Paul Krugman: Trump Clearly Despises the Very Voters Who Elected Him @alternet:
"In his Friday column, he hypothesizes how Trump's health care bill and austerity measures might affect a state like West Virginia, which voted overwhelmingly for him in the 2016 election. Twenty-nine percent of its residents are on Medicaid, 19 percent rely on food stamps and 4 percent receive disability payments via Social Security, the highest rate in the country and one of the coal industry's lasting legacies. If a Republican-controlled Congress has its way, the results would be "apocalyptic": Hundreds of thousands would lose health insurance; medical debt and untreated conditions would surge; and there would be an explosion in extreme poverty, including a lot of outright hunger. Why, then, would they cast their ballots for such a candidate? Krugman suspects that many believed Trump would rethrone King Coal, this despite the fact that one in six West Virginians now works in health care and social assistance. Countless other were likely suckered by an oligarch masquerading as a populist—one they hoped would preserve or expand their essential benefits, even at the expense of other more vulnerable racial groups. (West Virginia is 93 percent white). "What they got instead," he writes, "was the mother of all sucker punches." "So many of the people who voted for Donald Trump were the victims of an epic scam by a man who has built his life around scamming," he continues. "In the case of West Virginians, this scam could end up pretty much destroying their state"."
