Cleveland Elects Donald Trump

The Cleveland Convention could make Trump the President

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I am not up close to it yet, but I can imagine it:  Cleveland this summer, with angry protesters at a Trump convention and police in riot gear.   

I remember Chicago, 1968.  The images on the TV screens drove votes to George Wallace and Richard Nixon.   The lesson I drew from this is that regardless of who is actually to blame for violence, the very fact of violence tends to increase support for the perceived strong man who can restore order.

By last Monday, as I observed it at the Boca Raton rally, the actual event demonstrated that Trump was changing focus from being a wink-wink provocateur into that law and order strong man.  On Sunday, March 13, it was the old Trump, in an early morning Tweet:   "Bernie Sanders is lying when he says his disruptors aren't told to go to my events. Be careful Bernie, or my supporters will go to yours!"

But by Monday in Boca Raton it was a different story, no longer “protesters" vs. Trump's tough-guy supporters.   Monday he repeatedly told the crowd to stand down, to let the police handle problems: it was police law and order vs. “professional disrupters”, amid very visible uniformed police officers inside, SWAT trucks outside, ambulances and paramedics walking inside the event perimeter.   

All quiet in Boca Raton

The Trump rally in Utah on Friday put protesters across the street from the rally, just like Boca Raton.  News stories report that protesters attempted to storm the event, but were held back by riot police.   ABC News reported:  "Hundreds of people chanted "Dump Trump" and "Mr. Hate Out of Our State" as police in riot gear blocked the entrance to the Salt Lake City building, after protesters tried to rush the door and got into dozens of screaming matches with Trump supporters who didn't make into the venue."

Order in the venue--chaos involving protesters and the police outside it:  perfect frame for Trump.

Utah police separate protesters from Trump venue

At the Utah, as in Boca Raton, Trump made frequent references to the protesters and kept the threat of them hovering ominously just outside the cone of safety.  "Did any protesters sneak in tonight?   Did anybody?," he asked the crowd, which began chanting "Trump, Trump, Trump."   He smiled at the chant and flashed two thumbs up.

The protesters, he said, "They're stifling us, folks, they're stifling us.  We want nobody to get hurt, we want everything to be perfect.  This seems like a perfect evening."   With all the big rallies we are having around the country, "people aren't getting hurt, folks."   We had to cancel the Chicago event, which was necessary for public safety, he said.  "We ended it, nobody was hurt, we did a smart thing."

"You talk about freedom of speech, you talk about the First Amendment.   Very unfair, very unfair when they can stifle us.  Very unfair."

The ideal frame for Trump in Cleveland is “order versus chaos”, and it would be especially delicious for Trump if the symbols of “chaos" were to exemplify race and ethnicity without Trump needing to say it explicitly.   I can easily imagine that people from Black Lives Matter and Hispanic immigrant groups will eagerly play their role, giving the media the conflict—or at least the potential threat of conflict—that would justify the intense Breaking News coverage, and justify the Huffington Post headline “Terror on the Trail” they used after the peaceful Boca Raton event.   Trump protesters will want to tell their story.  

Trump had positioned himself as the strong man on money, trade, and immigration but is now being reincarnated as a champion of free speech and assembly.  In Utah Trump said, "Do we have love for the protesters?  Honestly, I love the protesters.  I love the protesters.   They are doing their thing, they're doing their thing, OK?   I don't quite get their thing, but whatever it is, they're doing their thing."   

But they are not us.   We are the American multitude they are protesting against.   "We used to be called the 'Silent Majority', but we aren't silent anymore."

Trump and Anti-Trump in Utah

So, surely, out of a metropolitan population of two million people in Cleveland there will be at least a dozen people on one side or the other to jostle themselves into a fight somewhere near a camera.   Surely, there will be anti-Trump partisans confident they are doing their duty by displaying a sign protesting a border wall or calling Trump and his supporters racist.  Surely, someone carrying a provocative sign of one sort or the other will dislike being flipped off.   It is easy to imagine protesters of several sides, conveniently color coded in black and brown, so that the racial and ethnic “chaos” can be exploited in the way most convenient to the modern “Southern Strategy” GOP, understood and dog whistled, not voiced.

Also it is easy to imagine the Democratic nominee looking “weak and feckless”, as Christie described Obama, as Bernie or Hillary attempts to talk down the conflict that he or she is accused of having encouraged. Trump has already mocked Bernie for looking weak in relation to Black Lives Matter.

 “Can’t we all get along,” Rodney King asked the people of LA as the rioting went on and on.  

Hillary's version  of "Can't we all get along?"

Hillary is already playing the role of pleader for peace:  "The divisive rhetoric we are seeing should be of grave concern to us all.  We all have our differences, and we know how many people across the country feel angry.  We need to address that anger together."

The protests continue.   Clinton talks; Trump employs the police.

Bernie and Hillary would be tied to the grievances of the protesters and therefore to the protest and “chaos” itself, because black and Hispanics are part of their political "identity team," a disadvantaged group, the person advocated for.   And protesters have a right to protest, and they will say what is on their mind: Trump is a dangerous xenophobe.

This will give Trump the contrast he wants.    Trump would stand with the police, with law and order, with public safety against the "chaos" of protest.  Helpless talk vs. strength; chaos vs. order. 

With any luck for Trump, some dark skinned teenager will be filmed looting an appliance store somewhere in America that week, which Trump will condemn and Hillary might be forced to comment.  She will condemn it, of course, but not the way Trump would.   She would put it into a context of poverty, unemployment, hopelessness; Trump would put it into a context of crime and disorder.  She would show nuance.  Trump would say it is simply wrong and dangerous. 

And this being America, no doubt someone in the upper midwest will be shot to death with a gun that week, as happens multiple times every week, convention or not.  It will not be hard to find chaos in the form of gun violence to report and add to the mix.

I attempt to see clearly what is right in front of me, which is why I try to get up close and to pay attention.  Today I am looking ahead, and have an image of the future that looks very good for Trump, if in fact his transition from provocateur to law and order candidate has been solidified, and the Utah rally certainly suggests it has.  Trump is George Wallace and Richard Nixon, 1968, and they got 347 electoral votes between them, a landslide.

That's how Trump gets elected president.   He needs those protesters, and he will get them.