Detecting method within Donald Trump’s madness
There is method in Donald Trump’s madness. The Republican nominee for the U.S. presidency does things that, on the face of it, seem insane. They are not.
Even his unprecedented attack on the parents of a Muslim American soldier killed in Iraq follows a certain bizarre logic.
In criticizing Khizr and Ghazala Khan, Trump may have broken all of the normal political rules. But his is not a normal campaign. In effect, Trump is gambling that among the voters he hopes to attract, fear of Muslims outweighs reverence for the military. Don’t assume he is wrong. Certainly, his critics within the Republican Party understand the strength of Trumpism. Well-known Republican legislators, including Sen. John McCain and House Speaker Paul Ryan have publicly condemned Trump’s attack on the Khans.
Yet McCain and Ryan still endorse his presidential bid. As the New York Times has pointed out, both are engaged in stiff nomination battles and neither can afford to alienate Trump supporters.
The Republicans have seen star legislators defeated before by populist insurgencies within their own party. They know no one is safe.
It is telling that Rep. Richard Hanna of New Yrok, the only federal Republican legislator so far to announce he will vote for Clinton over Trump, is not running for re-election.
Can Trump build on this support to win the presidency in November? Currently, the polls don’t favour him. Most show Hillary Clinton, his Democratic rival, has shot ahead and now holds a 5 to 10 percentage point lead.
But polls at this point in a U.S. presidential race are notoriously volatile. The polls to watch will be those taken after Labour Day when more voters begin to pay more attention.
One fact is interesting: Trump is doing unusually well in raising money from small donors.
Typically the money in American politics comes from well-heeled backers, such as casino magnates, real estate tycoons, investment bankers and Hollywood celebrities.
But Bernie Sanders, the Democratic challenger to Clinton, showed it was possible to mount a competitive campaign financed by $10 and $50 contributions.
Trump, it seems, has learned the lesson. His campaign reports that it pulled in $64 million last month, mostly in the form of small donations.
Given that some wealthy Republicans are refusing to back Trump, this is financially important. But it is also a signal that Trump, a billionaire who up to now has paid for most of his own campaign out of pocket, can draw on broad support from the less well-to-do.
And that is the essence of Trump’s seeming madness. The billionaire realtor may be the privileged scion of a wealthy family. But he can win only if he convinces enough disgruntled Americans that he, like them, is an outsider — that he stands aloof from the power elite, that he is not a slave to political correctness and that he tells it like it is.
Up to now he has succeeded by defying the experts, confounding the pundits and doing everything a politician is supposed to avoid.
Those who expected him to moderate after winning the Republican nomination last month just weren’t paying attention. A moderate Trump would be a contradiction in terms. To appear reasonable would queer his entire pitch.
And so the outrageous behaviour continues.
Do the grieving parents of a fallen Muslim soldier challenge him? Then Trump must double down — first by suggesting the wife’s religion forbids her from speaking publicly, second by hinting that Clinton, who brought this couple to public attention, cares only about non-white soldiers.
Does the president of the United States accuse him of being unfit to lead? Are the media on his case? Do his own party’s bigwigs take him to task?
To the self-declared outsider, none of this matters. Indeed, such attacks only prove his point that this election is about Donald Trump versus the elites.
I don’t know if Trump’s strategy will succeed. I do know that it’s not stupid. Dangerous and divisive maybe. But not stupid. The madness is calculated.
Even Trump’s unprecedented attack on the parents of a Muslim American soldier killed in Iraq follows a certain bizarre logic