Exactly. It’s bait-and-switch. Trump’s base is what Donald Warren, writing in 1976, called Middle American Radicals or MARS. As John B. Judis writes:
Trump, after the usual pattern of demagogues other than Communist demagogues, is focusing the MARS’ attention on the “below,” even though it is really the “above” (that is, the 1%, not the government except to the very considerable extent to which it acts as their agents) who is to blame for their declining job prospects and economic marginalization and disappointed white entitlement. And his approach works, it appeals to them, just as George Wallace’ strategy of blaming the blacks and biggummint did.
As has been said on this Board, I forget by whom, “You can’t spend 30 years dry-humping the crazy and then act surprised when the crazy wants to fuck.”
From my standpoint Trump and Sanders are both riding a current wave of anti-establishment. People are flocking to their campaign despite promises that have no chance of coming to fruition.
You’ll pardon me if I don’t take a former Clinton cabinet member as unbiased. From my view Sanders is almost as nutty as Trump (albeit without the buffoonery) and he’s getting almost as much support. Sanders might be hampered in that Hillary is a more viable (and better) alternative to what the Republicans are currently peddling.
Both candidates are demonizing (Trump: Islamists, Sanders: 1%ers), anti-science (Trump: AGW, Sanders: nuclear power), and nutty (Trump: Mexico will build the wall, Sanders: tax 1%ers at 85%).
One difference is that Sanders is attracting the recent liberal outrage (e.g. OWS) whereas Trump seems to be going against the grain of the Tea Party movement. In that regard Trump’s success is more surprising.
It worked well enough to get many American presidents into office. Lincoln ran on a fairly rational platform. So did TR and FDR and Truman and Eisenhower and JFK and LBJ and Clinton and Obama and . . . well, no Pubs since Eisenhower, for some reason.
Trump’s supporters tend to be less educated, blue collar workers. Those kinds of people are the ones facing the most competition from illegal immigrants in factories, service jobs, carpentry, etc. So his anti immigration stance is appealing to them.
Plus trump speaks out against the rigged political system, how the rich own the politicians. Both he and Sanders are popular for speaking out against this fact.
Plus trump says he will support Medicare, Medicaid, social security, etc. He is arguably the least plutocratic gop candidate.
I like trump. Wouldn’t vote for him but I like him.
Casting this as a problem with stemming from crazy Republicans is comforting to the left, I suppose, but Trump’s appeal has nothing to do with Republican ideas. In fact, Trump’s policies are simple blue-collar populism. There are a lot of scared, angry working class people out there, and that’s created a situation ripe for a table-pounding populust to rise. On the left you got Sanders, on the right they got Trump. The reason Sanders is fading is that he’s a bit too much of a principled leftist, a bit too old, and he doesn’t have the media skills that Trump has.
I will predict that if Trump becomes the Republican nominee the Democrats are going to lose a lot of blue collar voters to him. Those people were never staunchly Democrat anyway - Reagan managed to pull huge swaths of them into his coalition, but they drifted back to the Democrats after the aristocratic George HW Bush was supplanted by the plain-speaking Clinton, who was also more of a populist in campaign rhetoric while Bush was saying things like, “Message: I care.”
Trump should be scaring you Democrats as much as he’s scaring serious Republicans.
Your thesis is that irrationality wins. I say, sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t. If you want to make a case for the irrationality of the platforms of Lincoln, etc., have at it.
And there was a time when “Republican ideas” meant anything but “blue-collar populism.” But the GOP has been steadily trending in that direction ever since 1972, when Nixon employed the “Southern Strategy” and appealed to the “silent majority.” It was blue-collar populism that won the WH for Reagan – remember the “Reagan Democrats”? And they became Pubs not long after. It’s a blue-collar populist party now, only the establishment that made it so appears oblivious to what they’ve done.
We’re plenty scared of a Trump presidency alright, but the difference is that Trump’s failures will be the GOP’s failures, and it will mean more Democratic presidents. For the GOP, Trump’s ascension is existential. Liberals lived through GWB and we’ll live through Trump.
Once thing that’s hard for me to grasp is when Trump inevitably fails, either as a candidate or the president, what kind of even wackier GOP nominee we’ll get in 2020 or 2024.
The big issue with the Sanders platform is that it would never get through Congress. While some of it is iffy, some of it (like free college) is standard in other parts of the world. And there are specific proposals.
Compare to Trump - whose proposals are “trust me,” “it will be huge,” and “we’ll make Mexico pay for the wall.” That’s the sign of a demagogue - give the masses what they want to hear. Is it any accident that he has started quoting Mussolini approvingly? Is it any accident that he wants to make it possible to sue the press for saying something nasty about him?
Trump’s Message: “Your problems are the fault of the establishment in Washington, which has allowed millions of illegal immigrants to come into the country and take your jobs. Elect me, and I’ll smash the system, get rid of the immigrants, make good deals, and we’ll be winning again!”
Sanders’ Message: “Your problems are the fault of the establishment in Washington, which has allowed the rich plutocrats to take your jobs. Elect me, and I’ll smash the system, take the wealth from the plutocrats and give it to you, and we’ll have justice again!”
Trump is boorish, crass, and ignorant of the the issues on which he speaks. Sanders is radical, extreme, and ignorant of the issues on which he speaks. Both are making emotional arguments designed to play on the core fears and anger of the public. Both are populist demagogues.
I think that oversimplifies Sanders’ message. It’s more like “elect me so we can work together to reprioritize government spending to help people get the education they need to compete in the global marketplace and stop giving tax breaks to people and corporations who don’t need them.”