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Trump Is Now The Establishment
Though I’m not willing to throw-in the towel yet — Lord knows this election has been unpredictable — it’s very nearly certain that Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee for President of the United States. As a once-and-future #NeverTrump and #NeverClinton, I’m going to have to start thinking hard about what options remain to me (short version: they all stink). But that’s not what this post is about: It’s about you, Trump voters.
First, a bit of preemptive congratulations: You did it. You took your candidate from someone snobs like me rolled their eyes at to the presumptive nominee of the GOP. More impressively, you steamrolled over Jeb Bush and Mike Murphy and their donor-class millions, as well as a bench of fifteen other candidates widely described in Trumpian superlatives (The best! The most beautiful! The bigliest!). You even blew-past National Review and the rest of the “respectable” conservative media. Moreover, you moved the national conversation toward your key issues. At least at the moment, you’re winners.
Which brings me to the friendly advice I wanted to offer: You’ve got a problem with a frustrated, demoralized minority whose concerns aren’t being met and who may sit out the election as a result. If you think defeating Hillary Clinton is as important as you’ve said — and I’ve no reason to doubt you — then you need to figure out how to appeal to this group of people. You need to understand them. You need to take their concerns with the kind of gravity you felt the GOP denied you for so long. And you need to figure it out quickly.
Now, again, I’m a lost cause here but libertarian squishes in Massachusetts aren’t going to turn this election (As Trump might say: Sad). But there’s a much larger number of people who have been opposed to Trump so far, but who might reluctantly fall in line if he gets the nomination. You need to figure out how to persuade enough of them to put their misgivings aside so your candidate gets over the line. That won’t be easy, and you should have started yesterday.
For illustration, consider what’s going on in the alternate reality — no, not that one — where Donald Trump tragically died in a meteor strike and Senator Marco Rubio is in the same position as Trump is in our universe. Over there, would-have-been Trump supporters are furious and some Rubio fans are starting to feel buyers’ remorse. “Why on Earth,” they ask each other, “Did we think it was a good idea to support a member of the Gang of Eight amidst a national freak-out over immigration? Romney after ObamaCare was bad enough; this looks even worse.”
Those Rubio supporters are in serious trouble. Their party is breaking apart because they chose one of the two most compromised candidates on the one issue that makes Republican voters reach for their pitchforks and torches and it’s their fault. “If we’re going to beat Hillary,” they say, “We need some real answers and we need them now.”
However, that’s an alternate reality. In this one, Trump supporters are the establishment, or just about to be. You’re not going to convince everyone — again, lost cause here — but you need to start taking #NeverTrump concerns seriously. Don’t tell people that Jon Gabriel, Claire Berlinski, Mona Charen, Kevin Williamson, Robert Zubrin, and I are jerks. That hasn’t worked and it’s probably not going to start working any time soon. You need to show #MaybeTrumps that we’re wrong.
Convince them that Trump gives a damn about the constitution. Demonstrate to them that he’s not going to wreck the economy or get goaded into a war with Vladimir Putin. Persuade them that he’s going to use the powers of the federal government to run vindictive little wars against anyone who insults him, only now with the added threat of guns and the IRS.
It doesn’t matter whether you think those concerns are valid, or if you think they’re a mote compared Hillary Clinton’s log. Their concerns are what they are and you need to grant their worries the attention they feel they deserve.
In short, you need to try to understand non-Trump voters.
Best of luck.
Published in Politics
No, ‘we’ don’t. You are going to do what you wish. If you think Hillary is closer to your ideals than Trump, vote for her or stay home.
Now that the shoe is on the other foot, it’s fascinating how the anti-establishmentarians are supposed to pivot and appeal to these new outcast dissidents immediately. The siege has been long and costly and those inside the castle have been smugly intransigent. Now in defeat they appeal to us using our own oft-repeated entreaties, the very ones they dismissed for decades. It’s a little late.
I am under no illusion that I or anyone could convince that group of anything they already didn’t believe. So I won’t try. They have been defeated anyway.
Now the only question is how to defeat the left, with or without these forces – such as they are.
