Sunday night, after the rain clouds parted, Blanca and I headed due West like we were shot out of a cannon. Up and over the 4th St Bridge, she wanted to see Oyster Bay. We added on Ellison Loop NW for a little more climbing. That wall at the very end is a bitch, but I digress.

A beautiful night for a fling with your gfriend. Until we saw FOUR houses in a row with Trump/Pence signs. Trump’s gonna carry Oyster Bay?

No big deal you say, Washington is dark blue, no reason to let a few right wing nutters ruin a glorious ride.

But then, after we ducked into the driveway right before sunset, I finished reading Evan Osnos’s smartly written, “How Greenwich Republicans Learned to Love Trump.”

Which is filled with insights into things I don’t understand. Like this:

“The (college) admissions case reminded me of the rationale I kept hearing for looking past Trump’s behavior toward women, minorities, immigrants, war heroes, the F.B.I., democracy, and the truth, not to mention his request that Ukraine “do us a favor” by investigating his political opponents: a conviction that, ultimately, nothing matters more than cutting taxes and regulations and slowing immigration.”

Osnos disabuses people like me that Trump’s base is just gun-toting, stay-at-home protesting, working class, modestly educated, rural people. Trump has massive support among the ultra wealthy, like Michael Mason, a mover and shaker in Greenwich, Connecticut, probably the wealthiest enclave in the (dis)United States:

“Mason knows that the President’s ‘culture’ still upsets many people in Greenwich. But, he said, ‘his policies over the last three years have gained more attention and probably more support.’ He predicts that the trauma of the pandemic will persuade some voters that Trump was right to want to cut immigration and lure back industries from abroad. ‘He had policies that he wanted to change on our borders, on immigration. I certainly think people in this country now are worried about that.'”

The Resistance is deluded to think this pandemic shitshow is going to ruin his chance at re-election.

Another depressing insight:

“If you are among the Greenwich élite, whether you love Trump or hate him, it is easy to count the ways that he has oriented his Administration to help people like you. When Trump introduced his tax bill, he called it a gift to ‘the folks who work in the mail rooms and the machine shops of America.’ That was absurd. The bill cut the corporate tax rate by fourteen per cent, and most of the windfall went to investors in the form of dividends and stock buybacks. . . . Though he limited the deductions for state and local taxes, wealthy citizens were compensated by new tax breaks, including some specifically for the commercial-real-estate industry and for wealthy heirs. On average, Trump gave households in the top one per cent a forty-eight-thousand-dollar tax cut, while those in the bottom twenty per cent received a hundred and twenty dollars, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a nonpartisan think tank. Jim Campbell, the Republican organizer who embraced Trump early in 2016, told me recently, ‘I don’t know anyone who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and won’t vote for him again. In Greenwich, he’ll probably pick up some votes.'”

I never thought the country would elect Trump president. Since 2016, his supporters have become less afraid, less self conscious, and more outspoken. Now, for the first time, I’m bracing myself for the fact that my friend, who promises “100% that Trump is going to be reelected”, may very well be right.

Thanks for that Osnos.