Momentum for Trump

Is Trump Plausible as President?     Apparently.   He leads a populist revolt against the establishment, from the authoritarian right.

There are two contradictory news items today that reflect on Trump's legitimacy.   The Washington Post has an extraordinary editorial, condemning Trump.   And CNN publishes a poll saying Trump is now solidly in the lead.

It does not particularly hurt Trump that the media and policy elites of the country oppose Trump.   Trump leads a revolt against that establishment.   (Bernie Sanders led a revolt against the financial establishment--but not the media establishment--from the democratic left, but lost.  The establishment won.)   Hillary represents the establishment, which narrowly won in the Democratic party side.

So we can add another division to the election.  Hillary vs. Trump:  Same-old vs. new, anti-racist vs. racial resentment, and now establishment vs. populist authoritarian.   People who read the NY Times and Washington Post like Hillary's side of this.   They find Trump utterly implausible.  The NY Times and Washington Post are archetypal establishment media.

Today, well in advance of the election, the Post published an editorial saying that Trump would be a disaster as president and be an affront to two centuries of constitutional government.  

"Unfit for the presidency."

"Uniquely unqualified."

"Campaign of snarl and sneer."

"Politics of denigration and division."

"Dangerous for the nation and the world."

The vast majority of voters do not get their political news from the NY Times and  Washington Post.  Trump has moved ahead in the polls.  This matters, and it helps Trump going forward.   

The people are speaking

Trump has cited polls throughout his campaign, and there was a reason for it.   Trump's justification for his campaign rested in part on the idea that he was representing "the people" rather than elite opinion.   The post convention poll results go a long way toward validating Trump, and making him "presidential."   He is validated not because he sounds like other candidates--sober, polished speeches, careful and calibrated talk--but validated because he has the support of the people.  The new polls both reflect current opinion and shape future opinion.   The Washington Post can condemn him but now Trump can claim to speak for the majority, not just of GOP voters but of the whole country.   

The poll itself changes one of Trump's great impediments, that he is "un-presidential" and in some way essentially implausible as president.   His speeches are a patchwork of short bursts and half-thoughts.  Buttoned down Republicans like Mitt Romney and the Bush family refuse to endorse him.

But in a democracy the centerpiece of political legitimacy is the popular will.  Even the Constitution gets its validity because of its support by "We the People."   Trump is saying what a majority of people want to hear: change, racial resentment, undemocratic response to threats from inside and outside.   Trump is made "presidential" not by the discipline and professionalism of a teleprompter speech but by something more powerful and fundamental: the apparent will of the people.

The Washington Post dislikes Trump.  The people like Trump.   Overall, this is a very good day for Trump.

(I will note here once again that I am attempting to describe what I see happening.  I am not a cheerleader for Trump.)  

Why and How Trump wins this

This blog intends to be about observations, not predictions.  Why am I predicting a Trump victory in November?  Here is what I observe about the Hillary and Trump message.

Powerful ideas, appropriated by Trump

Hillary is a continuation, Trump is change.  Hillary has every good reason to want a continuation. In the past seven and a half years the American economy has pulled itself out of a deep recession, unemployment is down, gasoline prices are affordable, money from around the world is pouring into America making our dollar strong, stock markets are tripled, real estate prices are back up, and America is experiencing far less terror trouble than is Europe.  It doesn't help Hillary.  Revolts don't happen at the time of despair, they happen when things are getting better and people dare to hope for even-better.

Point for Trump, the change person.

Archie Bunker is alive and still votes

Hillary is anti-racist, Trump is okay-with-racist.    I believe the progressive left's analysis of America is correct and there is a large body of people with low-grade racism.   These voters know better than to say "nigger" in public and they agree that blacks and Hispanics should have the right to vote and they oppose overt segregation, separate water fountains, etc.  In short, they do not approve of 1950's overt southern segregation and they resent being accused of racism.  But still, they aren't actually fully comfortable with blacks, Hispanics, and Asians, especially when they retain foreign accents and elements of separate culture.  (Bill Cosby pre-revelations was OK: soft spoken doctor married to a lawyer, living in a big house, driving a Volvo.  But not so OK is a black person with attitude, or pressing one for English.)   Hillary's team identifies racism as a problem and white voters resent being identified as the problem.  They consider themselves the victim.  They are inclined to vote for the candidate who sympathizes with them rather than the one who blames and shames them. 