I went to the one in town. I think Mike Murphy called it a number of years ago on the flagship podcast. The tea party is the same as republican primary voter. The implication of this, which is validated by observation is that the tea party contained all the internal contradictions and inconsistencies of the republican party itself. Which is why people saw what they wanted to see in it.
Conservative is failing and it started dying long before Trump.
Ask 5 conservatives what it means and you get 6 answers. Keep the discussion going and you can press it up to 7.
If/when a guiding set of priorities are settled then check on the track record of holding the chosen political party accountable for fighting for them: Republicans 0, Any Opposition 1.
Principles are more than good ideas bantered on web sites or casual conversation and even more than worth dying over. They are worth taking the risk of putting a bullet in the other guy. To date I’ve seen no evidence that exists on the right save for a few outliers.
When the battle cry is ‘we will fight when we are ready and victory assured’ The team will never be ready and victory most definitely not assured. While this endless preparation takes place the enemy slits our throats.
There is only positive to this whole Trump thing is the opportunity to say “I told you so” and that is no victory, bittersweet or otherwise.
The good news. We aren’t there yet. There is still much ground to fight over in the coming weeks as my good friend Mr. Cole highlights earlier.
Yes, that’ll feel good for a while, and they deserve it, but then we’ll have to live with Trump, and WE deserve better!
As a Trump supporter you are the left.
My impression is that the GOP, the GOPe, and the Republican Party did not dictate Trump’s positions, rather that he ran over the GOP, the GOPe, the GOP donor class (Chamber of Commerce) and the rather passive Republican Party – often beholden to the GOP donor class – when he set the agenda.
Now I may have misread you. Are you saying something other than what I seem to be reading? I am not seeing the Republican agenda at this point, I am seeing the Trump agenda. If 55,000 to 60,000 Pennsylvanians switched parties to become Republicans and vote for Trump, I would guess that the Republican agenda, whatever that might be, is not the reason for their switch.
Last, does anyone in their right mind think that the Party will try to keep Trump from the nomination? Only if they are politically suicidal, and if they are, they’ll end up without a political home of any merit because they’ll lack the size to get anything done. They will be seen as traitors to a cause which included many of their considerations.
Completely agree. The delegate game is delusional. I say it again. Trump is on track to receiving more votes in a Republican primary than any other Republican ever. Zero percent chance at this point that he is not the nominee. Not intended to be hyperbole. I really mean zero.
I think it’s unknowable as to whether Hillary or Trump will do more damage to the country (Clinton will be predictably awful. I’ve a lot less certainty about Trump, and can easily imagine scenarios where he’ll be substantially better and scenarios where he’ll be substantially worse).
But again, telling people that I’m a jerk or a too-precious-delicate-flower probably isn’t going to work if you want to convince the #MaybeTrumps (it may help, but it’s probably insufficient). If you don’t want Clinton either, step up to the challenge before you.
Several random thoughts:
Trump isn’t used to hearing this, but “no means no” and “<1237 is not 1237.”
If he doesn’t get 1237 on the first ballot he won’t win on the second – and that’s pretty much guaranteed.
The other good news is that by the time of the convention, it will be too late to get on the ballot as a third party candidate in most meaningful states.
There’s another positive: more conservatives realize that conservatism is broken, especially when it form a national coalition. Trump is the latest, largest, and classiest in a series of [expletive] sandwich nominees that conservatives have had to choke down.
At least there’s little pretense he’s a “real” conservative.
It’s going to be so classy you are going to be sick of all of the classiness.
One more random thought:
A national election takes a ton of resources. As much as we all might not like the amount of money in politics, the “donor class”, etc, how will Trump fund his run against Hillary? I know he’ll get a ton of free media, but the ground operations, the get-out-the-vote work, requires a large network of paid staff and volunteers. Since he laid off his staff in key states like Florida, it will be very interesting to see how this plays out.
Pass me some more popcorn.
Tom, the biggest impediment to a successful appeal in this case is the emotional basis for Trump’s support. If the past few months (to include the comments on this post) have proven anything, it is there is no rational basis for supporting Trump. There in no talk of policy from Trump supporters because there is no consistent, coherent talk of policy from Trump.
Even the non-policy attempts to justify supporting Trump fall apart under the most cursory inspection.
