There’s a paragraph in Greg Miller and Philip Rucker’s Washington Post story on Michael Flynn’s resignation that’s quite breathtaking:

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The White House faces an escalating court fight over an immigration ban aimed at Muslim-majority countries, has alienated key allies with Trump’s brusque phone calls to foreign leaders, and seemed so caught off-guard by North Korea’s recent ballistic missile test that Trump and senior officials were shown learning of the development on cellphones in full view of patrons at Trump’s Mar-a Lago resort.

So let’s be super-generous and say that the first few weeks of Trump’s administration have been a mixed bag.

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We know from public opinion polling that this isn’t exactly playing well with the American people. But we also know that the Trump administration doesn’t care about all the American people, not really. Last week there was an interesting tidbit tucked into a Politico story on Trump’s relationship with Capitol Hill:

Conway, multiple sources said, shrugged off the concerns from thousands of people jamming phone lines critical of Trump’s Cabinet nominees, explaining that she’s more worried about her own “RPI” or “Real Person Impact” meter. “She basically said the people jamming up the phones don’t matter to this White House,” the communications director [for a Republican senator] continued. “That this administration just cares about what matters to ‘real people.’”

That’s the repellent part of Populism 101, but for now let’s focus on Trump’s base. Politico’s Adam Wren served up interesting piece of reporting on how the first few shambolic weeks of Trump’s administration are playing in a bellwether Indiana county. What he found will be somewhat disheartening to Trump critics:

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To a person, the Trump voters I talked to in Vigo offered a similar refrain as they assessed Trump’s first days in office, almost as if they were reading from a fresh batch of talking points issued by the president’s director of Surrogate Outreach: “He’s doing exactly what he promised he would do,” Kelly, 48, a pharmacist in Terre Haute who felt uncomfortable divulging her last name, told me when I asked her about Trump’s controversial immigration executive order, as she ate a slice of cheese pizza at the food court in Honey Creek Mall. Nor are voters like Kelly lamenting his Twitter tirades: “He’s speaking directly to the people. Like Reagan!” Dick told me over lunch. Trump’s brusque, shoot-from-the-hip conversations with world leaders and allies? “We’re not going to go to war with Australia,” Kindsvatter said. “I think he’s pretty much following The Art of the Deal,” said Ken Warner, 60, who works in the finance industry. “He’s got the price of fighter jets down. It’s not something we’re used to. It’s a little unorthodox. Listening to his Carrier negotiation, you have to shrug on the means but can’t disagree with the ends. You don’t want to be picking winners and losers. You don’t want to see a president calling out people on Twitter. However, the results so far have not been bad. So I can’t say it’s wrong.”

This is the flip side of Karabell’s column. It is true that Trump hasn’t actually done all that much. But that also means that the new president, for all of the national security foul-ups, also hasn’t done anything so egregious that it negatively affects the lives of Trump’s voters in Indiana. Remember, for all the campaign rhetoric, Trump inherited a pretty solid economy, and that’s what really matters. Even Karabell acknowledges that if Trump is good at anything, it’s creating a narrative built on a few glimmers of reality that makes the whole look better than the sum of the parts. And if Trump ramps up on the federal immigration raids, he will have another real data point to back up the perception that he’s doing stuff.

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So here’s my question: is there anything that could happen that could cause Trump’s group of core supporters to lose their passion for the president?

Right now, I think the answer is no. Trump supporters are clearly less-than-thrilled with some aspects of Trump’s style, but they also don’t see any material downside to anything that’s happened so far. Plus, most voters don’t develop buyer’s remorse so soon after an election. One can understand why Conway would feel secure about her RPI.

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Here’s the thing, though. If there is a serious economic slowdown, or a Katrina-level government foul-up, or a national security crisis that could lead to an unpopular war, those numbers will go south real fast. Because that is the point at which all of these minor kerfuffles start to look more like presidential incompetence to his base. It is true that the sooner such a negative shock happens, the more likely the Trump administration will blame the Obama administration for whatever bad thing happened. But Trump has made that standard political move more difficult by talking up the economy ever since his election. If the White House stays chaotic and bad things start happening in the next few months, all of the little things that Trump’s supporters can laugh off right now won’t look so funny if layoffs start hitting Trump counties.