Point for Trump, the okay-with-racist.

Hillary wants steady progress on ending terror, Trump says he will stop it now. 

  

New York Post.   You don't read it, but millions do.

Hillary may well be expressing the best possible outcome in a complicated world but it is less appealing than Trump's confident promise that he will stop terrorism now.  How would he do it?  Trump says he gets things done, enough said.  Hillary talks about allies and process.  Trump says he gets results, under budget and before the deadline, and his daughter verifies it, enough said.   Journalism is no longer an effective arbiter or mediator or independent authority.  Trump's assertions may be impossible but who is to contradict him?  The lying media?  Some people believe him and some do not, but Trump promises results and Hillary promises struggle.

Point for Trump, the one who says he will end fear.

CNN shows empty podium marked Trump instead of Hillary speaking

Hillary is tiring and boring TV, Trump is interesting TV.    Eight years ago, in one of Obama's infrequent moments of gracelessness, he was asked in a debate with Hillary about her 'likability" factor.   "You're likable enough" he said.   It was a gaffe, defined as a politician accidentally telling the simple but un-sayable truth.   Hillary is likable enough, but not highly and empathetically engaging.  She comes across as an excellent professional colleague, but not a soul-mate confidante.   I have been in her close presence twice, in Oregon and New Hampshire, and she is better than "likable enough".  But on TV she does not come across as engaging.   Trump is more interesting.   Voters need to decide who they want to watch for 4 years: CSPAN or "The Apprentice".  Trump is better TV, so people watch Trump and he sets the agenda, so the election is about his issues and not hers.   He wants to talk about change and resentment over privilege and ending fear.   Hillary will want to talk about how crazy Trump is, but even this is a pyrrhic victory since, after all, she is talking about Trump, the interesting one.

Point for Trump, the guy we love/hate to watch because he is so interesting.

What is Trump's path to victory?

1.   Progressive peel-off.  Some Sanders-progressive never-Hillary people won't vote, which will peel off a few percent from the narrow Obama victory over Romney.   That, all by itself, may be enough, moving this from a 3 point victory to a 2 point loss.   The Koch Brothers and the right wing people are trolling the Sanders people right now and progressives love the bait being served them.  They are being told: Don't compromise!  Hillary is evil! Vote Stein!  Send a message!  Those voters have every right to vote their conscience. They resent being urged to compromise, and many will not.   Never Hillary.

2.   White resentment over political correctness.   Hillary is correct in saying there is lots of racism out there in America, that it is sometimes subtle but it is pervasive.  She is right.  It is, indeed, a problem that hurts women and blacks and Hispanics.  So it is no surprise that people vote their racial animus.  The Archie Bunker vote is out there.  It shows up in the upper midwest especially among ethnic Catholics, those Reagan Democrats.  Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin have the votes to elect Trump, when they switch from weakly Obama to weakly Trump.  It only takes an extra few votes. 

3.  Events keep Trump's issues alive.   A cop murder between now and November anywhere in America and maybe one more workplace shoot-up should keep the issue of fear more prominent than the issue of economic recovery under Obama.   Events will help Trump.   A few thrown rocks by young black people at a Black Lives Matter rally would do it, especially if a policeman is hit.  Violence helps elect the law and order candidate: Trump.  

That's it.   Simple.   Some conscientious progressives don't vote as a matter of principle, plus Trump gets the extra votes of people uncomfortable and fearful over crime and wackos who act out in the name of Allah, or some other religion. 

President Trump.

Hope and Change

The 2016 election is a choice between old vs. new, same-old vs. change.