Want a guy who fights? How about a guy who stood up to public sector unions and won?
Want a guy who won’t cave to Washington insiders? How about a guy who publicly called the Senate majority leader a liar?
Want a guy who tells voters what they need to hear rather than what they want to hear? How about a guy who ran on reforming Social Security in Florida?
Want a guy serious about getting spending under control? How about a guy who actually balanced the federal budget?
Instead we are told this guy will bring jobs back to America while he hires immigrants (legal and illegal) to work for him.
That this guy will make Apple manufacture its products here while the products carrying his name are made in China and Mexico.
Don’t expect a rational argument from people behaving irrationally.
Here we have a case of TDS. Some people are label happy and TDSers are really label happy. He’s a progressive, a Democrat, a fascist…it’s unbelievable. Just as Trump supporters see him as ‘one of them’ and believe he reflects their ideology, the mirror image of equally deluded folk are wantonly projecting onto him everything they despise.
They make things up out of whole cloth. I’m not a Trump supporter.
Has anyone broken down the Ricochet membership by state? That seems to describe a fair number of members, including myself.
It feels more sinister than that to me.
Last night, during Trump’s dreadful, rambling, incoherent plotzing on FNC, he basically openly threatened the Carrier Air Conditioner people and any company that would dare to think about moving jobs offshore. He did’t supply an incentive or rationale for why they shouldn’t do this – such as tax or regulatory reform – but couched his response in thuggish undertones that sounded vaguely like “nice company you’ve got there; be a shame if anything were to happen to it…”
They are not behaving irrationally. They are just not judging a candidate with the same tools that conservatives do. Not only are our policy preferences not electorally viable, but the way we analyze politics is not broadly shared.
Most people do not read policy papers and argue over who believes in what. They vote based on impressions that are not connected to policy. That’s not irrational. We all make judgments about people all the time in the same way.
Why are we expecting the public make its choices about candidates by adhering to a policy position?
Again, not only are conservative ideas not electorally viable, the entire idea of judging politics based on policy is just not how the rest of the country behaves.
Tom, I am truly sorry you feel this way.
I wish someone had voiced a similar concern for those of us who had to vote for McCain to stop Obama. I do not recall any similar demand of the McCain supporters to make me feel welcome when the party got behind an erratic non conservative without a single day of private sector experience to stop an avowed Marxist.
I expect you to be pissed off and depressed and vote to stop Hillary anyway, the same way you expected me to do the same.
You owe me for McCain, Dole, Romney. I did not get a pass from responsibility, neither do you.
You mean asyncronous information is thing, and that there are a variety of ways with which people decide what to do in a world of imperfect information? who woulda thought.
Yeah. Good luck with that.
Even with the absolute worst, milquetoast, centrist, squishy candidate the party has ever put forward (and it’s hard to choose with Dole, McCain, Romney in the running for this category) this calculation would not be necessary, but it is with Trump. It’s not because our ideals have changed. It is because this candidate is farther from them than any other candidate in the history of ever.
With respect, what makes you so special? Do you think everyone else here was gung-ho about those three (or W?).
(I will, however, plead guilty to having been an early McCain supporter, though I maintain that it was the best of the available choices.)
Just because you don’t have the courage of your convictions doesn’t mean other’s should follow your lead.
Trump is winning the same way populists have always won: by appealing to emotion and the base fears of the electorate. The Trump voters are basically a whole lot of people crying, “A pox on both their houses! Burn it down!”. These are people who have been mocked for 8 years by the current President, ignored by the leaders of their own party, and who are seeing their way of life threatened by mass immigration and political correctness, and who are seeing their autonomy being stripped away by a distant ruling class. They’re mad as hell and they aren’t going to take it any more.
You can completely understand their anger, and you can understand how a flim-flam huckster like Trump could trade on that for political power.
For me here in Alberta, this looks sadly too familiar. We’re a very conservative province that has been ruled for a long time by a ‘conservative’ party that was essentially a bunch of establishment hacks doing the bidding of large, government-connected industries. So we spun off our own ‘Tea Party’ – the Wildrose. And like America’s Tea Party, they started splitting along populist/libertarian/social conservative fault lines and became ineffective. In the meantime, the center left liberals in Alberta became more and more militant being shut out of power for decades.
