Whatever becomes of his candidacy, Americans and the rest of the world will be wondering for a long time how the phenomenon of Donald Trump happened. They are already doing so.
The first thing to understand is that US political parties have nothing to do with who runs for the presidency. In fact, US political parties amount to a collection of functionaries who arrange the process of selecting a presidential nominee and push for victories for the party in the November elections.
Presidential candidates are, in reality, freelancers. They decide on their own whether to run, and the decision is based on their sense (and perhaps polling) of how they would do and whether they can collect the necessary funds. Some people run simply out of ego or greed. The publicity that attends a presidential bid can garner even a failed candidate a book contract, a television gig, or a well-paid speaking career. Trump ran on the basis of his celebrity. A famous developer with his name on all sorts of edifices and a personal fortune, he had been the star of a long-running prime-time “reality” show — a lodestone of US popular culture. He knew that America’s party system is so nebulous that he could decide on his own to run for President, and that there was no party structure to stop him.
Trump read the zeitgeist well: He played to the anger of the working class — those left behind in the shift from a manufacturing-led economy to one based on information. This was the group most hurt by trade deals such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which encouraged US companies to move their factories to Mexico and gave business owners who remained leverage to hold down wages. Trump lambastes NAFTA and promises that, as President, he would make trade deals that are more favorable to workers. Early on, he based his campaign on anti-immigration sentiment, launching his run by calling Mexican immigrants “rapists” and “murderers.”
Trump’s campaign is premised on his reputation as a fabulously successful businessman, though it’s not clear just how successful he’s been; there have been four bankruptcies, and some of the businesses based on his brand have failed. Though Trump still mentions the preposterous wall he has vowed to build along the border with Mexico (with Mexico footing the bill), he has now made trade his main issue. A whiff of fascism was apparent in Trump’s campaign from the outset.
Spurring violence is one of Trump’s instruments for gaining power. Were he to become president, there is little reason to doubt that he would exploit violence to maintain power.
The panicked Republican establishment that is now scrambling to block Trump from gaining enough delegates to win the nomination may be too divided and ineffectual to succeed. They are also torn over whether to try to block him at the convention, knowing that if they do, his followers may rebel. A few weeks ago, a small number of Republicans began to reconcile themselves to the idea that a President Trump wouldn’t be so bad; but this stopped when Trump continued apparently to encourage violence. Other Republicans concluded that his nationalism and nativism, as well as his ignorance about public affairs, make him dangerous. And now they have reason to fear that something has been unleashed that no one can stop.
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©Project Syndicate
