Trump’s rise is the most disturbing development I’ve lived through in American politics. Very few events have caused me to rethink so many fundamental assumptions about what could and couldn’t happen here. Maybe the concussion has made this make even less sense.
Maybe if I was older at the time Abu Graib would have been similarly jarring. But then you could have written it off to a few hundred Americans in wartime halfway across the world. Watching an authoritarian demagogue seduce millions of Americans, with unemployment at 5.5% and no world-shattering foreign policy crisis in the offing, into handing him a major party presidential nomination is something else.
I feel really dislocated . I thought I sort of got America and its politics and that maybe only 10% of peoples’ political views I couldn’t fathom.
I thought it was a joke
He rode down on an elevator and called Mexicans rapists. It was definitely over when he said McCain was only a war hero because he was captured, and that he likes “people that weren’t captured, OK?”
Susan, who grew up in rural New York, saw it early. I couldn’t conceive of a Trump supporter. No way church-goers would fall for him. Same goes for small government conservatives. At most, 10% of Americans were thick enough to find his misogyny and racism and ‘success shtick’ appealing.
I was in New Hampshire the weekend before the primary. Even when he was polling 15 points ahead of the pack, I wanted to get to one of his rallies so I could see him in action before he crashed. Only on Super Tuesday did it really sink in, and only now am I starting to wrap my head around it.
The policy appeal
My whole life I’ve been reading thinkpieces asking ‘why don’t GOP voters vote their economic interests?’ Trump is finally giving them that opportunity. The open market, small government GOP orthodoxy screws over unskilled and undereducated voters who rely on Medicare and Social Security.
The social issues? I don’t know enough people who are strongly pro-life or wouldn’t be completely turned off by his racism and misogyny to get what’s going on here. Maybe there’s some sense that it’s not 2004 its 2016 and by now the culture wars are almost passe.
The Charismatic Leader
But the charisma is real. Trump is resonating in a part of the brain I’ve read about politicians touching during the Great Depression and seen more recently in Europe but never thought possible in 21st century America.
To be annoying and drop a Max Weber quote, the charismatic authority of a leader rests “on devotion to the exceptional sanctity, heroism or exemplary character of an individual person, and of the normative patterns or order revealed or ordained by him.”
Sanctity: Trump is beholden to no-one. Yes, he gave money to Hillary Clinton, but that was when he was milking the system. Now he’s the only candidate who has no Super PAC and doesn’t take money from corporations. Usually tyrants aren’t billionaires, but in a country that celebrates economic success, his wealth doesn’t really raise eyebrows. Plus, his accent and manner of speech means he can’t really be an establishment plutocrat.
Heroism: Trump “tells it like it is.” Plenty of Americans think Mexicans are rapists and murderers. Plenty ISIS family members deserve to die. Any plenty of Americans may be a little turned off by the substance but respect the style.
Normative Patterns or Order Revealed or Ordained by Him: The above ‘truth-telling’ feeds into this. But Trump also possesses the magic of ‘The Deal.’ Everyone else who has ever worked for the government is either a sucker or bought off. Only Trump is independent enough to say this, and only through his brains can he undo everything that’s made America not great.
Trade sucks for Americans? Just negotiate. Budget doesn’t add up? Just negotiate. Putin messing up Syria? Just negotiate. Stop Israelis and Palestinians from killing each other? Well, he acknowledges that one would be “very, very tough.” “I would say if you can do that deal you can do any deal…That’s probably the toughest deal in the world right now to make and it’s possible it’s not makeable.”
The wish-fulfillment power fantasy Trump provides I don’t really understand but is a real thing as too.
The Rhetoric of Reaction
Consistency isn’t the name of the game — style is. The short sentences, New York accent, and five-beers-in grammar gives him an appeal talking point politicians lack. Said (I know, I know…) Aristotle:
Delivery has just as much to do with oratory as with poetry…These are the three things-volume of sound, modulation of pitch, and rhythm-that a speaker bears in mind. It is those who do bear them in mind who usually win prizes in the dramatic contests; and just as in drama the actors now count for more than the poets, so it is in the contests of public life, owing to the defects of our political institutions.
He’s as good a political communicator as they come. He has imbibed mainstream and right wing over the past few decades and knows better than anyone in America how to generate news.
Rubio hasn’t been in the playground long enough to know what to do with Trump. Cruz comes off like the high school debater he still is except today the judges aren’t ex-debaters back on break from college they’re the people who make a circle in the hallway and chant ‘fight.’
Foreign policy and trade? No one understands it.
“the deal”. makes sense (axelrod) as this is were obama was weakest. he spent two years trying to cut a deal that wasn’t there, wasted america’s time by not calling GOP’s bluff on the debt ceiling.
Could the GOP have stopped him?
What could have stopped him? Maybe a successful CEO could have called him out on his . After all
i really don’t blame them for not seeing it early. It was just out of the realm of possibility — never happened before in US politics.
An A1 candidate . After all those thinkpieces about this being the strongest crop in GOP history, all the candidates proved
Imagine you’re Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney, going to bed each night thinking that had they ran for president they probably could’ve
Or Jeb, knowing that you failed and a party and a country your family ran for twelve years has turned into the party of Trump.
Romney could’ve really called him out on business. Carly couldn’t. Rubio can’t.
But it’s not really about the policy perspective.
But he’s also giving them much more.
reevaluating this country. it just doesn’t compute with the nation i think i know.
trump courting establishment just enough. they want cover to be albe to support him. doing the pledge earlier. backing off on torture and killing isis kids.
He has a real shot at the general
He’ll run as a moderate . Lot’s of dems.
Another thing that trump says that isn’t totally crazy is his wheeling and dealing.
Obama
Obama really thrown off in first debate in 2012 when he went moderate.
Rockefeller republican. Takes a lot of reasonably popular positions that mainstream GOP won’t. It’s a real ‘profile in courage’ moment and I think most politicians today don’t have it in them.
What are the risks?
I don’t know how long he can keep it going. Right now it’s been 6 months since launch. Can he for another eight months?
What shoe could drop that could really hurt him? Rape allegation. Money laundering charges.
No faith in the GOP to buck him.
And he would be the worst president this nation has ever seen
It’s really
dictatorial president
Harder to predict domestic policy consequences. But Foreign policy consequences: a disaster.
reverse schadenfreude of sort of chucking at other democracies and thinking, no way it could happen ehre
Thank god Bush passed TARP, Bernanke opened the taps, and Obama passed the stimulus. If Trump polling at 40% is what we get with an, all things considered, pretty decent recovery from a twice-a-century recession, god knows what would have happened had the world tipped over the edge.
It will suck even if he loses
Tpp dies — trade consensus falters
Overton window expanded
Trump primaries on GOP