This week in Milwaukee, Donald Trump will join a rare group of only four Americans who have received their party’s presidential nomination in three consecutive elections. The others were Andrew Jackson, Grover Cleveland and Franklin D. Roosevelt who, of course, set the record at four.

Whatever his flaws and outrages, or in some cases because of them, Trump has demonstrated a hold on his party that has seldom been seen in modern political times. Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama enjoyed similarly strong bonds, even as it is hard to imagine either being granted carte blanche to write their party platform or going without one.

Regular readers know of my disregard for Trump as a morally unfit character and something of a con with dangerously authoritarian instincts.

However, this column is far less about Trump than it is about those who are drawn to him. The view of the Trump voter often advanced in media circles and common in the ever-enlightened ranks of the left is that of an uneducated simpleton, toting a gun, spewing racial animus, and blind to their candidate’s faults.

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A recent comment on my social media is par for the course. In it, Samantha, a Denver voter with a particularly acute case of righteous superiority, refers to Trump voters as “unbelievably arrogant, stupid, morally bankrupt cult members.”

Could her brush get any broader and her virtuous pretense any more obnoxious?

No doubt, there are some among Trump’s most ardent base who fit parts of this description. So, too, are there Democratic ultra-partisans who awake every morning blaming America for all the world’s ills and now dismissing evidence of Joe Biden’s infirmity as “fake news.”

Too many Trump critics deal in the broadest stereotypes of his voters without ever bothering to escape their self-imposed bubble to get to know those who think differently. For those clinging to such generalities, consider me a translator trying to paint a fuller picture.

In interviewing several Trump partisans from various parts of Colorado, I was struck by the extent to which they see their leader’s personal failings and chafe at his excesses.

For a rather small slice of his voters, clearly Trump can do no wrong and any alleged vices are inventions of his opponents. But far more, at least in my assessment, know those demerits all too well but have made a conscious calculation that the minuses are outweighed by his perceived attributes.

Terry from Aurora, while not starting with Trump way back in 2016 nor supporting him early in the 2024 primaries, articulately conveys the three issues that have put him solidly in the Trump camp. In his order, those issues are the border, inflation and student loan forgiveness. He referred to the latter as “a blatant example of vote-buying.”

Those three issues were cited time and again. Mike of Grand County mentioned all three. Hailing from a family of independent business owners, he was initially attracted to Trump back in 2016 as someone “who signs the front of the check, not the back of it.” Mike considers people like himself to be the “economic engine of the country” and perceives that “government is the only market sector now growing.”

Alexis from suburban Denver is harshly critical of much of Trump’s personal conduct but considers him “his own man who can’t be bought.” She trusts him as a non-politician who is “not afraid of going to jail; not afraid of getting gutted; not afraid of being kicked out.”

Much of Trump’s appeal is rooted in those perceived traits outside of the usual political realm. He is seen as a fighter, even a “pugilist” as described by one supporter who “does not roll over under pressure.”

While I might wish that some of that backbone extended to his personal rectitude, his enthused backers will settle for what they get.

Another Mike, this one living outside Colorado Springs, was with Trump from the beginning for precisely this reason. He saw in Trump someone who would “go against the grain and not play the political game.” For him, Trump is “not a politician, but a patriot who loves his country and the American people.”

In watching Trump for now eight or nine years, it strikes me that he has fundamentally shifted the political lens. His conservative ideology is clearly a central piece. But endless Republican politicians have voiced that doctrine. To the left-right paradigm, Trump added the split of insiders versus outsiders.

Trump’s GOP, once the party of monied elites and establishment power, has become the political home of the working stiff and the overlooked. No matter the irony of Trump’s own riches and silver spoon.

Consistent with our two-party system and the spiking of our polarized divide, Trump supporters virtually across the board cited the binary nature of the choice between Biden and their guy. This parallels the motivation of most Biden voters who are principally driven by Trump fear and antipathy.

To a person, Trump’s demeanor pales to insignificance when stacked up next to the prospect of another term of Biden and what is viewed as his party’s leftward drift. As Terry put it, “I don’t find all that much attractive about Trump but the Biden alternative is unfathomable.”

Reverse Trump and Biden’s names, and this is word-for-word what most Democrats regularly utter.

In each interview, I asked for their perception of Jan. 6 and of the widely-held fear of Trump as a would-be dictator.

For most Trump supporters, Jan. 6 has become so much background noise. It should be otherwise. El Paso County Mike expressed the prevailing view, contending that Trump stopped short of instigating the revolt but that he didn’t move quickly enough to calm it down.

As to the “dictator” concern, Terry conveyed the hope that “Trump will not go on a retribution tour…even if it would serve a lot of people right.” Mike from El Paso County writes off much of the anxiety to Trump’s “brash New York manner” and takes solace in our government “never being set up to be a dictatorship.”

Though Alexis took it in a different direction, likening the country at the moment to “children caught in the middle of a bad divorce” and saying that she could countenance a strong, dictatorial leader saying, “This is how we are going to fix it and we are just going to do it.”

In almost the next breath, Alexis tempered any such harshness by noting that Republicans could learn a thing or two from Democrats “about tolerance and compassion” whether with respect to the gay friends in her circle or in “understanding that people struggle and go through tough times.”

Nothing I heard from this handful of good, decent, fellow citizens changed my own view of Trump and my conviction that he should never again come near the Oval Office. But it is important to distinguish between the man and those many millions who find hope and voice in him.

While a few may be deplorable (word used advisedly), the vast majority hardly fit the all too convenient and dismissive stereotype.

Eric Sondermann is a Colorado-based independent political commentator. He writes regularly for ColoradoPolitics and the Gazette newspapers. Reach him at EWS@EricSondermann.com; follow him at @EricSondermann.