I’m not a
Trump supporter, and I never will be.
Leave aside, for the moment, his bombast, bullying and bull. Amateur politicians from either side of the
aisle, no less than amateur brain surgeons, are extremely dangerous.
Good
politicians—Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, for example—have normally spent
years learning how to build legislative coalitions and make deals they can sell
to their constituents. They’ve studied
the nuances of public policy, and they have a clear-eyed understanding of how
the world works. They’ve learned how to
practice the art of the possible.
All of this
is foreign to Donald Trump. He may well
know how to make a deal. But it’s a lot easier to make a business deal where
you can quantify the risk and split the difference with the other side than it
is to address indivisible points of deeply felt principle. Autocratic businesspeople like Trump rarely
have to accommodate the demands of others when they make deals.
I’m not
wringing my hands about Donald Trump potentially winning the Republican
nomination, nor do I think he has any chance of winning the presidency against
either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders.
Given U.S. demographics and the likelihood that Democratic turnout in
2016 won’t be much different from 2008 or 2012, the only way Trump wins is if
the Democratic candidate is involved in a career ending scandal of Watergate
portions. There’s never been a hint of
scandal associated with Sanders, and though Hillary’s got baggage, after over
20 years, we’ve seen it all before.
But I’m
also not doing my happy dance at the prospect of a landslide Democratic victory
after a failed Trump candidacy. Almost
any Republican nominee is likely to carry most or all of the states Romney
carried in the last election. If the
2016 general election includes only two candidates for president, it will probably
be decided by 5 percentage points or less, just like the last 4 elections were.
What I like
about a Trump candidacy is what it could do for American democracy. There are only four scenarios, but
they all lead to the same place, albeit at different times.
First,
Donald Trump could win the Republican nomination, either outright or as the
result of a brokered convention. Second,
Trump could lose the nomination, either outright or as the result of a brokered
convention. Third, Trump could decide
that the current Republican nominating rules were “unfair” to him, and he could
run as an independent. Fourth, Trump
could lose the nomination, admit that he’d been licked fair and square, and
fade away.
Under the
first scenario, Trump arrives in Cleveland, this summer with enough delegates either
to win the nomination on the first ballot or to be truly disruptive to the
party if he doesn’t get it. If Trump
arrives at the convention with a large number of delegates, but not enough to
clinch the nomination, non-Trump convention delegates might believe that if
Trump doesn’t win, denying him the nomination might cause big problems for the
party. Trump supporters might abandon the party to support a third-party
candidacy, they might even stay home on election day. In any event, Trump would likely demand that
the official Republican Platform include many of his campaign promises, some of
which are likely to make mainstream conservatives shudder.
Under the
second scenario, Trump does not become the official Republican nominee. Regardless of whether he loses the nomination
as a result of the “winner-take-all” Republican primaries that begin after March
14 or the intrigue that might take place at a brokered convention, Trump would
be able to argue that the party has been “unfair” to him and that “unfairness”
frees him to run as an independent. Running as an independent would cost him
the cache of the party label and the party’s financial backing, but neither of
these things would matter much to Trump.
And he’d take with him a large chunk of the rank and file muscle any
campaign needs to be successful on Election Day.
The third
scenario works out very much like the second one, except that Trump avoids any
semblance of control the party and its rules might have over him.
I rate the fourth
scenario as unlikely. Trump can
self-fund a general election campaign, and he’s shown himself adept at getting
free media coverage. The stadiums and
arenas full of people chanting his name will be evidence to him that a huge
chunk of the American public wants what he’s selling. And besides, does anyone think Trump is a
good sport?
No matter
what happens, the faction of the Republican party dedicated to the principles
of conservatives like William F. Buckley who, in an earlier era, faced down
organizations like the John Birch Society, are going to have to make a
choice. They’re either going to have to
swallow the “big government” ideas implicit in Trump’s program or they’re going
to have to walk away.
And
regardless of whether they keep control of the Republican party or cede it to
Trump and his supporters, the Republican party will split into a party of
Buckleyite conservatives on the one hand and another party of populists,
racists and nationalists on the other.
Of course,
this will make it much easier for Democrats to win elections at all levels as
people currently aligned with the Republican party split the non-Democratic
vote. But that state of affairs won’t
last for long.
Relieved of
the populists, racists and nationalists that will align with the Trump faction—and
their insistence on policies that disenfranchise or marginalized people who
disagree with them--the Buckleyites will be able to make appeals to Democrats
who want lower taxes, less regulation, and slower change but previously wouldn’t
consider voting Republican.
The
Buckleyites will still have difficulty winning elections where there are three
candidates, at least until demographic forces neutralize the Trump
faction. But once the people whose votes
depend on fear of people who aren’t like them are isolated in one discrete
political party, much of the tribalism that currently affects our politics will
be washed away. We’ll then be able
to have sensible political dialogue based on facts, evidence and reason, devoid
of coded language about race.
And that
would be huge for American democracy.
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