Donald Trump seems unhinged at times. He is uncontrollable. He seems dumb.Trump’s poll numbers are taking a dive. As such he is unelectable. Really? Hillary Clinton supporters must not fall into an old trap. Remember at this time in the election cycle Michael Dukakis was leading George H.W. Bush by double digits. Remember George H.W. Bush was flying high in the polls during his reelection. Michael Dukakis never became President and George H.W. Bush did not get a second term.
Donald Trump’s speech in Monessen, Pennsylvania recently mortified me. Why? Because, to many in states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan, it will resonate. The beginning of Trump’s speech touched one viscerally. It did so because he attached the sad reality of the lives of millions to a causality supported by both establishment Democrats and establishment Republicans.
This excerpt from his speech is probative. Make believe it is not coming out of the mouth of Donald Trump.
Trump first describes the problem from the point of view most Americans see and feel.
Today, I am going to talk about how to Make America Wealthy Again. We are thirty miles from Steel City. Pittsburgh played a central role in building our nation. The legacy of Pennsylvania steelworkers lives in the bridges, railways and skyscrapers that make up our great American landscape. But our workers’ loyalty was repaid with betrayal. Our politicians have aggressively pursued a policy of globalization – moving our jobs, our wealth and our factories to Mexico and overseas. Globalization has made the financial elite who donate to politicians very wealthy. But it has left millions of our workers with nothing but poverty and heartache.
When subsidized foreign steel is dumped into our markets, threatening our factories, the politicians do nothing. For years, they watched on the sidelines as our jobs vanished and our communities were plunged into depression-level unemployment. Many of these areas have still never recovered. Our politicians took away from the people their means of making a living and supporting their families. Skilled craftsmen and tradespeople and factory workers have seen the jobs they loved shipped thousands of miles away.
Many Pennsylvania towns once thriving and humming are now in a state despair. This wave of globalization has wiped out our middle class. It doesn’t have to be this way. We can turn it all around – and we can turn it around fast. But if we’re going to deliver real change, we’re going to have to reject the campaign of fear and intimidation being pushed by powerful corporations, media elites, and political dynasties. The people who rigged the system for their benefit will do anything – and say anything – to keep things exactly as they are.
Trump attempts to tie the problem with the political establishment and directly to Hillary Clinton.
The people who rigged the system are supporting Hillary Clinton because they know as long as she is in charge nothing will ever change. The inner cities will remain poor. The factories will remain closed. The borders will remain open. The special interests will remain firmly in control. Hillary Clinton and her friends in global finance want to scare America into thinking small – and they want to scare the American people out of voting for a better future.
Trumps then point out that his campaign is different. He used Brexit as an example of liberation from the establishment, the elites. The precipitous drop in the stock market with the seemingly fast recovery after Brexit makes the point that more prescient.
My campaign has the opposite message. I want you to imagine how much better your life can be if we start believing in America again. I want you to imagine how much better our future can be if we declare independence from the elites who’ve led us to one financial and foreign policy disaster after another. Our friends in Britain recently voted to take back control of their economy, politics and borders. I was on the right side of that issue – with the people – while Hillary, as always, stood with the elites, and both she and president Obama predicted that one wrong.
Now it’s time for the American people to take back their future. That’s the choice we face. We can either give in to Hillary Clinton’s campaign of fear, or we can choose to Believe In America.
That message sells because it not only highlights the reality of a disappearing middle-class. It also gives the reasons for the demise of the middle-class and assigns blame. And Trump made the plausible argument that Hillary Clinton’s association with the finance class, the elite, the establishment, makes her a part of the problem something she has yet to address adequately.
Forget about the inaccuracies. There is a lot of truth in the message even if the messenger is a liar, a demagogue, a bigot, and one that is also guilty of the pilfer. After all, his products are made offshore. He is part of the establishment he maligns. Later in the speech, Trump copped to being a part of the problem in the past, the type of mea culpa Americans love.
I read a note from a friend on Facebook that is as tone deaf as the message coming from the Democratic establishment. It is the fear I have of Democratic complacency.
A bunch of writers lately have talked about the growing divide in the world is not generational or civilizational but between those open or closed to the world; those who like globalization and change and those who do not. I think the “open” group is super small. I love the UN, IMF, EU, NATO, and such–all those things made to keep the peace after WWII. However, of people whose feed I usually get, I think it’s less than 10% who have positive feelings about these international institutions. These organizations cannot be sold during a stump speech. I suffered through Trump’s Ohio stream of consciousness today and the audience was loudest when he struck at anything intergovernmental. I have no idea how Hillary can sell global institutions to an electorate too thick (right populists) or stubborn (left populists) to understand them and the many benefits that stem from them. The real issue is these organizations emerged out of the Cold War consensus in cooperation among the political elite. That’s long dead and with that is any degree of elite agreement on anything. If it’s a contest between open and closed, it’s not a contest at all.
It doesn’t matter that globalism increases the size of economies if most of the spoils go to a few. It doesn’t matter that the world has less named wars if economics and other factors make for a seemingly less secure world. It doesn’t matter that Donald Trump is a fraud. What is important is whether America is ready to try anything given that in their eyes staying with the establishment, Democratic or Republican have failed many. Institutions failed to make their lives better than it was before.
In a year like this, Donald Trump could win. Trump had a horrendous month. And yet, he is within 5 points of Hillary Clinton. Americans know the Donald is flawed. They know he is a liar. They know Trump is a cheat. They know he is a bonafide unfettered capitalist. But he is not the establishment. Hillary Clinton’s only option is to pivot more towards the Bernie Sanders’ message. Hillary Clinton’s supporters voted for a subset of the Sanders’ message. Sanders’ message appeals to disaffected Republicans and Independents, the very voters Hillary Clinton is having a problem attracting. She must change her messaging or she will be outflanked.