THE political director was arriving at a big regional conference, surrounded by several party associates. She wields quite a bit of power as the regional eyes and ears for a Democratic governor in a reliably blue state where Republican victories in statewide elections are an anomalous oddity and GOP power tends to be concentrated in isolated rural areas with low population and almost zero national political visibility.

Striding toward the hotel ballroom where the conference was to be held, the political director moved confidently and engaged with a new acquaintance, the president of a local association. The conversation quickly moved toward a fundamental question that continues to vex Democrats, including the incumbent president and, to judge by their public comments, most of his senior advisers as well.

“Why do so many people vote against their own economic self-interest?” the director asked. “What are these millions of Trump supporters and MAGA fanatics thinking? Don’t they realise that Trump only cares about himself and wealthy cronies who will bow down to him? He won’t help them.

“It’s the Democrats and liberals who keep propping up welfare for the poor, tax breaks for low-income people, and Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security as a dependable economic safety net. So many MAGA supporters would have much worse lives without the steady economic support from Democrats that sustains them.

“And what about military veterans? Polls show they support Trump. Yet with Biden over in France for the D-Day anniversary, honouring the brave Americans and Allies who died heroically to liberate Europe and save Western democracy, we are reminded of Trump supposedly calling POWs and military casualties ‘suckers and losers’.

“What in the world are these Trumpers thinking? There’s just no evidence that he cares about really helping them, even as they continue to help pay his legal bills by contributing small amounts to his campaign as reliably as people used to tithe to the Church.”

The group now stood around the conference entry hall, cups of coffee in hand as the director smiled, winding down from her unexpectedly impassioned disquisition. She clearly meant her query to be rhetorical, but her new acquaintance replied nonetheless.

“I have a theory, if you’re interested,” he answered. “OK, go ahead,” she replied. “We have a few minutes before the meeting starts. Let’s hear what you think.”

“I think it all goes back to a movement founded on resentment and led in its early stages 30 years ago by outspoken, iconoclastic Republican operators like Pat Buchanan, who ran for president three times in a row between 1992 and 2000. His campaigns centred on non-interventionism in foreign affairs, opposition to illegal immigration, and opposition to the outsourcing of manufacturing from free trade. Doesn’t that sound like much of Trump’s message today?

“Buchanan’s theme was picked up and carried forward by a Georgia congressman named Newt Gingrich, who directed a revolt against a half century of Democratic rule in the House of Representatives by leading the GOP to a stunning 1994 takeover of the House. Demagogic positions developed by Buchanan and Gingrich fueled the rapid development of the tea party movement that splintered the Republican Party and enabled Barack Obama to not only win the White House in 2008 but to maintain a Congressional majority long enough to pass Obamacare.”

The political director paused, sipped her coffee and replied. “OK. I get that. But the tea party was a fringe movement. It was significant mostly because it splintered the Republican Party when they could easily have won in 2012 against Obama. Now their MAGA heirs are in control of the GOP.”

“Yes,” the association president agreed. “But there’s a big difference now. That difference is Donald Trump.”

“Oh, Trump again. What a fatuous toad he is,” the political director exclaimed. “I realise he is a talented demagogue. Not denying that. But he’s so transparent. He clearly cares about no one except himself – and maybe his immediate family. That’s it. Who can support that?”

The association president paused, listening to an announcement that the conference would soon begin.

“That’s just it,” he finally said. “The people who can support that message and that behaviour also only care about themselves – and maybe their immediate families and maybe their neighbours. They’re not interested in abstract liberal bromides and remedies. They want to hang onto what they have and share it with as few others – immigrants, minorities, radical socialists, sexual ‘misfits’ – as possible. Trump’s selfishness and self-orientation, his jingoism and isolationism mirror their own feelings. That he so consistently derides the pomposity of the well-educated class in the media is only frosting on the cake for them.

“Remember when Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign called the people who became the MAGA movement the ‘Deplorables?’ Well, from a liberal perspective, the Trump followers are indeed deplorable. But as long as we Democrats pay so little careful attention to them and to their grievances, they will continue to act out and support Trump, no matter what he says or does, or wherever he is convicted of felonies.

“We Democrats don’t respect them, and they are only too pleased to return that disrespect through Trump.”

The group surrounding the political director all looked up as the conference was called to order. She looked at the association president and grinned. “Guess we’ll have to continue this conversation later,” she said. “See you around.”

She and her entourage moved to the front of the conference hall and were seated in prime positions near the speaker’s podium. She did not pause and she did not look back.

German Marshall Fund feeling benefits of refocused American alliance

US President Joe Biden’s recent D-Day visit to France and the upcoming July summit meeting of NATO allies have refocused America on the history of the great Western Alliance.

Two retired generals were perhaps the most important Americans of the middle of the 20th Century. The more famous was Dwight Eisenhower, who led the Western Allies to victory in Europe in World War II and later served two terms as President of the United States. George Marshall was the other.

Marshall become Chief of Staff of the US Army under Presidents Franklin D Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, then served as both Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense under Truman. By far, Marshall’s greatest achievement was the establishment of the European Recovery Act. This transformative legislation, aptly nicknamed the Marshall Plan, undergirded Europe’s post-war economic recovery and set the context for peace in Europe for most of the next 75 years.

In grateful response, German Chancellor Willy Brandt unveiled the German Marshall Plan in 1972. According to its own website, the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) is a nonpartisan policy organisation committed to the “idea that the United States and Europe are stronger together. GMF champions the principles of democracy, human rights, and international cooperation, are now under increasing strain”.

A senior GMF official recently offered valuable insight into European perspectives on American foreign policy, which in the past decade has shaken European faith in the steadfastness of the US in defending the postwar Western hegemonic, democratic order. Donald Trump and his threats to withdraw the US from the NATO alliance have intensified this scepticism.

But Trump speaks for millions of isolated, isolationist, non-coastal Americans. In an effort to understand and perhaps counteract their persistent isolationist view, GMF’s Kristine Berzina leads Across America, an effort to cultivate US regional dialogue on transatlantic issues by taking policy conversations to communities across the United States.

Her impressions, shared recently with the press, include the following: “I feel much more optimistic about whether the US cares about Europe specifically when I’m outside of Washington. The three areas that we see really resonating are economic, military, and a kind of cultural, intellectual, moral affinity, right?

“The most important one, really, though, is the economic one. The economic relationship between the US and Europe is incredibly strong, and so it matters that across communities in the US, European companies are making major investments in everything from automotive manufacturing to serving as an export market for American natural resources for the oil and gas industry. Right?”

 As managing director of GMF East, Michal Baranowski provides the overall strategic direction and leadership for the organisation’s work in Poland, the Baltic states, and the V4 countries – Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia.