Al Smith Dinner Disaster. Not so fast.

Trump's Speech Bombed.   He is crazy like a fox.

I start with a premise:  Whether one likes what Trump says or does or his policies, Trump is a natural political genius.   He has the performer's gift of reading an audience and channeling their true feelings, and he knows how to stay the center of attention in a new media world.  With those two gifts he discovered what professional politicians did not--that a significant group of Republican primary voters opposed the traditional Republican orthodoxy.  They wanted patriotic populism, protectionism, and nativism.  They resented being told to "get along" with diversity and they resent a powerful social-economic-political class that they are not part of.    They feel America is being taken advantage of, and that they personally are being taken advantage of.   

NY Times notes it was the elite who snubbed Trump

They found Trump and Trump found them. 

It helped Trump to bomb at the event.  I watched Trump in New York at the Al Smith dinner.   His performance was painful.  He had one excellent joke--where he complained that the media praised Michelle Obama's speech but that when his wife Melania gave the same speech they panned it.  It got genuine laughs It was a funny joke.  It was consistent with his message of media bias in a self deprecating way.  

Many of his jokes were mean and resentful and not funny even to his most fervent supporters.  He could not have selected those jokes and read them back to some insiders and gotten a reaction of humor and delight.   He planned this.   He planned to get boos.   Watch it yourself: Click Here    Or read the transcript:  Click Here

With a face communicating anger and resentment Trump's jokes included lines like:

     "Hillary is so corrupt, she got kicked off the Watergate Commission."  [Boos.]

     "We've learned so much from WikiLeaks.  For example, Hillary believes that it's vital to deceive the people by having one public policy [booing starts] and a totally different policy in private.  That's okay.  [acknowledging the booing] I don't know who they're angry at, Hillary, you or I.   For example, here she is tonight, in public, pretending not to hate Catholics.  [boos.]

     "Now some of you haven't noticed, Hillary isn't laughing as much as the rest of us.  That's because she knows the jokes.  And all the jokes were given to her in advance of the dinner by Donna Brazile.   Which is--everyone knows, of course, Hillary's believe that it takes a village, which only makes sense after all in places like Haiti, where she's taken a number of them."  [boos throughout]

Some readers may view this performance as unforced error:  Trump being inappropriate.    Maybe not.   Think was was useful to Trump.  After all, the performance was scripted and practiced.

Fox reports this as an error for Trump

Trump was talking to his base.  He demonstrating that he, too, is snubbed by the glitterati and special interests.   

Trump was communicating that he was not going to dress up in a white tie tux and amuse the overdressed rich and powerful.   Hillary gave a well received speech, because this was her crowd, not his.   Trump got boos, and those boos showed his base that he won't be the jovial puppet of the special interests to be accepted.  He is an outsider.   They see his resentment at being snubbed.

A great many Americans feel exactly the same way, socially insecure and resentful at being excluded from greatness and wealth.  Sanders understand this, and spoke to the students with debt, the workers watching profits go to the top of the one percent.   Sanders attacked the billionaires.   Trump just got boos from them.

Curiously, the New York Times coverage helped Trump more than did that of Fox News.  The Times understood this as being a snub.   Fox saw this as an error by Trump, a failure to understand how to behave.   Trump understands the sting of exclusion.  So do most Americans, who resent being excluded from the the parties of the "preppies" at high school, who resent the entitlements of the boss or the boss' son, who resent the politicians with their town cars and privilege and who resent American prosperity that trickles up, not down??   

See?  Trump is a victim, too.

Trump channels the public's feeling of economic and social resentment.  Trump gave a gauche, unfunny, inappropriate speech, which made certain that he would be publicly snubbed and humiliated.   Trump is crazy like a fox.

Trump has made so many other errors that his campaign may not be salvageable, but this speech, and its boos, was on message.   

Trump could still win this.   This morning, on Fox News, I watched Trump in North Carolina, taking about job losses in North Carolina, saying NAFTA, signed by Bill Clinton, was a one way highway of our jobs to Mexico.   "They get our jobs, we get the crime and drugs."   The message is oversimple, but it is not being contradicted, and the message has appeal, when Trump makes it.

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There is more.   Once a week I upload a podcast of a conversation and commentary created by me and Thad Guyer, an attorney who specializes in representing whistleblowing employees.  We talk about the current state of the race, the mainstream polls, the outlier poll, Trump's message, Hillary's weaknesses, Bill Clinton's past sins, former Sanders voters, the ghost of Nader, and more.   Check it out.

Click here for the current podcast