Prediction:  President Trump

Kaine: safe, boring, same-old 

Voters are restless and are looking to surf the channels of potential new programs.   Hillary Clinton does not offer much change.   She has had the chance to suggest "new directions" but she isn't doing it.   Had she picked Elizabeth Warren or Julian Castro there would have been a whiff of "New and Improved Formula!" but she did not.

Tim Kaine is solid, safe, boring, more of the same.

So the die is cast:   Same-slog Hillary vs. Crazy Trump.   

Trump has added some sensible-steady to the Trump brand in the form of his adult children who gave credible speeches.   They are attractive and poised and polished.  Trump is getting credibility from them.   (Voters figure Trump couldn't be a total jerk and family failure if his kids look so nice and presentable.  Not Kardashians.)

Hillary's campaign has an opportunity here, if there is a good witness or two.   Many readers will have experienced watching the privileged path of the children of a business owner.  I have a few real-life observations, including times when I was the entry level employee and observed the jobs given to the children of the business owner, the teenagers and young adults my age.  I was sweating in the sun; they were in an air conditioned car, supervising my work.  It is good to be a rich kid, I observed.

Ivanka Trump

Still, the Trump kids presented themselves as work-oriented and endlessly praised their father-employer and the RNC crowds bought it.   They acknowledged their privilege.

If Hillary's campaign has some witnesses of ugly spoiled-brat behavior it would probably be a good time to present it. The Trump son's tweet praising the groundskeeper who worked instead of attending his sister's wedding was the right kind of data.

Of course the Trump kids did not work themselves up by merit alone.  But they admit it, which makes them harder to criticize.  At this moment Trump has added some youthful glamour to his mix.  They are attractive and apparently hard working.They didn't coast on their privilege.   And that is the Trump message: he will use his privilege to work on America's behalf.   As Ivanka put it, her father will make the extraordinary sacrifice of giving up his current splendid life in order to become our president.  

The presidency as sacrifice.  Smaller house.  Smaller jet.  Harder work. I  have observed no blowback from that comment so the public apparently accepts the idea.  It is good to be rich.

Trump is positioned to win the election.   Trump's big problem is that he seems like a temperamentally risky vessel for the change he offers.   His assertions that he alone can make Americans safe has a grandiloquence that some people will find off-putting, which is why his kids help his brand.  But his message of security and change is what a great many voters want to hear.   

Irrelevant:  People don't feel better

Obama failed to communicate the notion that the past 8 years have been years of solid economic improvement: full employment, low inflation, low gasoline prices, stock market tripled, housing prices back up, crime generally down.  The facts do not matter.  Voters don't believe the data.  Objectively Obama was an enormous success--but people do not believe it.

Terror worked, and people feel nervous.  They feel the economy is weak and security is low.   Terror incidents terrorize people.  It works to unsettle people and goad them into self-destructive behaviors.  Americans are ready to give up privacy and liberties and start quagmire wars against a religion which will alienate our allies and increase the likelihood of greater wars.   It was the geopolitical equivalent of the "draw play" in football.   The defense (America) rushed in exactly the direction the offense wanted, getting totally suckered.

Trump is winning on his message and Hillary does not appear to be changing hers so Hillary's focus is to convince people that Trump personally is unsuitable and that is what the election will be about.  Steady-but-Crooked Hillary vs. Says-Good-Things-but-Crazy Trump.  Voters may choose message over messenger.  Trump could easily win this election.

Notice to progressive readers:   I have repeatedly warned that Trump is a far more formidable candidate than progressives understand.  Progressives are in a media bubble.   Progressives talk to one another.   Progressives don't understand and relate to the xenophobia and white identity resentment that motivates many Trump supporters, so they do not incorporate it into their political calculus.   I have warned that a significant number of progressives will vote for Jill Stein or not vote or otherwise be never-Hillary and that I have thought this would be decisive.  No longer.

