Some three years ago, before the madness truly began, Dave Eggers traveled to a Trump rally in Sacramento. It was August, months before the election upset, when the polls considered the race all but won. Eggers was expecting a mass of intolerant fervor. But the scene he encountered confounded him.
"What i found was a very diverse, reasonable, and kind of likable audience thaht looked like a Fourth of July parade", the 49-year old recalls. Upon seeing and speaking with members of the crowd, he suspected that a Trump victory was entirely plausible.
Eggers has continued to attend and report on these rallies sinde Donald Trump became president encountering a similar sight of surprising diversity and ostensible rationality at each gathering. Every time, the arc goes like thisL first, Eggers enters "sputtering with rage" about Trump's latest misdeeds. Then he talks to supporters and feels gradualy heartened by their "invariably nuanced" responses to his prodding. "Everyone I've interviewed rolls their eyes at certain aspects of [Trump's] behavior and policies", he says. "They have reservations. They're complicated thinkers just like everybody is." In Alabama, for instance, church leaders spoke candidly with Eggers about separating their voter interests with their view of Trump as a human.
