A key question now worth contemplating -- right before everyone goes home for Thanksgiving (and the inevitable family political squabbles) -- is how many of the promises Donald Trump made to his supporters can he break before they'll abandon him? Because so far, Trump has been doing some pretty serious backpedaling on some of his core applause lines, as he prepares to shift from campaigning to actually governing. Will his fans accept these broken promises, because they actually liked Trump's style more than they believed all his grand assertions, or did they take them all seriously and now are beginning to feel betrayed that they're not actually going to happen? This could be a crucial question, going forward, when assessing Trump's political capital and the effectiveness of his presidency.

Today's big news is that Trump apparently was just kidding about all that "Lock her up!" stuff out on the campaign trail. He's not going to sic his Justice Department on Clinton after all, it seems. Kellyanne Conway explained Trump's new position with a statement that might just send chills through Trump supporters everywhere:

I think when the President-elect, who's also the head of your party, tells you before he's even inaugurated that he doesn't wish to pursue these charges [against Clinton], it sends a very strong message, tone, and content. ... I think he's thinking of many different things as he prepares to become the president of the United States, and things that sound like the campaign are not among them.

For: "things that sound like the campaign" read: "all those applause lines where Trump made sweeping promises to his supporters, such as 'lock her up.'" This isn't the only big issue Trump's been recently disavowing, either, since he got elected. The big, beautiful border wall somehow became just a fence (in some places), and Trump's not guaranteeing Mexico's going to pay for it anymore (or, at least, he's lately been silent about this big promise). In another stunning about-face, Trump has actually been praising major portions of Obamacare, and saying a large part of it may not have to be scrapped. He's even sounding more reasonable on climate change these days, a big shift from: "it's all a Chinese hoax." Now he seems to be rethinking his stance on backing out of the Paris accords. Oh, and he talked to a Marine officer who told him torture doesn't work, so he's rethinking his support for waterboarding as well.

That seems to be a lot for Trump supporters to swallow, especially seeing as how he's not even in office yet. Breitbart just ran an article (I refuse to link to them, so do your own search to find it) with a headline that prominently featured the phrase: "Broken Promise," on the Clinton story alone, and the comments seem to be mixed. There are some who are outraged and feel betrayed already, and there are others insisting that Trump is merely doing a head-fake because if President Obama knew he was indeed going to go after Clinton, then he'd just pardon her right before he left office. If Obama thinks Trump won't go there, then he wouldn't pardon her. So even among Breitbart commenters, the reaction is so far pretty varied.

One thing is becoming pretty clear, and that is Trump supporters are likely to give him enormous latitude when it comes to his business dealings and possible conflicts of interest. The Trump Foundation taxes for 2015 were just released and showed that the foundation confessed to "self-dealing" after all those Washington Post stories laid bare how Trump used his own foundation's money in illegal ways. Plus, there are huge questions about whether a "blind trust" really means "turn it over to my children, who will also be my close advisors as president." But my guess is that Trump's supporters won't really mind any of it. After all, part of his appeal is his supposed business genius, so his supporters will likely brush all this aside as no more than sour grapes from Washington insiders and the lefty media. As Trump rightfully pointed out, there simply are no conflict of interest laws that apply to presidents. Presidents, members of Congress, and judges are all mystifyingly left out of the federal laws which ban conflicts of interest for all other federal employees. So Trump can continue to claim "all laws will be followed," and then do whatever he wants with his business dealings (such as Trump hotels encouraging foreign diplomats to stay there, which has already happened).

Making a fast buck is one thing, though, and disappointing your supporters on key campaign promises is another. Now, to be fair, Donald Trump is nobody's paragon of consistency. He flip-flopped on an almost weekly basis during the campaign, on any number of issues. His supporters didn't seem to mind all that much, so perhaps they'll take all of Trump's recent backpedaling in stride. He's still promising to make good on a number of things from the campaign, including dumping the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal on his first day in office. The promises he keeps may prove to be more important to his voters than the promises he jettisons. At this point, it's impossible to tell.

Trump's fluidity on positions could work another way as well, it's worth pointing out. Trump pays very close attention to the media, so if reports start coming from righty sites that he's losing support among his base because they feel betrayed, then he might just flip-flop right back to his original position, and then blame the whole thing on the biased media misinterpreting his real thoughts on the matter. He's a master at doing so, as evidenced by how many times he pulled this trick off during the campaign. So if any one of his new positions annoys his supporters too much, he can always later claim, "that's not true, I do still support my campaign position." It's worked before, so Trump may have this built-in "out" for anything that causes too harsh a reaction on right-wing news sites.

There's another facet to all of this as well. For every blustery extreme promise he made on the campaign trail that he's now walking away from, Trump could actually pick up some public support. "He's not so bad -- he just said all that crazy stuff to get elected," might run through the minds of people (especially Republicans) who refused to vote for Trump. They may see it as being reasonable and presidential, and be more inclined to give Trump the benefit of the doubt, for now.

It's still early days, so it's impossible to see how all these reversals by Trump will play out. But it's also an interesting topic of conversation for Thanksgiving family get-togethers. After your uncle (or aunt, or sister, or whomever) gleefully gloats for a while over Trump's victory (liberals are going to have to eat some crow with their turkey, in other words), take the initiative and see if they're open to a reasonable conversation about their support for him. "What promises he made during the campaign would be deal-breakers for your support if he goes back on them?" is an excellent question worth asking over the holidays, in other words. What would cause Trump supporters to abandon him? What would be unacceptable? What could be dismissed as: "Oh, he was just saying that stuff to get elected"? The answers to those questions might be the best early indicators of how successful Trump's presidency is going to be seen by those who supported him. So it's certainly worth asking, during the holiday weekend.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant