You know how, on the radio, there is a delay, so that if something bad happens, like an interviewee lets fly with the f-bomb, remedial action can be taken and the sensibilities of listeners are not offended? For some reason, I never wondered till today whether the same kind of precautionary steps are taken on cable news shows where controversial topics are frequently discussed and the emotions of guests can run high. I don't remember hearing any f-bombs or bleeps. I have heard people say things that they probably regretted—or at least would have regretted, if they were constrained by decency and reason. The people tend to look nice, so I think the make-up room personnel perform admirably, but I have no idea whether any airbrushing ever occurs once they are talking on air.
I wondered today for the first time because I was watching while a guest waded into tender territory, and I thought I could detect her slowing down, like she was asking herself whether it was wise to say what she was winding up to say, but she was too far into it, so she pushed through to the end, then laughed a little nervously at herself while the more tv-experienced anchor—it was Craig Melvin—regarded her with what looked like a bemused smile. The topic was that Christianity Today editorial that I editorialized about yesterday—it's a subject of interest to me, which is why I had dried my dishwater hands and walked around the corner to watch in the first place. The guest was a young African-American woman with I think religious credentials of some kind, though I was still in the kitchen when she was first introduced. Her point was that evangelicals should worry more about being true to Jesus and less about being true to Trump, who in no way resembles Jesus. I'm paraphrasing, but that's the point she was making, and, as she warmed to her topic, she said something like: You know, Jesus, he kept company with unsavory types, including prostitutes—it was around here that she seemed to slow down a little—but he never, you know . . . paid, never like, paid for sex.
If he did, it was related in the apocrypha to the Apocrypha only.
So that was a morning brightener. In keeping with my current obsession with this general topic, I did some back-of-the-envelope calculations to try to determine how badly Trump's prospects for reelection would suffer if his support among Christian evangelicals slipped even modestly. Of course, one key input is the percentage of Christian evangelicals in the voting population, and I don't even know what the definition of "Christian evangelical" is, let alone how many of them there are. But according to Pew Research, just over a quarter of voters are white and evangelical, and 81% of them voted for Trump. To keep the fractions round, let's assume that a fifth of voters are white evangelicals and that four-fifths of them voted for Trump, whose victory in the electoral college owes everything to narrow wins in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. His widest margin in those three states was Wisconsin: 0.7%. There were about 2.97 million voters in Wisconsin, and Trump won by 23,000. A fifth of 2.97 million is 594,000, the approximate number of white evangelicals voting in Wisconsin. If they went for Trump by 80% to 20%, his margin within this group was 356,400 (475,200 to 118,800). Let's see what happens if everything stays the same except that he gets 75% of those voters, instead of 80%. And let's for the sake of argument say that the missing 5% do not switch their vote to the Democratic candidate—instead, they vote for someone else, maybe the Libertarian, or just don't vote at all. Trump's margin among white evangelicals in Wisconsin then slips from 356,400 to 326,700, a difference of 29,700. Remember, he carried the state by only 23,000.
A very rough-and-ready grind of the numbers, to be sure, but I've tried to make assumptions and round numbers with an eye toward understating the effect, so I think it's safe to say that Trump's reelection chances would decline precipitously if there were even a modest exodus of white evangelicals from his base. And it does seem like a somewhat unlikely alliance that might be subject to some fraying, no?
Comments