I’ve seen a lot of weird phenomena as it relates to support of President Donald Trump. For example, Trump is the first candidate I’ve ever seen to have flags be a regular way for supporters to express their support.
This year though, we have seen another weird phenomenon that Trump supporters have been obsessed with: boat parades.
Exhibit A:
And Exhibit B, which literally comes from a Trump campaign staffer.
And then there’s this, a “world-record” attempt spearheaded by the former Attorney General of Florida.
Just do a quick Google search and you wind up with a metric ton of links regarding “Trump Boat Parades.” Every time I log onto the internet it’s:
Every time I see one of these stories about boat parades all I can think of is: huh?
There are only about 13-17 million recreation boats in the entire country. That means, at most, only 4% of Americans own a boat. Four. Percent. Recreation boaters also tend to be, for the most part, white upper-middle-class males.
So what message exactly is the Trump campaign trying to send here? Such a gung-ho focus on boat parades is certainly no way to reach out to persuadable voters considering that many of America’s most persuadable voters are in no position to own a boat even before the current economic downturn.
So why do this at all? Some Twitter friends posited some theories.
So I suppose this, more so than anything else, makes a lot of sense. Boat parades then, as an organic expression of Trump support, are the best that some people can do right now. Even if they are impractical and potentially counterproductive. (The overpasses issues is something I wrote about back in 2013).
But as far as the Trump campaign apparatus promoting this? I have absolutely no idea what they are thinking.
Maybe it’s because the boaters often show some a great deal of enthusiasm for Trump.
Maybe it’s because, as suggested, it’s the only way the Trump supporters can congregate to show their support for Trump without it become an issue with masks and social distancing.
Maybe it’s because the Trump campaign is tired of bad news, seeing as they are currently down double-digits nationally, and want to try to spin some sort of positive message.
Either way, focusing on boat parades is not a winning message for Trump, nor would it be for any other candidate. Whether intentional or not, boat parades emphasize the class warfare message of haves versus have nots that has been pushed by Democrats during this entire election cycle. If supporters want to do boat parades, more power to them. But the Trump campaign leadership should know better than to push this type of messaging as indicative of broad national support.