Swarens: Here's why Donald Trump may win a second term

Tim Swarens | IndyStar

Show Caption Hide Caption Jeff Sessions defends Trump immigration policies Parkview Field in Ft. Wayne hosts U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who spoke with a group of about 100 mostly supporters in a closed session.

Sally Tedrow voted for Barack Obama for president in 2008. Four years later, the retiree and devoted Methodist from Keokuk, Iowa, did it again.

More than 600 miles away, in Jefferson, Ohio, Bonnie Smith was a life-long Democrat, one who supported Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primaries.

No one would mistake either of them for hardline conservatives, or even Republicans.

But in November 2016, Tedrow and Smith, along with nearly 63 million other Americans, did something that shocked the world. They helped elect Donald J. Trump as president of the United States.

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How could Tedrow switch from Obama to Trump in four years? How could Smith go from Sanders to Trump in six months? The factors that drove middle of America voters to back an unpredictable, often erratic billionaire from Manhattan are explored in a new book by journalist Salena Zito and Republican advertising executive Brad Todd.

In "The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics," Zito and Todd give Trump voters something they don't often receive from the news media or the entertainment industry: Respect.

For that reason, I suspect most readers who pick up the book already will be happily onboard the Trump train. Finally, they'll say, someone gets it.

Yet a much different audience -- those who recoil at the thought of Trump winning a second term two years from now -- has the most to gain in scouring "The Great Revolt" for its insights on why about 6 million Americans switched their votes from Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016.

Zito was a Pittsburgh-based political reporter in July 2016 when she set out to visit every county in Pennsylvania. Traveling the backroads, she came across houses, barns and even a horse with "Trump" painted on the side. She saw homemade "Trump for President" signs (when voters care enough to create their own advertising for a candidate it's a good indication of their fervency). And she talked to enough Trump supporters in diners and bed-and-breakfasts to be convinced that the Republican nominee was about to pull off an enormous upset -- in Pennsylvania and across the nation.

"I took a lot of heat on social media for predicting a Trump win," Zito told me in a phone interview.

She was right of course. Not only did Trump become the first Republican presidential candidate since 1988 to win Pennsylvania, he also defeated Hillary Clinton in five other states -- Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin -- that Obama won twice.

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That's history. What about the future?

Zito said there are strong indications that the populist and conservative coalition that lifted Trump into office has held together, and the factors that pushed voters such as Tedrow and Smith to take a chance on a maverick businessman remain in play.

"We haven't moved from that moment as a country," Zito said.

One thing many Trump voters have in common, Zito said, is a "skepticism of all things big."

They don't trust the traditional news media, major corporations, the entertainment industry or the two major political parties. When Trump takes on everyone from the NFL to CNN, he's leveraging that distrust to his advantage.

And when celebrities like Samantha Bee and Robert De Niro crudely attack Trump and his children, it signals to the president's supporters that he's still fighting for them.

Others are starting to pick up on that dynamic. New York Times columnist Frank Bruni, about as distantly removed from a Trump supporter as Paris, Ill., is from Paris, France, castigated Bee and De Niro this week for stumbling into the president's trap. "(De Niro) made the blue wave look iffier and Trump 2020 stronger," Bruni wrote.

Why does harshly insulting Trump actually help him? Because Trump's supporters see themselves and their values as the real targets of elites' disdain.

"People have been craving respect," Zito said. "They've been craving that Hollywood not make them the butt of jokes."

One other important lesson Trump's critics should take from "The Great Revolt": He's a symptom, not the cause, of the deep frustrations that pushed him into office.

"People are still scratching their heads about why people voted for Donald Trump," Jonathan Kochie, a bar and restaurant owner in Freeland, Pa., said in the book. "Well, here is the thing: we voted for ourselves, and that is the thing they missed. That is the thing they still miss. I turn on the television and they talk about how he brags, or this or that about him, and they still don't talk to us. They still don't hear us. They still don't get us. We are a part of America too, and we are a part of America that wants to be part of something that takes everyone forward. Takes us all together."

They still don't get us.

The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that Jonathan Kochie is right about that. And it's questionable whether progressives want or are even willing to try to understand people such as Kochie, Sally Tedrow and Bonnie Smith.

The answer may well determine whether Donald Trump shocks the world again in 2020.

Contact Swarens at tim.swarens@indystar.com; friend him on Facebook at Tim Swarens; follow him on Twitter @tswarens.