So, TV — or not TV?
Which beloved characters would have voted for Donald Trump?
Two questions have dominated political Twitter for the past few days: (1) Could the new Twitter design be any more dysfunctional; and (2) which fictional characters would have voted for Trump? I find that second question more fun than thinking about, say, North Korea’s new maybe-nuclear submarine.
The original tweet that inspired this debate specifically said, “no villains,” which makes it interesting. The point of this speculative exercise is whether one can imagine popular, likable characters voting for someone so unlikable as Donald Trump for U.S. president. To narrow this down further, let’s limit the criteria even more:
■ Television characters. We watch television at home. These characters resonate in personal ways that, say, the Marvel Cinematic Universe does not.
■ Anti-heroes don’t count. Would Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) have voted for Trump? Heck, Tony would have given money to the campaign and procured a sweet trucking gig to bring
New Jersey farm goods to the Trump’s D.C. hotel. But while anti-heroes might have been all the rage during peak prestige TV, that defeats the purpose of the exercise. So no Don Drapers, no Walter Whites.
■ The character would be alive today. Asking whether Star Trek characters would have voted for Trump seems silly, given that those characters were alive in the 23rd and 24th centuries. Sure, the odds are excellent that Leonard Mccoy, an irascible Southern military officer who demonstrated blatant racism against foreign members of the Enterprise crew, would have worn a #MAGA hat. But this does not really tell us much, so I’ll focus on characters that are presumed to have been alive in 2019.
■ The character would have been expected to cast a ballot. I can think of several popular characters who might have preferred Trump. But I can’t see these characters voting. Jason Mendoza of The Good Place, for example, is exactly the kind of guy who would have loved Trump’s fake billionaire shtick. Anyone familiar with that show, however, knows there is no way Jason would have registered to vote, much less cast a ballot. Similarly, I could see churchgoing Mike Heck, living in Orson, Ind., on The Middle, not wanting to vote for Hillary Clinton. On the other hand, Mike Heck is exactly the kind of character who would not vote because he would not believe that his vote would count.
So, with these criteria, who in the fictional TV universe would have voted for Trump? He scores well with the animated demographic. As Vox’s Matthew Yglesias notes, “Homer Simpson is a classic secular, northern, non-college white Obama-trump voter.” Similarly, most of the cast of King of the Hill, living in Texas, would have been expected to vote reliably for the GOP.
Texas-based characters are another place to mine support for Trump. Friday Night Lights remains one of my favourite shows, and coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler) might be the beau ideal of inspirational male authority figures on 21st-century television. While Coach Taylor has no problem with strong women, my hunch is that in 2016 he would have stayed rock-ribbed conservative and voted for Trump. Tim Riggins, too — actually, there’s a decent chance Riggins (Taylor Kitsch) would have got a job as assistant secretary of the Interior.
Beyond relying on demographic characteristics, who else would have voted for Trump? Wealthy, womanizing, business-obsessed Barney Stinson (Neil Patrick Harris) from How I Met Your Mother is a lead-pipe cinch to be a Trump supporter. Non-college outer-borough Joey Tribiani (Matt Leblanc) from Friends seems likely as well. Law enforcement officials probably would love Trump’s law-andorder rhetoric, so cops ranging from Rick Grimes to Andy Sipowicz would have gone for Trump. Zack Morris from Saved By the Bell would have voted for Trump, because, let’s face it, Zack Morris is trash.
And what about characters who were actually acknowledged to be Republican on their television shows? That is a sparse landscape. The character that comes to mind is Alex P. Keaton from Family Ties. Keaton was a Reagan Republican if there ever were one. He attended Milton Friedman lectures at age 17, for goodness’ sake.
That said, Keaton, as portrayed by Michael J. Fox, seems like the kind of Republican who would have campaigned for
Mitt Romney but could not have voted for Trump. His conservatism on the show was always related to economic policy. Keaton never seemed like the anti-immigrant type. It seems unlikely he would have supported a candidate who thought that trade wars were good and easy to win. And, in the end, Keaton’s ethics usually led him to make the ethical choice.
I suspect most of the characters listed above would have voted for Trump. Alex P. Keaton, however, would have been an original member of the #Nevertrump movement.