Yule Stock Show Moon
My sister wrote me today from Singapore: “I’ve never seen such an election as this one-I can’t stand the thought of the Trump as president-is it possible ??? Just seems to so much press here…”
My answer to her follows. It’s how I see the election right now:
His main appeal is to white folks left behind by the current Gilded Age. Is it possible he could be the Republican nominee? Increasingly, amazingly, it seems so. But the Republican establishment, the old and big money doesn’t want him. What he’s doing is splitting the GOP base. That means he’ll be weaker in a general election.
The new demographics of the U.S. imply that people of color, especially Latinos, and younger voters plus the traditional Democratic base of liberal whites, especially women hold the key to the Presidency. If they turn out, and that’s always the big question with the Democratic vote, no Republican candidate has a chance.
However. Both Sanders (my guy) and Hillary have substantial downsides. Still, in an election in which Trump is the alternative I believe the Democratic base will rally-out of revulsion if nothing else.
It is a peculiar election. The one that bears the most resemblance in recent memory might be when George Wallace ran as a third party candidate. He was a right wing populist, too. He carried Indiana and changed its politics ever after. By encouraging the southern diaspora to vote against their economic self-interests, essentially through racist appeals, he moved those voters out of the liberal union voter camp into what would become Nixon’s moral majority and the Reagan Democrats of later years. Much more conservative. Many of those folks are now in the Tea Party or are rabidly pro-Trump.
One man’s view from the top of Shadow Mountain.
I think Trump stands a good chance of winning. If he energize conservative voters that do not usually vote, I think he can pull it off. The Democrats are usually always one step from being totally at each other’s throats. If Bernie can take some wind out of Hillary’s sails, the Democrat base will be split. Trump would then win, with the conservatives supporting him.
Actually, that is energizes.
I hope you’re wrong. My best guess is that he will energize an electorate much like George Wallace’s, maybe a third of the vote. Not enough to win, but enough to make the whole election unpredictable.
I base my guess on his primary appeal to angry white people, which sets aside the youth and people of color vote. The demographic changes in the U.S. are real, whether they will translate into electoral results again, like they did for Obama, is hard to know.