breath taken away by the total ignorance of USAns of the the most basic facts of, well, everything!

Leave A Reply

Subscribe

All the latest from Z, directly to your inbox.

Institute for Social and Cultural Communications, Inc. is a 501(c)3 non-profit.

Our EIN# is #22-2959506. Your donation is tax-deductible to the extent allowable by law.

We do not accept funding from advertising or corporate sponsors.  We rely on donors like you to do our work.

ZNetwork: Left News, Analysis, Vision & Strategy

Subscribe

All the latest from Z, directly to your inbox.

THE WIND CRIES FREEDOM

The Wind Cries Freedom, the new book from Z co-founder Michael Albert, is a sweeping oral history of a future American revolution.

Through thirty interconnected chapters, it draws out the strategies, failures, turning points, and hard-won wisdom of a movement that called itself the Revolutionary Participatory Society. These are not the polished memoirs of politicians: they are the unfiltered accounts of people who organized in neighborhoods, hospitals, universities, stadiums, courthouses, and places of worship, and kept a shared vision alive through cynicism and exhaustion.

The result is speculative political fiction that reads like history: messy, human, and quietly hopeful in the way that only real experience and long thought can produce.

Get your copy and peruse more features on the book’s website below.

“Read it, argue with it, but don’t look away. The future it recalls is one we must still fight to deserve.”

Yanis Varoufakis

“The most unusual and intriguing combination of prophecy, manifesto, and movement building manual that I have ever encountered.”

Bill Fletcher Junior

“This work fills a huge gap in our social movement literature.”

Cynthia Peters

You've just read your article on Z this month.

DOES Z'S SURVIVAL MATTER?

You keep coming back for a reason: serious political analysis, movement reporting, and debate beyond the priorities of corporate media. Today, Z is in a precarious financial position. If Z is part of how you understand the world, help keep it going. The readers who give monthly are the reason this work survives between fundraisers.

Z is in a precarious financial position. If it’s part of how you understand the world, help keep it going.

Number of donors708
Our goal1,000

Sustainers at $9/month or more receive the digital Z Magazine.

Already a sustainer? Click here and we won’t ask again. Thank you!

Your reading count is stored only in your browser and is never sent to us.

Sound is muted by default.  Tap 🔊 for the full experience

CRITICAL ACTION

Critical Action is a longtime friend of Z and a music and storytelling project grounded in liberation, solidarity, and resistance to authoritarian power. Through music, narrative, and multimedia, the project engages the same political realities and movement traditions that guide and motivate Z’s work.

If this project resonates with you, you can learn more about it and find ways to support the work using the link below.

Z is in the most precarious financial position in its history.

Z is a place to think beyond the limits of the present.

For decades, Z has brought together political analysis, movement reporting, debate, and visions of a different future from writers and activists around the world. That work is more than journalism. It is movement infrastructure: movements need places to develop ideas, test arguments, learn from experience, and imagine what comes next.

In the first two days of this fundraiser, 19 donors and 8 new monthly sustainers stepped up. Help us reach 1,000 donors who keep Z independent, for everyone.

For decades, Z has published the analysis, debate, and visions movements need, free of paywalls, ads, and billionaire owners. If that work should continue, Z needs your support now.

Number of donors708
Our goal1,000

Sustainers at $9/month or more receive the digital Z Magazine.

Subscribe

Join the Z Community – receive event invites, announcements, a Weekly Digest, and opportunities to engage.

Exit mobile version