Nice piece by Jack Shafer on how the National Inquirer and its ilk pushed the Trump candidacy. I particularly liked this bit:

Some consider Enquirer readers representative of the emerging “post-truth” era, reliant on their own beliefs and indifferent to the facts accepted by the mainstream. But a better way to look at Enquirer readers might be as a “pre-truth” group, drawn to arguments based on pure emotional appeal. Ted Cruz makes such a perfect tabloid villain because he looks like one, because he went to Princeton and Harvard, and because he seems unimpressed by anybody not named Ted Cruz. Hillary Clinton, too, is a paid-in-full member of the American elite: Wellesley, Yale, the Senate and global foundation muckety-muck. Going into 2016, the tabloids already had marked her as their campaign heavy.

Trump, on the other hand, could be cast as the perfect proletarian candidate: patriotic, plain-talking (or plain double-talking) and a nativist. Trump, being rich and educated at the Wharton School, isn’t an obvious ideological fit for these Enquirer readers. But when he wolfs down fast food or speaks in broken sentences, praises his tacky palaces as beautiful, or unexpectedly takes a vulgar turn in the middle of a speech, he ends up declaring a kind of class solidarity with a set of people who could never afford his resorts. His penchant for glitter, big hair, big things in general and bad grammar, and his disdain for all thing refined (his favorite musical is Evita), makes him highly representative of Rust Belt culture. I grew up with many of the people who voted for Trump in the primaries and the general election. They can smell condescension at the parts-per-billion level. With Trump, they don’t even sniffle.

In Cambridge, where I live and work, 74% voted to Remain in the EU, while 26% voted Leave. In Stoke-on-Trent, the respective figures were 31% Remain, 69% Leave. My friends and academic colleagues were astonished by the results from places like Stoke.

I wasn’t — because I know Stoke well. My late wife Sue came from there and my parents-in-law still lived there, so I spent a lot of time in the city and so saw at close hand how it had been devastated by globalisation, automation and central (and local) government neglect.

A few days ago I read Dominic Cummings’s astonishing account of the Brexit campaign, and afterwards started digging back into pre-referendum coverage. In the process I came on this remarkable video made by John Harris in Stoke-on-Trent. From my knowledge of the city, it’s spot on. And Harris is right — the video also illustrates the depth of the problem that the Labour party now faces in UK politics.

UPDATE And no sooner had I posted this than the news broke that Tristram Hunt, the improbable Labour MP for Stoke Central constituency, has been appointed Director of the V&A Museum and so will resign his seat. Which means there will now be a by-election in Stoke.

In psychology, the term magical thinking denotes “the belief that one’s thoughts by themselves can bring about effects in the world or that thinking something corresponds with doing it”. It’s what small children do, often in entrancing ways. But at the moment it’s what the entire ‘liberal’ establishment appears to be engaging in, as its members contemplate the prospect of a Trump presidency. So there’s much chatter along the lines of “well, of course, he’s just the President-elect and doesn’t yet have to operate under the constraints of office”, or “surely he’ll have to give up Tweeting when he’s President”.

For a salutary antidote to this kind of fatuous thinking, see Polly Toynbee’s scarifying piece in today’s Guardian. Way back in 1988 she interviewed — and profiled — Trump. And it’s clear from her report that the monster hasn’t changed one bit. “Trump’s nature”, she writes, “was never a secret”.

He has never dissembled, he can’t dissemble. Why would he when he worships every aspect of himself, each hair on his head, each word he tweets? Greater self-love hath no man.

Apart from his lost good looks, he is unchanged since I interviewed him for the Guardian back in 1988. He was 41 and in Britain to plug his book, The Art of the Deal. Then as now, he was a petrifying megalomaniac with no grip on reality, or not a reality shared by others. At the time I described his “demonic power and energy waiting to spring”. Now look how far he has sprung.

I wrote about his aura of “glitz, greed, glamour and an ambition so colossal that it will probably not rest until he rules the world – which one day he just might”. And next week, God help us, he will. But nearly 30 years ago was his eye already on running for the presidency? I put the question to him. “Not for a period but I am involved politically. You could do it from where I am,” he replied with the same nonchalance he might describe making a pitch for some new property or casino in New York.

She asked him what his platform would be if he ran for President. “Respect”, he replied.

We’re a second-rate economic power, a debtor nation. We’re getting kicked around.” His current determination to tear up Barack Obama’s carefully brokered nuclear deal with Iran has a long history. He told me that as president, “I’d be harsh on Iran. They’ve been beating us psychologically, making us look like a bunch of fools … It’d be good for the world to take them on.”

Sound familiar? That was 29 years ago. Toynbee asked him what he thought about Britain. “Your country’s distaste for success”, he replied, “is a national disease.” Brexiteers, please note. “What kind of trade deal”, asks Toynbee, “does Liam Fox imagine he will broker with this man whose contempt for Britain, even back in its most Trumpish era, was so withering? Just as Trump’s view on Iran is unchanged, I doubt he has formed any new views about Britain”.

And the moral of this little story: if you think the presidency might domesticate Trump, think again. Magical thinking is best left to toddlers.