David Michael Miller
There are Democrats who are giddy over the prospect of Republicans actually nominating Donald J. Trump to go up against their candidate in November.
Trump has negatives the size of his own ego. The very things that make him popular with about 60% of Republicans make him deeply disliked among women, Hispanics and those of us who aren’t so angry that we can’t see straight. And there is a small but growing list of principled Republicans like Wisconsin Congressman Reid Ribble who say they’ll sit out the election before they vote for that man. If he gets the nomination, Trump will hit a ceiling that isn’t glass, but granite. Or so the theory goes.
There are two problems with this thinking: Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
In the last debate Trump started to sound not quite so crazy and even just a little presidential. His defense of New York after Ted Cruz’s smarmy attack over “New York values” had even me cheering. If he got the nomination and then started to move to the center, he could gain some traction with moderates, swing voters and, most importantly, with the politically disaffected, who are impossible to count in polling because they don’t usually show up to vote. If Trump motivated nonvoters to make it to the polls, odd things could happen.
The other problem is Hillary Clinton. The Clintons are at their worst when they think they’re on top of the world. In his excellent biography of Bill Clinton, First in His Class, David Maraniss details the now familiar pattern of soaring success followed by hubris, followed by dogged rebuilding and even more success, more hubris, disaster and on and on and on. Hillary seems to have caught her husband’s disease.
A good example is how she treated the Democratic debates. Not content with her big lead, she got her ally (and the walking disaster of a Democratic party chair) Debbie Wasserman Schultz to schedule debates over the holidays and, this last weekend, after a day of NFL playoffs football. The idea was to drive down ratings. When you assume you’ll win the nomination, you don’t want those who presume to challenge you to get a full airing of their silly little ideas.
Most of America doesn’t care, but who does? Precisely the liberal activists who support Bernie Sanders. Clinton and Wasserman Schultz’s manipulations only serve to anger and motivate the supporters of her leading opponent. Want to know why Clinton now trails in both Iowa and New Hampshire? Look to her own hubris.
Lastly, Clinton is hands-down the most qualified person to run the country, which, it turns out, is a big liability right now. This is a year when a substantial chunk of the public doesn’t want someone who knows how Washington and Wall Street work; they want someone who will (metaphorically) blow both of these places to smithereens. Clinton might be wise to say some things that are just off the wall to prove that she isn’t as smart and capable as she is accused of being. Her numbers might soar.
Trump is running as a populist but of the far-right, fascist, racist variety. If he used that to get the nomination and then shaded his populism toward the left (e.g., promising to carpet bomb Wall Street and knowing how to do it because he pretty much lives there), he could be for real. And just how scary is that?