I now feel that Trump is likely simply to win outright, winning a majority without a peel-off of votes to Jill Stein or some other never-Hillary alternative.  This has the benefit for progressives that they can now conscience-free vote against Hillary, without the burden of thinking they are doing a Nader-sabatage.  Progressives need another cleansing bout of a McGovern 1972 loss to help them re-callibrate their understanding of American politics, and they are on track to get that lesson.  Progressives have not laid the groundwork for a Sanders revolution; meanwhile the right has laid the groundwork for Trump.  Oh. 

The lesson will be better learned if they in fact vote their conscience and support an alternative to Hillary Clinton. That way they will not think this was simply a matter of a Nader glitch.  In hindsight, Gore really would have been a better president than G W Bush and there really was a difference.  Oops.

Thad Guyer adds a comment on this election, which I share here:

"Yes, Trump says "he will save us", and we Democrats know he is far more likely to doom us. We listen to Hillary Clinton on this, and the mainstream media (MSM) reinforces that almost self-evident message. But Hillary continuously tries to tell us something that the MSM is simply pathologically unwilling to say (following the MSM humiliation that Trump would never be the Republican nominee)-- Hillary and the Democratic Party are in an electoral fight for our lives against Trump. 

The MSM doles out a constant diet that Hillary is far ahead, that Trump is unelectable, and that the Republicans are too divided to win. Hillary rightly urges us not to listen to that comforting message. Today on the NPR program, Diane Rehm, the panelist echo chamber assured listeners once again that Trump will not win. One panelist said without contradiction that Clinton is ahead in polls by "7 points" and soon may be so far ahead that Trump will have no chance of closing the GAP. Yet, RCP Poll Average shows Clinton behind in several major polls and now has only +2.7 point lead in an aggregate of all major polls-- within the margin of error. (See RCP http://goo.gl/ia5ffn). The New York Times gave great fanfare to the FiveThirtyEight.com statistical projection three weeks ago that Clinton has a "78% chance of winning". There is no MSM reporting that the same statisticians as of today say Clinton's chances have dropped TWENTY POINTS since that projection just a few weeks ago with the FBI report in the interim-- the probabilities for her win are now down to "58.7% and Donald Trump up to 41.3%". (See, http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast). 

Michael Moore: Trump will win

For the past two months, the MSM has touted Obama's alleged stellar approval ratings, which all leading statisticians say will be a major electoral factor. Ignored is the fact in the past seven days several major polls show Obama's approval in the negative, and his combined poll number is now below 50%. (See http://goo.gl/ToXyjT). As UpClose noted today, America's famous and ultra-liberal documentary film maker Michael Moore warned Bill Maher's audience that Trump is in a trajectory to win-- the audience booed Moore. (See http://goo.gl/3LyjSa). Moore's alerts have been ignored by the major MSM.

If the MSM is the voice of our party, it is an irresponsible one. To the contrary of "Hillary will surely win", the urgent message needs to be "danger,danger, complacency will doom us"."

Trump's Convention Speech

Yes it was a dark speech.  Things are bad but Trump is strong.  And his daughter says he's effective.  He says he will save us.

Every smart person is saying what I wrote above.   I don't need to pile on.   I have just one thing to add.

Republicans who liked Reagan and Romney and Ryan need to take stock of the fact that Donald Trump is no Ronald Reagan.   If, in fact, Republican voters like Trump and his message then Republican voters pay no attention whatever to the ideology and beliefs of their political philosophy and are in fact simply loyal to the GOP brand.   Or, Republican voters have really changed their mind.

Trump-ism is totally different from Pence, Reagan, Romney, and Ryan. 

Mixed Marriage

Trump wants big government. The other guys say they wanted smaller government.   Only big government can tell businesses where to place factories, only big government can increase the surveillance and security state, only big government can attempt to destroy ISIS immediately.

Trump is unconcerned with "family value" morality issues.  The traditional Republican party has abortion, anti-gay, family values front and center.   Trump has not studied the issues deeply enough to handle questions about them.  Trump is cosmopolitan and urbane, not small town and cloistered.  Trump even stuck in the unnecessary comment about protecting LGBTQ people.

