Donald Trump’s victory in the GOP race is utterly appalling; no reasonable person can doubt it.
Trump is a bigot. His campaign began with a attack on Mexican immigrants, one that was pushed into the background when, finding a more timely target, he flung his vitriol at Muslims. He is a misogynist. His attacks on Carly Fiorina, Megan Kelly, and Heidi Cruz are portents of an ugly campaign — assuming of course that Hillary Clinton will be the nominee. Trump delights in thuggery and violence, as his response to demonstrators at his rallies makes clear. Trump is an ignoramus. He knows little about the world–and cares even less. Trump is an authoritarian. Trump is a bully. Trump is a megalomaniac.
And yet he won.
But what does his victory mean? It certainly does not mean that Americans love him; they don’t. Roughly two-thirds of Americans tell pollsters they don’t approve. Most Americans, Republicans, Democrats, and independents alike, can’t stand what he stands for.
It wasn’t his genius–though his manipulation of the press was, well, masterful. Nor was it the pathetic coverage by that same press, though the free airtime he got was astounding.
No. It was the truly awful nature of today’s GOP, and the genuinely dismal calibre of the GOP field. With Trump’s grinning mug before us today, it is difficult to remember how truly awful the GOP field was. There wasn’t a single worthy in the whole lot.
Some of the were just plain dumb. Rick Perry — remember him? He still can’t count to three. Bad math also haunted Bobby Jindal, who somehow thought the crooked numbers from Louisiana would propel him to the presidency. It didn’t add up. Others embraced truly stupid ideas; Scott Walker’s biggest contribution to the politics of the nation was to one-up Trump by suggesting that we build a wall on our northern border.
Lindsey Graham, himself a one-time presidential hopeful, explained that his party had gone “batshit crazy.” And, indeed, the boundary between “plain dumb” and “plumb nuts” was fully explored by this crowd. Ben Carson, whose credentials at first impressed, insisted that the pyramids had been built by aliens. Trump himself racked up the greatest number of crazy pronouncements, deftly combining staggering innumeracy with bombastic bullshit.
There really wasn’t a consequential person in the bunch. The one that the press–and the deep-pocketed money-men of the GOP–backed as the “serious” candidate, Jeb!, made us rediscover the vacuousness of the Bush clan. Armed with buckets of cash and oodles of advisers, he was devoid of ideas, lacking in charisma, and tainted by the legacy of his cynical older brother and the belated embrace of his sharp-tongued mother. The other “serious” candidates — Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina, Marco Rubio — each had deep and easily exploited flaws. Christie had the legacy of traffic-gate and his supposed cosiness with Obama to contend with, but his venality and shallowness truly came to the fore after he dropped out of the race and endorsed Trump. Christie did make one contribution to the race: he gleefully popped Marco Rubio’s balloon of pretend-seriousness. John Kasich, another not-very-good governor, managed to convince a few sympathetic journalists that he was the decent alternative in the GOP, but his policies were no different from any of his right-wing colleagues’. He could only ever have been a serious anti-candidate, but even that proved well beyond his reach. Carly Fiorina, whose contribution to the American economy was to destroy Compaq, imperil HP, and eliminate 30,000 jobs, offered nothing of substance to anyone–except to a desperate Ted Cruz.
Ted Cruz, of course, touted in the last few weeks as the last hope of the anti-Trump crowd, would not ever have been a viable candidate. He’s just too damned nasty and self-serving, even in the age of the Tea Party. As Lindsey Graham (perhaps only half-)jokingly pointed out, “If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you.”
There were a handful of others, too. Jim Gilmore. The fatuous Rand Paul. The odious Rick Santorum. And the utterly unremarkable George Pataki.
It was in this shallow and brackish political pond that Trump became a big fish. In the early going, his victories were pluralities (except, of course, in the all-important Northern Marianas, where he won nearly three-fourths of the vote…). Trump didn’t really take off until New York — but that is as much a testament to Cruz’s weakness as a candidate.
So where does that leave us? Trump managed to knock off the GOP’s army of nonentities by exploiting a split field at the beginning and having the good fortune that the two remaining candidates were, respectively, too bland and too awful to attract more than a fraction of the vote. With five or six candidates in the race, all Trump had to do was take a third of the vote to be declared the winner. Now, though, he has to win all of the Republican votes and a very significant chunk of independents. There are huge obstacles to a Trump victory: he has alienated women, Latinos, Blacks, Muslims, and if the past is any guide, is almost certain to offend another big chunk of voters before November. But if a Trump victory has to be considered a long shot, it’s not impossible.
I don’t think Trump will be able to win over the groups he has already alienated. So his goal has to be to maximize the turnout amongst those who support him, and minimize the turnout of those who are against him. Trump does not need 50%+1 of Americans to support him. All he needs is a plurality of votes in enough states to win in the Electoral College. Trump’s campaign will be dirty and it will be ugly; the aim will be to fire up his crowd and turn off his opponents. And I would guess that Trump would welcome a third-party candidate, knowing that a three-way split would give him a greater chance of a victory by plurality than a two-way race would of an outright victory.
Trump represents a real danger to the republic. So here’s my plea: do what you can to encourage everyone you know to vote. Remind them (and yourself) of the things Trump has said. Imagine what would happen if he carried out even a fraction of what he has promised.
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