A Majority of Voters Like Trump's Message, but not the Messenger. Watch out, Hillary. Trump is rebranding and it might work.
I saw two things on Sunday that should scare Hillary supporters.
First: People are open to a Trump re-brand. On Face the Nation they showed a focus group run by Frank Luntz. Luntz does work for political and corporate clients looking at messaging and the words that consumers and voters find persuasive. He coached Republicans to call the estate tax the "death tax" and to call a Medicare-style option in the Affordable Care Act a "government option" rather than a "public option." He is effective in teasing out the best ways to sell an idea or to kill it.
The panel consisted of people who had liked Donald Trump at first but who then soured on him. The voters said they have recently concluded that Trump is too wild and crazy to be trusted as president. "He's lost me," one woman said. "He's become outrageous." Other panel member echoed her. Trump needs to think before speaking, the panel said.
This is the Hillary Clinton message, and it was working.
But nearly all of them said that they would be open to voting for Trump if they thought he could change his style and talk about the important things instead of being an insulting bully.
There is something appealing to voters about Trump's message of shaking up the system. "Hope and Change" worked in 2008 and it has appeal in 2016. Hillary Clinton has ceded the message of change to Trump, and it is a dangerous choice because the Sanders vote showed a great many people want change and we don't get it from her. Her message is that Trump is a dangerous vessel for change, so we are stuck with her.
But we aren't stuck. Hillary gave to Trump the power to fix the thing that was wrong: Trump himself.
Second: Trump is rebranding. It seems almost satirical to say that it is news that Trump gave a speech in Akron, Ohio yesterday and stayed on script, read the teleprompter, and didn't say anything massively stupid or insulting. But that is what Trump did and it is, indeed, newsworthy. Because a self-disciplined Trump is a new Trump.
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| Trump in Akron |
I have attended Trump speeches live in New Hampshire, Florida, South Carolina, and Nevada. There is a great deal of crowd noise and Trump-crowd interaction in these speeches. The microphones on televised speeches point at Trump, not Trump and the crowd both, so the crowd influence is understated. But in the Akron speech the microphones reveal a realistic understanding of the event from the point of view of a crowd participant because the crowd noise is very audible. Trump was interacting with the crowd but he stayed on message. He was clearly using the teleprompter but was no longer reading from it as if by rote. He looked natural and extemporaneous. And he talked about national problems and solutions.
The speech wasn't Trump riffing about Trump, and his polls, and his gripes, and what a winner he is personally. It was about America and Americans. The Hillary campaign left an opening for Trump and Trump is seizing the opportunity. He is growing up. He is "acting presidential." It may be too late for Trump to change opinions, but he is showing us something new, for now, here.
Hillary is--so far--sticking to her brand. She is continuity and stability. She is "new" in the sense of being female but she is not new in the sense of policy or purpose. She is not going to shake up Washington. Her election frame is: continuity versus crazy.
Trump is--now, maybe, if he can stick to it--changing his brand. He is "hope and change" but now carried out by a grown up politician, no longer a wild and crazy schoolyard bully. His election frame is hope and change by a new guy who is up to the job versus same old political system by a tired old corrupted practitioner of the system.
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| Before: Playboy prince Hal, in bad company, unready. |
(Shakespeare, in Henry IV, parts I and II,wrote that misbehaving Prince Hal dismissed the bad influence of friend Falstaff and became a hero to England as he stepped into his role as King and protector. We like the story. Humans have deep experience with this process. They watch and approve when their undisciplined teenage boys grow up into sober mature men who take on the serious responsibilities of adulthood and leadership. Humans--voters--are open to that narrative. It is a familiar and welcome story: teenage boy up to no good--then a period of trial and experience in the army or in college or in work--and out comes a fully adult man of good judgement capable of leadership. Maybe, at long last, Prince Trump is ready to become King.)
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| After: King Henry V, Ready and able to lead |
Trump needed to signal a transition, and the campaign personnel change was enough to alert the media that a change was afoot. The media legitimized this as a reset event. The jury is out on whether Trump can pull it off by staying in character as the sober responsible adult, but if he can do so he can become president.
The voters in the Luntz focus group welcomed a change in Trump and were urging it on him.
That is the thing that should frighten Hillary supporters. They were pulling for him. They wanted what he was selling and they wanted him to be worthy of carrying it out.
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