Trump wants to limit immigration.   The other guys liked the business-friendly open borders and free trade.

Trump likes the social safety net.  The other guys said these entitlements made people weak in character and put the country into deeper debt.   Trump likes Medicare, Social Security and according to his daughter he want to expand assistance to new mothers.

Trump is skeptical of a global interventionist foreign policy.   The other guys are neoconservatives and want to engage more deeply in the world, arguing that is is the moral thing to do and in our interests.  Trump is isolationist.

Trump has done what Democrats could not do: get the Republican Party to reverse its positions on a great many of their core beliefs.

What remains?  Pro guns, anti-Hillary, and not shaming white identity politics.

Progressive Media Bubble

Guest Post:   There is a tide of anger and frustration in the American public invisible to consumers of the Mainstream Media.

Peter Sage Introduction of the Guest Post:

Frequent Guest Post author Thad Guyer is expressing anger and frustration more clearly than in the past. [For the record, he says he isn't angry nor frustrated, but that's how he sounded to me.  Read to the end and decide for yourself.  Or just believe Thad.]  He thinks that the media environment of the educated voter (i.e. classy news sources like the NY Times, the Washington Post, serious magazines, network TV) are stifling and obscuring a giant undercurrent of public resentment over the state of the country and world.

Thad Guyer is getting at the same point that progressive TV documentarian provocateur Michael Moore said: that Trump is going to win because the media is missing just how appealing Trump's policy prescriptions are, especially in the upper Midwest states that Michael Moore knows best: Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania.   Those states are Democratic blue but they are no longer safe for Hillary.  They like what Trump says about the failure of the established policy.   Blue collar workers want protection.  They don't get it from higher education or monopoly licensure so they want to get it from strong government. 

Lots of swing blue collar votes

Polite society adopted the policy solutions that fit the world view of college educated successful white collar professionals but was blind to the limitations of those policies for blue collar workers.   Bernie suggested free public college.   Hillary--the moderate liberal--said college loan restructuring.   Trump says we ought to have great jobs for people without college and we would have them if we had fair trade deals with China.

Blue collar solutions to American problems are characterized as "tabloid news"--the NY Post not the NY Times.   People who listen to NPR rather than Rush Limbaugh miss a big part of what is going on.  

Guyer says that the Mainstream Media delegitimizes open discussion of the policy failures of progressive, multicultural society, which suggests intent.  An alternative view--my own-- is that the presence of endemic glimmers of misogyny, racism, religious intolerance, and xenophobia are matters of ideological faith among progressives.   It is there, in the public, they believe, and it is an ideological sin.  It is akin to the religion of anti-communism of the 1950s; anti-communists were sure communist thinking was out there.  It is not subject to discussion.   In the 1950's communism was evil per se so any tinges of progressive thinking was evil.   Thus blacklists.

The ideology of anti-racism is a current version of a similar secular religion, this time carried out by the faithful among white progressive Hillary supporters plus her coalition of the oppressed: women, blacks, Hispanics, LGBTQ.   Their religion channels progressives into finding racism and xenophobia often and everywhere, and losing the distinction between David Duke/KKK/alt-right neo-Nazi anti-semitism and the wider variety of low-grade endemic xenophobia and ethnic identity.    This is why "micro-aggressions" are noticed and condemned.  They are ever on the alert and they are sure it is everywhere and, bingo, they find it everywhere.  The result is that in their eyes low-grade xenophobic fevers get conflated with full-bore Bull Connor/Adolph Hitler racism.   So people with the slight disease of xenophobia-fever hide and repress it, feel bad about having their feelings mis-cast as ugly racism, and so they rebel against the pressure and complain about the tyranny of political correctness.   And become Trump voters.

