>>13037
Progressives are basically reverse stormfags. Schrodinger's white man - he is both all-powerful racist oppressor and powerless to act out his inherent racism at the same time.
And Trump is just a run-of-the-mill populist; he talks big game, people are fed up with their own leaders, and if he pisses them off then all the better. He's only popular because the Republicans aren't popular with their own base. In 2010 Republicans said they needed the House to make change. They got it, then they said they needed the Senate; in 2014 they go that. The party establishment still has not made any major changes, and has increasingly worked with the Obama administrator they promised they'd obstruct if only they could get the seats in Congress for. Mainstream Republicans also denigrated and cast aside a real grassroots movement in the Tea Party, further damaging their support.
I can only speculate as to why this happened, but here's my take. The Bush years saw the solidification of Republican control of the government, and they saw that once they were in control they kind of liked it. Perhaps it was the dominance of neoconservatives in the party, with their ideological roots being far to the left of the rest of the party, even if their rhetoric wasn't; they were much more comfortable with big government than the Republicans of the Reagan era. They kind of abandoned the anti-big government action (but not the rhetoric) that got them their jobs in the first place. This created a problem where they became the establishment they were being elected to defeat, and that's why a lot of them seem to have gotten cold feet when faced with their old supporters, like the Tea Party movement. That's why we see McConnell and his seven drooping chin flaps, each more terrifying than the last, trying to revive the import-export bank with the Obama administration, which is nothing but a drain from taxpayers right to wealthy American corporations, and why he views Ted Cruz and other "Freedom Caucus" members as rebels. Really he mostly ran on the same platform they did, he just doesn't deliver the goods like they do, and that's a threat to him.
So Trump is just a big "fuck you" to the Democrats, who loathe him, to progressives, who have equated him with Hitler on at least three big occasions, and the establishment Republicans, who failed to do what they were elected to do. He's the natural political consequence of being elected to do something and then refusing to do it. Plus, he pisses Democrats off like no tomorrow and doesn't apologize for it, which no major Republican has had the gall to do for a long time.
That said, I hope he's never elected. He's all over the place policy-wise, his protectionist rhetoric scares me (Bernie's too tbh), and he has no understanding of politics (or economics, for a rich guy) besides the fact that his poll numbers look good. Unfortunately, pissing off the right people is not good when you're in office, even if it helps you get there, and that's all he's good at doing.