3/4/16
Yours truly has been on top of this Trump phenomenon, movement, or whatever
people are currently calling it, from just about the
beginning. In December, I discussed, or
maybe I introduced, the concept of the “Reverse
Bradley Effect,” predicted a loss by Trump in Iowa, and wondered what such a loss would do for the Trumpian
effort:
A few days later, yours truly produced his best work on
Trump, explaining, in a letter to the Chicago
Tribune quoted on WGN Radio, why Mr. Trump was doing so
well in what was considered a Quixotic quest for the Oval Office:
Now people who get paid outrageous
amounts of money to do what I do for free are finally picking up on the secret
to Trump, elucidated in that December post, i.e., it’s not Trump. People aren’t idiots and they realize the
man is veritable patchwork of flaws, but they are so tired of being treated like
sociological curiosities and being either patronized or disdained that they are
willing to embrace a man whose behavior in many instances appalls them.
Then on the dawn of the Iowa caucuses, I hedged just a bit
on my prediction of a Trump loss and revisited both the “Reverse Bradley Effect”
and my long held theory that the overwhelming share of apathetic voters are not
yearning and pining for a “mainstream centrist” but, instead, don’t vote because
they see that “mainstream centrists” are taking us on a dystopian cruise down a
very malodorous river:
So far, things have been working out just about as I had
predicted, if indeed I were in the habit of predicting things. In the wake of Trump’s nearly stunning
victories on Super Tuesday and the
debate last night that reminded me of the pro wrestling matches and interviews that
were such a fascination of my youth, I have a few more thoughts to share with
my readers.
First, despite what you hear from the people who somehow
managed to get good paying gigs spewing nonsense on cable TV, it is still early
in the campaign. There is a lot of
time, a lot of states, and a lot of delegates between now and the conventions. Note that, of the five largest states, only
one has held a primary or caucus. Nobody,
not Mr. Trump, not Hillary Clinton, is
inevitable at this stage. The now
proclaimed non-existent path to the nomination of a challenger to either of the
front runners could suddenly clear with a big state victory, an indictment, a gaffe
of outrageous proportions, or simply the public’s growing tired of the acts of either
of the front-runners. There remains
plenty of fun to be had this election season.
Second, many Republicans are opposing Mr. Trump on
principle and/or personality. Some
GOPers are opposing Mr. Trump because they fear there is no way he can beat
Mrs. Clinton. Many Democrats are
cheering on Mr. Trump, thinking, like their mainstream Republican colleagues, that
he will be easy pickings for Mrs. Clinton.
Yours truly completely understands the opposition of the first of the
above groups. But the second should calm
down and the third should be careful what they wish for. Donald
Trump can certainly win a general election against Hillary Clinton.
There are at least three reasons for my confidence that,
despite the conventional, largely unchallenged, wisdom, Mr. Trump can defeat Mrs.
Clinton. First, those of us of a certain
age remember the 1980 Republican contest when we were told that the “nuclear
cowboy” Ronald Reagan could never
win a general election; he was, we were assured by the pundits, you guessed it,
“too far out of the mainstream.” Some
might argue that Mr. Reagan was not as far outside the sphere of respectability
and acceptability as is Mr. Trump.
While there might be something to this argument, those who make it
display not so much a surfeit of political insight as a lack of experience and
sense of history.
Mr. Reagan was using language that Mr. Trump would not
consider, or at least has not so far not employed. In his 1976 campaign, Mr. Reagan was railing
against welfare queens. In the 1980 campaign, he called the man he would
later make his running mate “a Yalie, a preppie, a sissy,” despite the fact
that George H.W. Bush was a genuine war hero.
Yes, it was a different, more tolerant, time (due to the pervasive and
increasingly jack-booted political correctness that is making Mr. Trump
viable), but, still, Mr. Reagan’s rhetorical outrages were at or near a par
with those of Mr. Trump.
Remember the other knock on Reagan, other than that he
was “outside the mainstream,” a dangerous radical right-winger? He was also a policy lightweight, according
to the intelligentsia. He just didn’t
have the knowledge, or the intellect, to be president. And his assurances that he would find the right
people to help in his administration (Sound familiar?), as he did as governor
of California, rang hollow to his betters
in the salons of Georgetown.
None of these obvious points of disqualification stopped Mr.
Reagan from defeating an incumbent president, winning a second term by a
landslide, and putting a nearly despondent post-Nixon GOP on the path to not
only relevance but dominance.
Second, for years we have been told by the wise men (er,
sorry, wise people) on the tube that the GOP must broaden its base, that it is
doomed to failure if it doesn’t bring new blood into the party. Though I am sure that this is not what our
clear superiors have in mind when they tut that the GOP must broaden itself,
who, pray tell, is broadening the Party?
It isn’t Marco Rubio, the man
who proclaims that he is the only one who can beat Hillary while going 1 for 20
or so in the contests so far. It isn’t Ted Cruz, who can’t seem to win outside
his home state, bordering states, or states dominated by people who share his narrow
vision of social conservatism. It is Mr.
Trump who is broadening the party. Does
anyone think that participation in Republican caucuses and primaries is 60%
higher than it was in 2016 because people are clamoring to vote for the John Kasich, the preferred candidate of
the New York Times? If the Republican
Party wants to attract new voters to the polls, people who are NOT going to
vote for Hillary Clinton, it is Mr. Trump who will do so for them.
Third, yours truly is starting to think that the
Republicans can beat Hillary Clinton with just about anybody at the top of the GOP
ticket. Yes, there are the issues of Benghazi, Libya and the Arab Spring in general. Yes, there is the family money laundering
operation called the Clinton Foundation. And of course there are those nagging
e-mails that, though I think won’t amount to much, could be as big as the
brown-nosers in Washington fear they could be.
But there is also that blatant Hillary hypocrisy, the disingenuousness,
the real or perceived too clever by half dishonesty, and that annoying screech
of a voice that wears on even her most ardent supporters. There is her taking the American people for
a bunch of idiots, best exemplified by Mrs. Clinton’s protestations that her
political difficulties arise from her ability to advocate for other people but
her inability to advocate for herself.
There is her card-carrying membership in, indeed her decades of leadership
in, the Washington insider club that
American voters so despise. There is
the continuing fear, or confidence, that, given enough rope, Mrs. Clinton will
surely hang herself on her own rhetoric and stone faced, sneering, smirking
personality, or lack thereof, that if she is only allowed to talk long enough,
she will say something, or a collection of things, that will sink her
presidential hopes. She’s blown it
before and surely she’ll blow it again.
She is not Bill, the political natural who lights up a room. She is Hillary, the policy wonk who is certain
that she is the smartest person in the room yet is too desperate to prove it.
If you don’t want Mr. Trump to become the next president,
I completely understand. Though I am
fascinated by the man, and surely am party to the anger and frustration he
reflects, I, too, am not sure I would want him to be president. But just because Mr. Trump’s election is not
an outcome you would want, don’t register that disinclination, or outright
horror, by denying that his election is something that cannot happen. It surely can…and I have just told you why.
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