The judgement and condemnation of the progressive multicultural left is harsh and broad.  Or perhaps the judgement and condemnation is exactly on point, because the xenophobia and racism really is there.  I believe it in fact is widespread, but because it is real it is in fact a significant element of politics.   In a democracy progressives have two problems, not one.   The first problem is the racism and xenophobia that is endemic and exacerbates social problems.   The second is political:  there are a whole lot of people  they have identified as their political rivals and whom they have shamed as tabloid-reading racists.  Trump gives those people voice and affirmation while Hillary blames them.  Trump gets their votes.

 Xenophobes, racists, proud Christians, and people generally uncomfortable with foreigners feel what they feel.    Having identified the problem as both real and big progressives now have to deal with the fact that the people they call racists are going to outvote them.

Progressives deeply and solely in their media bubble are out of touch with the emotions that fuel the Trump campaign.   Progressives may not share those feelings but they were not going to vote for Trump in any case.   But there is a huge voting block who will.

Guest Post by Thad Guyer

Guest Post by Thad Guyer

Anti-Trump Media Suffocates the Democratic Party

Americans left and right now sneer at our mainstream media (MSM). The New York Times, the Washington Post, LA Times, CNN, MSNBC, Huffington Post have all squandered their credibility in their unabashed and ever more trite efforts to shame and embarrass anyone straying from liberal progressive ideology. The MSM now actually and actively delegitimizes political centrism. We are either pro-Hillary and anti-Trump at an ideological level, or we are a suspected “hater”. Centrism has been the backbone of our political and cultural stability for a century, with Americans free to pick and choose policies from left or right of center. No more. The MSM has messaged as clearly as print and broadcast will allow that Democrats may not have any positions other than internationalism, global trade promotion, heavy immigration flows, burgeoning social welfare programs, budget deficits and not cutting taxes or regulations.
 
Codes of political correctness are promoted to make it unacceptable to publicly voice support for any part of the conservative agenda. We dare not say “I think welfare programs might not be the best way to foster economic inclusion”, or “maybe we need to control our borders to cut down on the amount of illegal immigration”, or even “I think America is great”. Centrism is dissent, and no dissent is legitimate.
  
The MSM is grossly out of touch with the innate centrism that is part of the American personality. I am based in Vietnam now, a communist country that controls the media. I have worked in and spent time in countries with state controlled media, like China, Cambodia, Bolivia, Morocco, and Turkey. In those countries, the media is the voice of the government. Citizens ridicule the government media behind its back, dismiss it as a joke, but fear to publicly disagree with it. Centrism is not acceptable in these countries. Political loyalty is demanded to the state media.

We now have parallels in America with some of these countries.. Our MSM is not government controlled, but it is the voice of political power. It is the voice of the Democratic Party. Like my Vietnamese, Chinese and Bolivian friends and colleagues, Americans are hesitant to speak centrist positions. Centrism is dissent. A Democrat cannot voice support for anything Republican. A carelessly stated centrist position on globalism, borders, public benefits, or taxation can have social consequences, and even impair employment opportunity. 

Democrats are now a party of closeted centrists, oppressed by media enforced liberalism, codes of political correctness, and seldom honestly engage with each other in political conversation. Democrats lie about not liking anything Trump advocates. This suppression of centrism is stifling and stagnating. The MSM is suffocating the Democratic Party, fueling extreme partisanship, and creating a greenhouse of anti-establishment nationalism, racial division, and a body politic ready to explode.
 
The mainstream liberal media has given us Donald Trump, far more than Fox News ever could.  

What Donald Trump should do Tonight

Donald Trump will give his big nominating speech.

All eyes on Trump tonight.   Historically the big "Yes, I accept your nomination" speech is a big deal.  It gets a huge audience and the political press analyzes the speech and expands its impact.   Tonight may be different.   Trump does not need to introduce himself to voters.  Even the uninterested and non-political know him.

But this would be a chance to shock Americans by re-introducing himself if he wants to.  He could push reset.  What would the new Donald Trump look and sound like?   He would sound like Donald Trump, the new Donald Trump:  Donald Trump, Junior.

