If former Republican congressman Bob Livingston had said that he was supporting Donald Trump because he thinks it’s high time we used the threat of tariffs to get China to change its behavior, I would disagree with him. But his reasoning, while in my view mistaken, would have been intelligible.
Here is what he actually told CNN: “I am really, really irritated by these people who think they are smarter than the American people. The American people are expressing themselves loudly in just about every state, most of the primaries and he’s getting most of the votes. And for me that’s very, very important. I want to see the American people heard and I want to see Donald Trump president.”
Leave aside the fact that if “the American people” are heard, Donald Trump will not be president: He polls worse against Clinton than any other candidate; her lead over him has been increasing; 61 percent of Americans have an unfavorable impression of him. Trump has gotten only a plurality of the subset of the American people that has voted in Republican primaries.
Again, though, leave Livingston’s badly mistaken premise aside. Even if he were right about it, this would remain a sorry excuse for an argument: He’s winning, so he should win. The American people loudly expressed their desire to see Barack Obama take office in 2008 and continue in it in 2012. Presumably Livingston disagreed. Was he holding himself out to be smarter than the American people on those occasions? Should they have been “really, really irritated” with him?
In 2012, Livingston was on board for Newt Gingrich’s primary campaign. Gingrich won two primaries: South Carolina’s on January 21, and his home state of Georgia’s on March 6. Polling averages had him consistently behind Mitt Romney from the beginning of February onward. Why wasn’t it “very, very important” for Livingston to “see the American people heard” in February, March, or April of that year? (Gingrich dropped out May 2.)
Back then, Livingston would probably have responded with contempt to the claim that he had a moral obligation to respect the emerging will of the people by supporting the candidate who had the lead. That contempt would have been fully deserved, as it is now.