He's Kind of Gray

What's up with the continuing success of Donald Trump in the presidential race? Much of it is a mystery to me, but there's one element that relates, I think, to my last post on the Confederate Battle Flag.

Now I'm hardly the first or only person to be seeking the reason for the unbelievably long run of the Cirque de Trump. When not predicting his imminent disappearance, most all of America's pundits (and the more "important" and "authoritative," the more likely) have been trying to solve the mystery of the Trump supporter.

Take, for example, Peter Wehner in Commentary:

What’s fascinating to me is that for many Trump supporters, the kind of flip-flops and philosophical transgressions that would disqualify any other candidate many times over doesn’t apply to Trump. The question is: Why? What is it about Trump that causes some people on the right to suspend their critical judgments, renounce fidelity to conservative ideology and policies, and extend immunity to Trump in ways they would never to anyone else?

...

His is a populist moment – and for them, Trump is Mr. Anti-Establishment. They see him as the confrontational outsider, unscripted and not politically correct, a person who can shake up the system. Donald Trump is The Great Disrupter. In addition, he knows how to “school” the “establishment” types and has their “number.”

Andrew Prokop of Vox also riffed on this idea, explaining that Trump's casual dismissal of his support for politicians in the past was a refreshingly honest moment in the first Republican debate. "Trump's analysis of how money influences politics isn't about straight bribery. It's about building a long-term relationship in which each side does favors for the other. He gives to politicians, and then, he says, 'When I need something from them, two years later, three years later, I call them.'" This, Prokop wrote, is part of the appeal. "One of the main themes I've heard from Trump supporters explaining why they support him is their belief that he 'can't be bought.' And weirdly enough, his frankness about how he himself has tried to buy others helps make this point."

Rush Limbaugh, who has been surprisingly uncritical of Trump through the run (perhaps one showman recognizes another?), once pointed out that many Trump supporters have only the vaguest of ideas of what Trump has actually said. He described how, when he quizzed them about what they thought Trump's policies were, he would either get amorphous responses or projections of what the listener wanted to hear ... but Trump had never said.

In October, Bill Clinton offered his own, somewhat admiring evaluation of the support:

"Because he says something that overrides the ideological differences," Clinton explained. "If you look at the first debate, a lot of those guys were competing for who could be the most politically correct on the answers. Trump says, 'OK, I've supported Democrats, I've supported Republicans. Yeah, I used to be friends with Bill Clinton, who cares? I run things, and I build things. And you need somebody who'll go in there and fix it. And if they don't let me fix it, I'll just get them out of the way.'"

I'm wondering if Clinton remains as impressed, now that Trump has moved his snarky Twitter comments to the subject of the ex-President himself ...

More recently, The New York Times took on the question:

The anxiety Mr Trump supporters betray by looking for scapegoats says most, of course, about themselves. Typically members of the white lower middle-class, they are at once jealous of the small privileges that distinguish them from the toilers below, and bitterly resentful of the faraway government that provides their Social Security and Medicare. Remonstrating in hard times, they are the “radical centre”, in academic jargon, who turned out for George Wallace, a populist southern Democrat who ran for president four times in the 1960s and 70s, and for another pair of crowd-pleasers, Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot, in the 1990s. Asked who was the last politician to excite them like Mr Trump, several in Sarasota cited Mr Perot. Mr Trump’s big achievement is to have entered the race with a message already perfectly crafted for this group.

Now the "radical center" (Amerifying the spelling from academeze) may not be exactly who I meant to describe as using the Confederate Battle Flag as an emblem for lack of anything else, but it'll do for the moment.

Now, as then, a fear that America is getting weaker, economically or militarily, plays to its members’ fear of loss and change. That also plays to a nationalistic desire for a strong hand on the tiller— for someone, as Linda Miller, a retired accountant, said admiringly of Mr Trump, “to kick ass and take names."

So said The Economist in an article on December 5th proclaiming the Trump Campaign "The Greatest Show on Earth," but with the subhed: "Mr. Trump's support will not collapse, but he is still a long shot for the Republican nomination." They don't know why they like him, but Trump's supporters know he's not the guys that make them feel bad about themselves, their work, their lifestyle, where they shop, who they have as friends, what their entertainment is, what they eat, how they eat, etc., etc., etc. And he lashes out the way they wish they could ... only they can't, because then they would be sent to the Human Resources office, which seems to take that term literally.

But what happens now? Surely, as The Economist said, he can't become our president, or even the nominee of a major party, can he? Surely he's just the satisfying temper tantrum the "silent majority" has been repressing, and then we can return to politics as usual?

Ezra Klein, writing for Vox, has a theory or two. First, how has this gone on so long?

Donald Trump is the candidate willing to say things that are truly beyond the pale. He is the candidate who won't be cowed by the media or political elites. Every time he stands tall against a "politically correct" firestorm — wherein "politically correct" means treating people with some bare modicum of decency and respect — his numbers firm up. Backlash is his brand.

But it's gone on and on (Klein quotes Mike Allen in Politico: "It’s 28 days to Iowa, 36 days to New Hampshire, 47 days to South Carolina, 50 days to Nevada and 57 days to the SEC primary. If you think voters will suddenly get serious — and that Trump is a ‘lampshade candidate’ who’ll eventually wear out his welcome — you’re running out of time to be right.") How can it end?

He will lead until he doesn't. His fall will be quick, and it won't obey the apparent rules of his rise. If there is a reason for it, it will fundamentally be, "People get more pragmatic the closer they get to an actual vote." As much as Republicans tell pollsters they think Trump can win the general election, I am skeptical they will truly believe that come Election Day.

 Magical thinking? Maybe. But it is the wise leader who recognizes in Trump, in the Confederate Battle Flag, in the recent prairie rebellions in Oregon and Nevada, in the Tea Party movement, a great, dark, dangerous, rumbling -- but still unfocused -- discontent in the way of things.