Trump bets his presidency on a ‘silent majority’

With his law-and-order, tough-on-protesters rhetoric, Donald Trump is courting a suburban vote that might no longer exist.

The lines of demarcation between the nation’s cities and their suburbs have faded in the decades since Richard M. Nixon courted the “Silent Majority” that elected him to the White House.

With his law-and-order, tough-on-protesters rhetoric, Donald Trump is betting his presidency it still exists.

The suburbs — not the red, but sparsely populated rural areas of the country most often associated with Trump — are where Trump found the majority of his support in 2016. Yet it was in the suburbs that Democrats built their House majority two years ago in a dramatic midterm repudiation of the Republican president. Continue reading.