It’s not too early to say it and we shouldn’t be afraid to face facts: We’re entering a new Golden Age of Donald Trump news. I know many of you are impatient with the attention we sometimes give Trump – despite reading the same news assiduously (we’ve got data, don’t deny it!). Even I get sort of bored and impatient with it. But not now. Now we’re in new territory. As we know, over recent years, Trump has ditched his old brand as a cartoonish plutocrat, comfortable in the multi-cultural world of New York media and celebrity culture, to rebrand himself as an clown-car racist and populist xenophobe. And now finally the chickens or whatever farm animals Trump cavorts with are coming home to roost. Whatever damage he’s doing to his own businesses, he has become the doofus bull, enraged and ridiculous, let loose in the China shop of GOP electoral vulnerabilities.
Two things stand-out about the last weeks’ turn of events. One is that, as even Trump himself now concedes, for the first time his antics seem to be having a backlash that is significantly damaging his business brand and having an immediate effect on his bottom line. Even he admits that he is surprised by the extent of it. You can imagine him saying to himself, “You make one extremely racist comment denigrating an entire nationality and one of the biggest immigrant groups in the United States and suddenly everyone’s a critic.”
Back in the 2012 cycle I was genuinely surprised that his harsh turn into racist birther claptrap didn’t prove more damaging to his business. But I think that was a testament to his clownish persona and reputation. He was insulated by the fact that people were accustomed to him saying outrageous or ridiculous things that he’d likely say the opposite of a week later. So it simply wasn’t held against him like it might be another public person. But that has changed with gusto. In a mild reprisal of the Confederate Flag turnabout, companies and brands are dropping Trump right and left. I suspect he’s become untouchable by many or all Fortune 500 companies.
The Kochs can be disliked by a big chunk of the country. But that won’t make their oil industry products and services any less economic. Trump is much, much more vulnerable to this kind of backlash than your average billionaire because the entirety of his business model – in real estate, gambling, entertainment, retail – is based on the popular culture and his place within it.
Then there’s the effect on the GOP, which is more significant than the guilty pleasure of Trump’s business mortification.
If Republicans had a strong frontrunner or even a few strong candidates, Trump’s ability to do damage would be limited. He might even become a helpful foil. But they don’t. In a crowded field with no clear leader, Trump could easily become the numerical frontrunner with support in the high teens. At best, he will create a distraction that prevents a real candidate from gaining attention and momentum. At worst, he will damage the party’s already precarious standing with the Hispanic community and force some or perhaps all of the contenders to play catch-up with his embrace of what we might call imbecile populism.
TPM Reader JB at least thinks he’ll have much more traction than many of us realize …
Did you watch the Trump announcement speech? I hadn’t bothered, but saw the polls and watched it just now.
I expected the foolish caricature from The Apprentice, but that was not who showed up. I found myself thinking “wow, this guy is a force.” His facts are wrong, his policies are contradictory, fantastical and dangerous. But, damn, he is going to be a formidable politician and a force in these debates and the GOP race.
First, he doesn’t sound like any of the others, and he knows how to give a speech. He says things like we are getting our ass kicked as a country. Our leaders are stupid. Iraq was a waste. China’s leaders are outsmarting us. Mexico is killing us. He isn’t saying America is the greatest. He is saying we are losers and losing and if you want to win again you have to elect me. I win. Does anyone else say that? It’s powerful and will hit a nerve.
Second, he is a pure populist. I didn’t appreciate this until I saw the speech. He knows (seemingly instinctively) what will play to the hopes and fears of white working class voters, and he doesn’t care if that yields contradictions. He also seems sincere, and had me believing he believed all these contradictory things with all the earnestness of Joe Sixpack. We’re gonna shrink the debt and rebuild the country and repeal Obamacare and replace it with something cheaper and better and save social security and erect protective tariffs to create jobs and build a wall on the border (and make Mexico pay for it “mark my words”) and generally kick ass and dictate terms like we used to (in an imaginary past). “If I am president, no one is going to push us around.” HELL YES and Amen, thought the crowd.
We are a country in inevitable relative decline as the rest of the world catches up after our huge post~war, post~colonial head start. We don’t always win and we can’t dictate terms. No one feels this more than the white working class Trump is targeting. They are going to love candidate Trump and buy what he is selling. Mark my words ;-).
On balance, I don’t think I agree. But JB may be on to something. Being freed from the constraints of ever having to face a majority electorate gives you huge advantages in building support with 15% to 20% of half of it.
I got in a conversation over the weekend with a well-meaning liberal who was dejected that despite all Trump’s racist nonsense it actually seems to be helping him politically. Not even close I told him. He is clearly damaging himself financially. And it’s a disaster politically as well. Trump may be mini-surging in the polls. But politically Trump himself doesn’t exist since he’ll never be elected to anything. But every point he climbs in the polls is a real and present damage to the GOP. So if you oppose the things Trump espouses, what’s happening right now is, in a political sense, quite literally all good.
Personally, what is most interesting to me about all this (and in a way the most satisfying) is that I’m not really sure Trump believes any of what he’s saying. I don’t mean he’s secretly sensible or non-racist or non-stupid and is just saying these things out of cynical calculation. I’m not clear Trump actually believes or thinks anything the way regular humans do. Having watched him in various incarnations for some time, I think Trump says whatever sounds good or is convenient or self-aggrandizing at the particular moment. And anything Donald Trump says must not only be true but extremely true. So, in a sort of self-affirmation feedback loop, whatever Trump happened onto as a new anti-immigration hawk is now really, really true and obvious and righteous because Donald Trump said it.
Whatever the truth of it, Trump is damaging himself and discrediting the GOP. As I said, in political terms, it’s all good.
