NYT:

“This is the country that elected Donald Trump,” said Garth Gardiner, driving a pickup across the 48,000-acre Angus beef ranch he runs with his two brothers. They lost about 500 cows in the fires. “I think he’d be doing himself a favor to come out and visit us.” Mr. Gardiner voted for Mr. Trump, and said he just wanted to hear a presidential mention of the fires amid Mr. Trump’s tweets about the rapper Snoop Dogg, the East Coast blizzard and the rudeness of the press corps. “Two sentences would go a long way,” Mr. Gardiner said.

CBS:

One element of President Trump’s budget proposal could sharply reduce funding for Meals on Wheels, which delivers nearly a million meals a day to the sick and elderly.... The program works for 56-year-old Linda Preast, who signed up for the program two years ago after a stroke left her in a wheelchair. Meals on Wheels delivers to her every weekday. Like most residents in Jones County, she voted for Donald Trump. “Are you surprised?” Miller asked. “Yeah,” Preast said. “Because he was told- I was under the influence that he was going to help us.”

VICE:

Marina Hitson McCuen took Donald Trump at his word last fall when he promised to repeal and replace Obamacare with “something terrific“ that would bring down costs. That couldn’t come soon enough for McCuen, a 53-year-old Trump supporter who works behind the counter at Celebrity’s Hotdogs in nearby Asheville. McCuen can’t afford health insurance, and she’s blunt about what happens if she gets sick: “I’m shit out of luck.” Like a lot of people living on the western edge of the state crossed by the Smoky Mountains, where folks can tick off all the factories that have shuttered in recent decades, McCuen doesn’t think it’s a good idea to simply end President Obama’s signature health law. “You can’t just cancel, cancel, cancel Obamacare like witchcraft,” she says, flicking her hand as if waving a wand.

Feeling bad for Gardiner, Preast, McCuen, and other Trump voters who will be hurt by Trump's policies and his indifference? Really, really, really bad, like a good liberal should? Well, you'll feel better after you read Frank Rich's new piece in NYMag...

As polls uniformly indicate, nothing that has happened since November 8 has shaken that support. And what are Trump’s voters getting in exchange for their loyalty? For starters, there’s Ryan-Trumpcare, which, on top of its other indignities, eliminates the requirement that Medicaid offer addiction treatment, which over the past two years has increased exponentially in opioid-decimated communities where it is desperately needed. Meanwhile, Trump’s White House circle of billionaires is busily catering to its own constituency, prioritizing tax cuts for the fabulously wealthy while pushing to eliminate rural-development agencies that aid Trump voters....

There’s no way liberals can counter these voters’ blind faith in a huckster who’s sold them this snake oil. The notion that they can be won over by some sort of new New Deal — “domestic programs that would benefit everyone (like national health insurance),” as Mark Lilla puts it — is wishful thinking. These voters are so adamantly opposed to government programs that in some cases they refuse to accept the fact that aid they already receive comes from Washington — witness the “Keep Government Out of My Medicare!” placards at the early tea-party protests.

Perhaps it’s a smarter idea to just let the GOP own these intractable voters. Liberals looking for a way to empathize with conservatives should endorse the core conservative belief in the importance of personal responsibility. Let Trump’s white working-class base take responsibility for its own votes — or in some cases failure to vote — and live with the election’s consequences. If, as polls tell us, many voters who vilify Obamacare haven’t yet figured out that it’s another name for the Affordable Care Act that’s benefiting them — or if they do know and still want the Trump alternative — then let them reap the consequences for voting against their own interests. That they will sabotage other needy Americans along with them is unavoidable in any case now — at least until voters stage an intervention in an election to come.

UPDATE: