by cmsellers » Thu Jul 25, 2019 5:28 am
I'm gonna break up my wall o' text with headings.
King of the Hill
So WRT King of the Hill, I agree that Hank would almost certainly be a NeverTrump Republican, Dale wouldn't vote, and Boomhauer doesn't very political, though as an FBI agent he could be a "go along with Trump in the hopes we can control him" type. Bill has been shown to be kind of soft-hearted, so I'm not sure he'd be a Trump supporter either. Buck Strickland and Cotton are 100% Trump supporters, if either of them are still alive at this point.
I can see Kahn, Peggy, and Luanne all voting for Trump, though also good reasons for them not to. Vietnamese-Americans are the only reliably Asian-American subgroup, and while Kahn is Laotian, he seems to be ethnically Lao and his background is closer to many Vietnamese-Americans than to the Hmong, who are the largest group of Laotian-Americans. However, like other reliably Republican ethnic minorities like Cubans and Orthodox Jews, Vietnamese-Americans voted Democratic for the first time in 2016. I can imagine Kahn and Hank both being horrified by Trump and then being horrified that they agree. Peggy seems like the kind of person who might support Trump because she thinks he's more liberal than Hillary. And while Luanne is a poor white who excuses horribly sexist behavior from men, she also doesn't seem like the voting kind.
Parks and Rec and The Office
Ron Swanson's brand of libertarianism, I think, makes him unlikely to support Trump. Trump is the opposite of a libertarian, and though a distressing number "libertarians" did support Trump, they tended to be Tea Party types, which Ron Swanson really isn't, and to reliably vote Republican. I always read Ron Swanson as a capital-L, Libertarian who reliably votes for Libertarian Party candidates and writes stuff in when there's none available. And I don't read Andy as political at all.
Of all the Parks and Rec employees, I feel like Donna and Jerry are the most likely Trump supporters, though I have an easier time imagining both as apolitical. That said, I can imagine all the Parks and Rec employees bullying Jerry for voting Trump, someone calls Donna out on supporting Trump too, and she has some excuse about why it's different for her.
Michael Scott doesn't seem like the political type, but Angela is 100% a Trump supporter and same for most of the white warehouse crew. Phyllis is a plausible Trump supporter, as an old white woman. Jim and Pam, TBH, seem like Trump supporters too, especially Jim, given how much of a bully he is. Dwight, I feel like, is someone who doesn't vote because voting is how they track you, but I can imagine him defending Trump once he's in office.
Why I think sympathetic fictional characters who are likely Trump supporters are rare
One thing that occurred to me is that most show writers are very liberal (and the exceptions mostly libertarians like Trey Parker, Matt Stone, and Mike Judge, none of whom like Trump either), and they tend to write sympathetic characters with personality traits that make them unlikely, IMO, to be Trump supporters.
Unsympathetic characters are sometimes characterized as conservative, but even a lot of unsympathetic characters by liberal writers seem like they'd either lean Democratic or apolitical. So while I can believe the self-insert characters of Trump supporters like Frasier Crane, Roseanne Connor, or Tim Allen's characters would be Trump supporters, it's hard to think of a sympathetic character by a creator who doesn't support Trump where I go "yeah, this person would probably a Trump supporter."
One possible exception that comes to mind for me is Archer's Cheryl Tunt, but that's because she's a masochist would would probably like the idea of Trump grabbing her by the pussy, and you can argue about how sympathetic she is. (Though she's way more sympathetic than Mallory Archer, who is definitely a Trump supporter.)
The other possible exceptions are the characters from the show Justified. It's set in Eastern Kentucky, the Trumpiest of Trump country. I'm not sure about Boyd Crowder, who is an autodiadect who abandoned his white nationalism, but most of the other locals are probably Trump supporters. And if Raylan votes, being a cop who routinely breaks the law to get what he wants, he's almost certainly a Trump supporter.
Writing this also makes me realize that clearly part of the problem is that shows are usually set in places that are likely to lean Democratic. Even small cities like Scranton and Pawnee (well, it's real-world equivalents) lean Democratic and the characters on The Office and Parks and Recreation have jobs (white collar office jobs, government work) that make them likelier to be Democrats or NeverTrump Republicans.
The only shows I can think of from recent times set the late 20th/early 21st century in definite Trump Country and featuring people with jobs that Trump supporters are likely to hold are are Justified, Roseanne/The Connors, Fargo, The Middle, and Greg Garcia's My Name is Earl and Raising Hope. There are probably characters in the shows I haven't discussed yet who are Trump supporters, but it's not immediately obvious to me who, at least not as I'm writing this. I'll sleep on it.