Trump is an entertainer. He loves his rallies and his audience. He's good at it. It is destroying is campaign.
Trump-the-entertainer helps make sense of his campaign. He isn't acting like a politician. He is acting like an entertainer, seeking an audience and feeding off it.
I have watched Trump up close in New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada, and Florida. What we all see on TV is a guy riffing on current events, rather like a stand up comic. This observation is real and accurate--but incomplete.
Media microphones are on the Trump podium and are directed at Trump, so what we hear is Trump. We hear most crowd noises faintly or not at all, which gives a false impression. In a live event we hear the crowd clearly. The audience is engaged and noisy. Trump is not riffing from stream of consciousness; he is riffing with and in response to the crowd. Here is a 20 second snippet of a Trump rally in Nevada I recorded myself from within the crowd close up. As you will observe, Trump is the loudest voice but he is part of a boisterous group, at one with it. My microphone captures the live reality--something very different from what we see on TV.
***He holds events in states he is unlikely to win, e.g. Maine and Connecticut. If Trump wins Maine and Connecticut his election would be a landslide. What makes sense is that he is not seeking votes, he is seeking venues.
***Amid a drum-beat of criticism and friendly advice to be "more presidential" instead Trump overtly does things which are un-presidential but provocatively attention-getting. Examples are available daily, but the most recent one is Trump's saying that Obama is, literally and intentionally, the "founder of ISIS" and that ISIS gives Obama its most valuable player award. In a long interview with talk show host Hugh Hewitt Trump insisted that Obama did not just lay the groundwork where ISIS was possible, but founded it, while Hewitt tried to lead Trump to sounding less extreme. Trump stood firm. His goal is not to be credible; it is to be noticed.
Hewitt: I think I would say they created, they lost the peace. They created the Libyan vacuum, they created the vacuum into which ISIS came, but they didn't create ISIS. That's what I would say.
Trump: Well, I disagree. . . . They wouldn't talk about your language and they do talk about my language, right?
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| Only 27% of Republicans agree that Obama is American |
Trump has been massively successful in sowing seeds of doubt among Republicans over Obama's legitimacy. Only 27% of Republican voters agree that Obama is actually a legitimate American citizen born in the United States. NBC poll Trump is America's founding "birther" and Trump's language feeds that meme, a meme that serves a large, but minority, audience. Trump birtherism is a turnoff for non-Republicans, but he persists in tweaking the birtherism idea, referring to Obama yesterday as "Barrack Hussain Obama" and presenting Obama as an ISIS partisan. It makes Trump interesting and newsworthy, but puts a ceiling on his support. Trump persists, choosing to be noticable rather than presidential
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This exemplifies one of the ongoing themes of this blog: that a politician's strength is the politician's weakness. Every trait that is strong enough to be appealing and a source of strength has a flip side, an element of weakness. Trump has dominated the news by saying outrageous, interesting things. He is entertaining. Trump won the primary by dominating the news because of how newsworthy and how interesting he is. Hillary is moving the focus to how outrageous he is.
2 comments:
Trump on Obama: “If he would have done things properly, you wouldn’t have had ISIS”
To listen to Trump define the term “founder”, go to minute 15:20 at http://goo.gl/KW1RrN. To read the transcript, see Hugh Hewitt, “Donald Trump Makes A Return Visit”, August 11, 2016, http://goo.gl/scTXqQ. Trump answered Hewitt’s questions as follows:
HH: I’ve got two more questions. Last night, you said the President was the founder of ISIS. I know what you meant. You meant that he created the vacuum, he lost the peace.
DT: No, I meant he’s the founder of ISIS. I do. He was the most valuable player. I give him the most valuable player award. I give her, too, by the way, Hillary Clinton.*** His, the way he got out of Iraq was that that was the founding of ISIS, okay?***
HH: I don’t. I think I would say they created, they lost the peace. They created the Libyan vacuum, they created the vacuum into which ISIS came, but they didn’t create ISIS. That’s what I would say.
DT: Well, I disagree.***: I mean, with his bad policies, that’s why ISIS came about. *** If he would have done things properly, you wouldn’t have had ISIS. *** Therefore, he was the founder of ISIS.
“Discounting Media Hype, USC Polling Institute Reaffirms Trump and Clinton are Still Tied”
Media hype about Trump pushing “nuclear proliferation”, “espionage”, “assassination”, and “ISIS founder” effects narrow polling windows concurrent with 48-72 hour news cycles, but it lacks durability. Voters needed no media spin on Romney’s “47 percent” because Romney himself was clear in what he meant during the secretly recorded donor meeting. Nor do voters need media spin about Hillary’s email; the FBI director provided rich factual context for that. So too with Trump University and casino bankruptcies. Fact driven durable media coverage has durable polling effect—media proclaimed “game changing gaffes” don’t. (See Nate Silver, “The Impact of the 47 Percent”, Sept 9, 2012, http://goo.gl/lrc5VP 9/28/2012).
Just two weeks ago, the Real Clear Politics (RCP) polling average had Trump tied with Clinton, but by August 9th, RCP had Clinton +7.9 , down to +6.2 as of today. Only the University of Southern California USC/Los Angeles Times’ poll model has consistently discounted media-driven poll “surges”. USC reports that between August 4 and today there has been no change in the Clinton-Trump tie. Clinton’s lead, USC says, has remained exactly the same-- +1. (See RCP trending table, http://goo.gl/xGX4). Polls showing Clinton with leads of +8 to +13 this week led to liberal media jubilation, even to absurd claims that these polls might force Trump to “drop out”. (See for example, “Could Donald Trump Drop Out?”, NYT, Aug 4, 2016, http://goo.gl/4Y4Pcf). The NYT has attacked the August 4th USC poll as a flawed outlier. (See, “A Favorable Poll for Donald Trump Seems to Have a Problem”, Aug 8, 2016, http://goo.gl/XwN1cD).
The USC/LA Times “tracking” poll is the work of USC’s Center for Economic and Social Research in “applied political science”. (See, http://cesrusc.org/election/). It is designed “in a way that mutes the impact of bounces and temporary shifts in candidate support”, some of which may be caused by media hype in concurrent news cycles. (See, “Why the USC/L.A. Times tracking poll differs from other surveys”, Aug 9, 2016, http://goo.gl/j6izjr). USC rejects models (1) based on random cold calls to unvetted respondents, and (2) that give no weight to respondents “who say they don’t know or are undecided”. Instead, USC randomly selected 5,000 participants, and following application of demographic and voting history filters, “tracks” 3,200 of them in 5 to 7 day survey cycles.
There is strong evidence that the media’s political hype drives its own sensational polls. The Urban Institute's chief methodologist, Rob Santos, past president and vice president respectively of the American Statistical Association and American Association for Public Opinion Research, says some polling results in forced errors because “the media and candidate campaigns have pressured pollsters to provide results cheaper and faster”. (See, “Why the Polls Get it Wrong”, LA Times, Mar 27, 2016, http://goo.gl/jRjrFt). Sensational poll surveys specifically trying to measure the effects of Trump “espionage”, “assassination”, etc. are churned out fast and furiously for whomever is paying for them. These polls feel really good. But as James Warren of the Poynter Institute, an organization promoting journalistic ethics and higher standards for media “fact checkers”, warns us: Don’t “[f]orget that Trump was written off for months as a joke or that the campaign was seen heading south at multiple times”. (See, Vanity Fair, August 4, 2016, http://goo.gl/GVLd1a).
Question: So what happened after the NYT and other media challenged USC’s August 4th findings that Clinton is only +1? Answer: USC ran the survey again and on August 12th again concluded that she is only +1.
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