Donald Junior

Yesterday I described Donald Trump, Jr.'s speech briefly, and gave a link:   Click Here

The speech is the one the new re-set Donald Trump can do.   If The Donald can manage to sound like Donald Junior then The Donald will have solved one of the lingering problems that he has--that he does not yet seem entirely plausible for the job because he isn't presidential.    The Donald should do it.

  1.  It preserves the Donald Trump brand. When given by Donald Junior it preserves the brand name and when given by The Donald it would preserve it even better.  It would fulfill the promise that The Donald could be presidential when he needed to be.

  2.  It uses grown up languages and sentences  and sounds like  he takes the job seriously.

  3.  It gives a coherent and cohesive picture of what is wrong with America and what the solution is, linking the important strands of a business friendly and nationalistic populism.  

Too much immigration hurts the working poor

  4.  It would have significant appeal to progressive Sanders voters because it re-frames the anti-immigrant and xenophobic rhetoric of The Donald into a matter of care for the interests of the hard working legal immigrants and native born workers.   There is a progressive argument for immigration control, and it could tamp down the charges of blatant racism and xenophobia.   Being anti-immigrant can be an expression of concern for the American working class.  The free movement of labor means low wages for entry level jobs.  Black liberal Congresswoman Barbara Jordan made that very case.  The Donald could publicly acknowledge his debt to her, which would confound his critics.  Here is an ad from NumbersUSA, an anti-immigration group, showing Barbara Jordan speaking on behalf of "the most vulnerable":    Click Here: 30 Second Ad

  5.  The coherent populist appeal is a direct contrast to Hillary Clinton, essentially from the left.  It echoes the Sanders critique.  Trump owns the anti-Hillary vote and most of the Republican vote.   This approach will not offend his conservative base even as it reverses direction on Hillary, sounding more like Bernie Sanders and liberal senators like Sherrod Brown and Elizabeth Warren and Jeff Merkley.  Trump attacked the Republican establishment and Sanders attacked the Democratic establishment.   Being anti-establishment is a majority position.   Hillary is a successful practitioners of establishment politics.

With Senator Merkley, a liberal populist

  6.  The coherent populist understanding of the world is simple enough to express and simple enough to be understood, and it seems "right" and consistent with the observation of lots of people: Republicans, Democrats, Greens, Libertarians.  The elites have screwed the average American by destroying the economy and the political system.  The weak recovery and political gridlock seem strong evidence that something is very wrong.

   The Populist View:   In the past couple of decades business, academic, and media elites--plus the political elites they have bought and corrupted--have sold an idea of global trade and monopoly protections for the powerful so we have the worst of crony capitalism.  Wall Street, big business, the Chamber of Commerce all sold the idea that borders didn't matter, that labor should be free to cross the borders and that "free trade" helped Americans.  The result is that we have lost jobs to low wage high polluting countries and that we have floods of unassimilated people with very different cultures coming here.  Some newcomers are criminals, some are terrorists, and all of them are hurting native born Americans by driving down wages.   We need a strong leader to stand up for the interests of America's enemies, some of which are the privileged interest groups--which include the corrupted political class in America who are puppets for their rich donors--who protect themselves at the expense of regular Americans.   America "works" for those privileged and self-serving people and they sneer at regular Americans, but the average Americans have the power to "take back America" and "make America great again" if they rally behind a strong leader who fights for "America first".  Donald Trump is that man.

Will Donald Trump push reset and give a speech in the style of Donald Junior?   We will see.  He may not have it in him.  If he cannot give it I believe it will reduce his likelihood of winning, but he may pass along the baton to Donald Junior, who might be giving that speech 4 years from now.

Donald Trump has more popular positions on the issues than does Hillary Clinton, but he appears an uncertain and risky vessel for presenting those positions.   Donald Senior can repair that problem and his son showed him how to do it.

Revolt against Elitism

The Trump brand is anti-elitist, and son Donald Junior spoke to reinforce that brand.

