I Know Why Trump's Base Is Slow To Leave Him: Art Briles

Stay with me here.

I've come to the conclusion there is nothing that Trump can do to alienate his hard core base. At least for now. Polls show his approval rating is around 37%. It moved there pretty quickly. Having it move lower than that will be very, very slow. Why?

This was almost an epiphany to me last night. Baylor football, Art Briles, and me.

As a metaphor, Baylor football was down, really down, for a long, long time. Then a savior came along in the name of Art Briles. You know what he said in his opening press conference about arguably the worst team in the nation? "We will win the Big 12." That was like Trump initially saying, "I will win the Presidency." Yeah, sure you will.

Both were right.

I was ecstatic about Baylor's later success. We were, in the words of Trump, "winning."

And then the scandal happened. And here we come to the point of this post. You know what my reaction was? Denial. My leader could not be anything other than who I thought he was. If Baylor gives up on him the team might go back to where it was: Being a "loser" and not a "winner"! We could not let that happen! It was a long road to get where we were. We weren't going back.

Then the Board of Regents fired the greatest coach in Baylor history. The news reports kept pouring in.

But I defended him in person and on Liberally Lean. The firing and the awful news reports didn't mean anything, right?! He was being mistreated, I said. This had to be an ESPN conspiracy.  (I didn't know to use the term "Fake News" at the time.)

I took heat from everyone. BagOfNothing torched me every week. Commentors killed me. Finally, Mrs. LL actually took me aside one night and told me, "You are in denial about this and you need to stop. You have never looked at this from the perspective of those girls." (She doesn't do things like that.)

And they were all right. I was wrong. It just took me a year to realize it because it was so hard to do.