I've run the gamut on Trump for the last several months. I've been alternately puzzled, bemused, amused, distressed, etc. Like so many other people, I've waited for the "inevitable" bursting of the bubble, each time he's said or done something outrageous. Of course, it hasn't happened. I admitted a while ago that I went from thinking he had zero chance at the nomination, to thinking that he had a slim chance, to now figuring that it's approaching a coin flip. At this point, I'm not really afraid of his winning the election, but I'll concede that I've been wrong about him more than once to this point.
And while I said yesterday that I experienced no small amount of schadenfreude that Republicans appeared to be getting the candidate they deserved—for their fetishizing of wealth, for their anti-intellectualism, for their encouragement of nativism and everything else—today I've found that feeling dissolving into worry. Worry for what it means for our society, our politics, our identity. I'm still not particularly worried that he's going to become president, but I'm worried about what his ascent means for the future.
I tend to think that Trump's campaign has been smart and calculated rather than freewheeling, reactionary and ignorant, as it's been portrayed. I think he's a bully, and per the maxim about punching a bully in the nose, the way you curb this particular bully is by beating him. He was oddly deflated and detached-seeming after losing in Iowa. If this campaign is a massive ego-feed for him, his ego trip ends when he loses. It's just that the shower of mediocrities who've shared the stage with him haven't been able to pull it off yet. Lindsey Graham, after the first debate, said something to the effect of "I can't believe I'm losing to these guys." That says it all, to me. He's terrible, but what does it say about them that they can't seem to lay a glove on him?
I think the situation has come to a head because of the singular personality of Trump, but its roots are in the weakness of the Republican party. For years now it's been the captive of the Tea Party, where cutting off one's nose to spite one's face is pretty much the price of admission. They have no interest in governing and value purity over results, every time. That dynamic has continued to shrink the demographic appeal of the party, and I'm not really certain how that trend is going to be reversed.
There was a lot of comment from the national press about the appearance of Rubio on the stump in SC with Nikki Haley and Tim Scott. The picture that was painted was of youth and diversity, but the optics were just papering over the fact that the party's appeal has narrowed to a swath of folks who represent just the opposite. One thing I will say about Hillary is that, despite the jokes and memes about her courting the black vote in SC, or her attempts to run the table with female voters by any means necessary, she represents something more than window dressing. Her team and the various state apparati that support her are legitimately diverse across numerous fronts, and her appeal to women and minorities is probably more legitimately informed and earned than her detractors are willing to credit. The Trump phenomenon, for the moment, exists within the context of the party for whose nomination he's running. He's found a message that resonates with that crowd, and that's what's going to have to change.