Hillary Clinton is an elitist.   She tries to disguise it a little but mostly she embraces it.  In New Hampshire in September I recorded her revised "origin story."   She did not speak of her own log cabin childhood because she did not have one.   She spoke of her mother.  Hillary said her mother's struggle, having been forced to leave the house as a teenager, was "the touchstone" of Hillary's own life of public service.   Hillary said she could have gone to Wall Street after leaving Yale Law School, but instead worked for the Children's Defense Fund.   (And then, later, in Little Rock, worked for the Rose law firm--as elite as it gets in Arkansas.)

Hillary was Wellesley and Yale Law.  She was a lawyer.  She serves on boards, including being the first female director on the Walmart Board.  She vacationed at Martha's Vineyard.  She reads serious newspapers and serious books and knows serious journalists and is comfortable with serious--and seriously wealthy--people.  

Hillary Clinton's instincts and peers are from a culture of educated, successful people--the kind of people who read and comprehend complicated information created by respected institutions.   There is an aristocracy of these talented people and she is in it.   The aristocracy is theoretically open to intelligent and hard working people, primarily through the avenue of education, and the theory is mostly true.  It is open.  Hillary is in it and so could anyone.

(I help coordinate the Harvard admissions interviews in Southern Oregon.  Every year about a dozen wonderful, bright, ambitious young people apply to Harvard.   Admission to Harvard is one of the many gateways into that privilege, but there are lots of others: elite colleges, military academies, extraordinary athletic or technology talent, parental money.  It is way, way easier to get enter this elite body if one starts off with parents in the educated middle or professional class, but it is not essential.)  

 Donald Trump is an anti-elitist.   It is not intuitive that Trump is anti-elitist since he is the product of inherited wealth and he mentions that he went to Wharton--and notes it is Ivy League, a really, really top school, the best--and that he lives in a zone of luxury: top jet, top homes, top casinos, top golf courses, top businesses, top wives all of them 10s when he married them.

Donald Trump, Junior

But Donald Trump communicates a working person's notion of wealth, vulgarity in the old sense of the word:  tasteless, crass, ostentatious, flamboyant, overdone, gaudy, garish, brash, loud.  It is the wealth of a name in capital letters in gold on a casino rather than the wealth of a name on a university library or charitable foundation.

And Trump is openly critical of elites of journalism, of academia, of politicians and political commentators.   He mocks them.

Son Donald Trump, Jr. spoke last night and reaffirmed that brand.  Donald Junior gave an extended and coherent policy explanation of Trumpism.   Donald Junior does what his father does not do: appear like an intelligent, disciplined political leader.  

The current laws do not help regular American.   They help the protected elites.   Don Junior said that his father was working to help every American, not the "crony elites." 

"To this day, many of the top executives in our company are individuals that started out as blue collar . . . . We learned from people who had doctorates in common sense."

Donald Junior criticized the closed system of education which serves the interests of the teachers' unions and the tenured faculty at universities.  The Democratic Party, he said, is under the control of teachers' unions who oppose upward mobility by stifling innovation in order to protect themselves and their jobs. Click here for the 15 minute speech     Readers who find Donald Trump personally offensive but who "sort of like what he says" will hear Trump-populism expressed with credibility and self discipline--a better version of Trump.   

"For the first time parents no longer think their kids will be as well off as we were.  We have lost the confidence in our leaders and the faith in our institutions."    Donald Junior went on to say that his father listens to practical experts valuing their "street smarts and work ethic",  not the people with degrees from Harvard and Wharton with their "paper credentials" with "fancy colleges and degrees."

Donald Junior continues, that his father 'knows that the heart of the American dream is that whoever we are and wherever we're from, we can get ahead."    The flood of immigrants to America stand in the way of jobs and promotions for hard working Americans.

The regulations do not help consumers, he said.  It helps preserve the privilege of billionaires and the "protected people" at the top of  society.

Donald Trump, Senior may lose this election but his son could win it.   He expresses the Sanders viewpoint nearly as well as Bernie.