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| A Lot of Democrat Blue and Orangutan Orange |
I am guilty of two political sins this election season. First, I underestimated Trump's chance of being the nominee. Once the field of candidates was more or less set, Nate Silver said that the GOP field was four roughly equal quadrants: one each for Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and Scott Walker and the fourth for everybody else. I was even more heavily slanted toward the conventional candidates. I only left about 10% chance for anyone other than Bush, Rubio or Walker. I didn't make Trump the favorite until after New Hampshire.
Donald Trump has swallowed more than 3/4 of the field's chances, with only Rubio still sanding among the conventional candidates. The exact numbers at the moment are 80% for Trump, 16% for Rubio, 2% each for John Kasich and Ted Cruz. (Here I will pause for one brief moment of celebration: we have almost certainly been spared the specter of Ted Cruz becoming President of the United States.)
I am about not enthused for a Hillary Clinton presidency. I happen to prefer her over Bernie Sanders in about the same proportion that I prefer beige to taupe. I'm not going to go out and flip a police car over to prove it. But there is one thing I can get enthused about, and that is preventing a fascist president. And that, it seems, will be our national task for the next eight months.
Schadenfreude Turns to Anxiety.
I am not alone in underestimating Trump's chance of being the nominee. That sin is easily forgiven. What I''m more troubled by is that I have enjoyed the process too much. I think that Donald Trump is the natural product of a right-wing media that for seven years peddled and incessant flow of lies about Barack Obama, undocumented workers and a slew of nontroversies best embodied by their shameful exploitation of the attacks on the outpost Benghazi. Trump also used some brilliant jujitsu to point out that Citizens United corrupted our political system. Moreover, he promised to strengthen popular and necessary pieces of the social safety net, especially Social Security and Medicare.
It was fun to watch someone trounce the hollow patriotism and phony "conservative values" of Walker, Bush, Rubio, Chrsistie and Cruz. Those sentiments were always a phony shell game and it was nice to have an actual WWE Hall of Famer tear down that facade. I was also glad that Trump brought a streak of populism to the Republican race. At the last debate Cruz and Rubio were still attacking him for supporting an individual mandate. He defended his position as not wanting people to die in the streets and they called that socialism. That mentality has been dominant in politics because of the false narrative that this is a "conservative" country that hates government and loves the free market even to the detriment of our own well being. No we are not. We are a rich country that is skeptical of political philosophies. We like winners and we like the little guy. The trick is to win by convincing the little guy that you're on his side.
But the time for enjoying the train wreck that has been the 2016 GOP nomination has to be cleared off the tracks even before the bodies get cold. In 72 hours, Donald Trump is going to have the silly half of this process sewn up. As the calendar turns to the general election, we can't mix words: Donald Trump is not merely a demagogue. He is a fascist.
Fascism is a big charge. I do not lob it around lightly. I rest this assertion on his below statements, all of which have been well documented. I provide links to each one because I recognize the gravity of my accusation.
- Characterizing immigrants from Mexico as "rapists". Source.
- Promising to bring back "waterboarding and worse" of terrorists because "they deserve it".
Source.
- Promising to murder the relatives of suspected terrorists. Source.
- Declaring that he will ban all Muslims from entering the country. Source.
This isn't just nuts. It's a call to fascism. And we have to do whatever it takes to prevent him from winning the White House.
But Can it Happen?
Let's put it this way: all of the reasons why it can't happen are the same reasons we all thought he couldn't be the nominee. In the past two weeks, as a Trump nomination became more and more likely, the predictions market for who will win the general election barely budge. Now that Trump is about to be the presumptive nominee, we need to look at a few specific things that will determine the shape of the general election.
A. His opponent, Hillary Clinton.
Bernie can not be the Democratic nominee without substantial report from black voters. Yesterday's result in South Carolina shows that he has not made that sale. His campaign schedule this week proves that he is not trying to anymore. He might win heavily white states like Minnesota, Vermont, West Virginia and Oklahoma. He will keep winning delegates throughout the spring. But he will not be the nominee.
This leaves Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump has obvious lines of attack against her. First he will claim that she is in the pocket of all the Wall Street banks that have given her so much money over recent years. Hillary foolishly avoided releasing the transcripts of her paid speeches to Goldman Sachs. She will not have that luxury in the fall because Trump will call her a fraud. She needs to release them early and get it over with. More importantly Trump will attack her on free-trade, immigration and the Muslim world. Hillary can and should win all of those arguments on the substance but Donald is very capable of winning on style by just flat-out insulting her.
Hillary is also perceived as too ambitious and insufficiently honest. Those are traits that can kill a politician, especially against an opponent who can claim with a straight face to be making a personal sacrifice by running and when the public often confuses the lack of a filter for truthfulness.
I have written repeatedly that I think the predictions markets underestimate the Democrats' chances of winning the next election. In the past 2 weeks the probability of a Trump-Clinton match-up nearly doubled from 41% to 78%. And the prediction markets have barely budged. The Democrats were a 61% chance of winning then and they are a 63% favorite now. That's right, the prospects of a Trump nomination have reaped all of a 2% jump for the Democrats.
This means that the betting public thinks Trump can beat Hillary. One scenario is equally horrible and plausible. We know that Hillary is a lousy presidential candidate. If she wasn't the Democratic race would be Bernie taking on Vice-President Obama. And we know that Donald is a good candidate, because he's already gobbled up a deep field of Republicans that were more likely to win than him.
So we will get into September and October with the race too close to call. What if, in the middle of October two young men with Arab last names decide to shoot up a movie theater. Or a high school cafeteria. Or the parking lot of a major college football stadium right after a game. Does anyone doubt that people will bend towards the candidate promising to do something rash in response?
B. His Party and its Appratchicks.
This is a fun mental concept. Can you imagine Bernie Sanders giving a full-throated endorsement of Hillary at the Democratic convention? It's easy. But what about Rubio or Cruz or Kasich endorsing Trump? It's a little trickier, isn't it?
Sometime in March the GOP race will effectively be over. Kasich and Rubio have already said they will drop out if they do not win the race in their home states on March 15th, they will drop out. Cruz is likely to win his home state of Texas on March 1st, but it's hard to imagine him winning anywhere else. So as the candidates drop out, what will they do? I can't imagine Lindsay Graham endorsing Trump. Jeb Bush is hard to imagine also. But Rubio and Cruz have a future to worry about and they will be left with a choice-be loyal to the party and hope to win in four years or repudiate him and hope to say "I told you so" next time around.
Then there is the pundit class. Does George Will hate Hillary Clinton enough to debase himself by banging the drum for Donald Trump? What about Charles Krauthamer? I don't think these guys have much influence over rank and file voters but they too will have to choose between a unified front and their need to oppose fascism.
C. Third Party Candidates?
I think if Trump has the nomination sewn up by April 1st, someone will emerge to run as a third party candidate from the right. This person will not win, but they can give intelligent Republicans an excuse to not vote for Hillary Clinton. But if the election is close, I don't think that candidate will get more than a blip on election night. If however Hillary runs up a good lead, and current events don't jolt the race dramatically, this candidate might attract enough voters to throw all of the swing states to the Democrats and also some not-so contested states, like Missouri, Indiana and even Montana. Even Texas might be contested by Hillary. And the GOP could lose in the Electoral College by a 2 to 1 margin.
Then the Republicans will lick their wounds and try to get used to having lost the popular vote in six out of seven general elections. A few months later, the 2020 field will begin to ooze into a loose, murky condition. And the conventional wisdom will be that they screwed up by not nominating a true conservative.
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