So, we had an election. And the voters yelled “A pox on both their houses!” and in a spasm of unthinking rage elected a socialist government that promised it was really, truly a moderate, conservative-friendly, only slightly left-wing government. But more importantly, they were outsiders who would start fresh and fight for the ‘common person’.
How’s that working out for us? In less than a year they have tripled our deficit, gutted our already reeling oil-based economy, slapped onerous new regulations on farmers, raised taxes across the board, announced an entire new cabinet department dedicated to creating new regulations and heavily enforcing current ones, are spending billions of dollars on ‘green jobs’ and building new government buildings and hiring more teachers we don’t need. They’ve mandated a complete shutdown of coal power by 2030, without having a plan for replacing the 76% of our electrical power that coal generates. They’ve announced a new $15/hr minimum wage is coming, and next year we get a carbon tax and probably a provincial sales tax. Investment is fleeing the province, citing regulatory uncertainty and government hostility to business as a prime factor.
Decades of slow, steady conservative governance created the most free economic zone in North America. One electoral spasm later, and all that is flushed down the toilet.
So I understand the anger, but am dismayed by the form it is taking. Elections have consequences. Electing Donald Trump will be a disaster for America. Nominating him to represent Republicans is a disaster for the Republican party.
Please. You know who brought us McCain? The same northeastern voters who feted Trump last night. Yes, the same people.
Not that it matters – sometimes the other guys do something right (electorally) and no Republican candidate shy of the reincarnation of Lincoln was going to beat Barack Obama in 2008. The scale of the victory was overwhelming.
I suppose that would be true, if the electorate had the faintest idea who Trump is or what he stands for. I take some solace in the fact that Trump is nothing but a cult leader. One cannot draw any sound conclusions about what he means for policy, because his candidacy has nothing to do with policy. If he were to announce that he was changing every one of his policies 180 degrees tomorrow, it wouldn’t affect his popularity at all. Arguably, he has already done just that; just not all at once.
I know better than try to convince people who are entrenched in their beliefs to change. Also, I have no idea what Trump will be like as POTUS. I have a sense, but I’m not expecting others to share it or think I can convey this ‘sense’ to them. I have no evidence. I do think Trump will be better than Hillary and I don’t think he will be any kind of disaster for foreign policy or the economy.
I believe our foreign policy as it is, is a disaster. I believe our economy as it is, is another disaster. Trump has at least mentioned our 20 trillion debt, and he’s not an interventionist, which I think, at this point, is wise.
Hillary will continue and worsen this disaster. Hillary has an entrenched operation and vast network to implement her plans. Trump doesn’t. Trump will have plenty of opposition in Congress should he undertake bad policies. Unlike Hillary who will be very proficient at getting her way. Republican congresscritters won’t fight her (see 8 years of Obama).
I also am getting very tired of the absolutists here on Ricochet. Say something un-negative about Trump and you are branded a ‘supporter’. Really low-level discourse…
I think there are two arguments that would be helpful in persuading anti-Trump people. When I’ve been in a group of pro- and anti-Trump Republicans, a pro-Trump person will assert that Trump will hire the best people and nearly every head will nod. I don’t know why this is typically accepted without any facts cited to back it up, but most Republicans seem to buy it.
The other argument is the Supreme Court. Even I accept that Donald Trump may nominate a good justice, while Hillary Clinton will not. These arguments are not enough to convince me to vote for Donald Trump, but I expect they will persuade some.
That’s a reflection of the candidate, who is running a very low-level campaign. It would be nice to have long, detailed arguments about Trump’s policies, except that Trump’s policies are incoherent and change daily. There’s nothing to argue.
It’s hard to stay out of the ‘low level’ discourse when the candidate himself responds to serious questions by essentially saying, “Oh yeah? Well, you’re fat and ugly,” or “Before I answer that, I just want to say that your show is losing in the ratings, and you’re a loser.”
Of course, the old saw about not getting in the mud with a pig applies here. But don’t expect the pig to engage you in serious porcine debate, either. Because that ain’t part of its skill set.