I’m a little frustrated with Nate Silver’s frustration. I understand the basic impulse to rage against anyone who attributes a single positive attribute to Donald Trump, even if the positive attribute (cunning, savvy, foresight, intuition) is in the service of a negative goal. But Silver needs to reckon with three things.
First, Donald Trump defied all the experts to win the primaries against eleventy billion competitors, and he stunned the world by executing an Electoral College inside straight that came out pretty much exactly how he and his advisers said it would come out, with the Rust Belt falling in his column. This wasn’t some accident that had nothing to do with their plan.
Second, all the way along his path to victory, he was scolded by the media and Republican consultants and by many of his own handlers for going off script and saying needlessly stupid or offensive things. The list is too long to detail, but we all know the list. He generally wasn’t hurt by these antics in the places where he needed to win, and collectively they pretty much describe why he won in those areas.
Three, even though there is no doubt that Trump acts impulsively and from base instincts and emotions much of the time, and even though he clearly doesn’t understand the rules of politics or the separation of powers very well, he is usually following a rough process laid out for him by advisers. If he goes off script, which he does often, there is still an overall intentionality and plan he is following. The advice he has received is retained however imperfectly in his head and plays a part in how he behaves.
Taken in combination, these three things explain what we see. His plan for victory entailed crafting a message on the economy and on cultural issues that would help him win where previous Republicans had consistently lost, without ceding traditional Republican territory. He executed that plan. What he learned from his success is that the scolds in the existing political firmament were clueless and that his intuition was a better guide than the analysis of polls or any common wisdom that could be found anywhere. He learned that he had wide latitude to say whatever the fuck he wants, no matter how uninformed or hateful, and that far from being harmed by it, it would serve as the source of his appeal and strength.
Maybe Trump’s success says more about the character of our nation in this moment in time than it does about his political intuition, but it seems as if there is enough of a match that it hardly makes a difference which one you want to emphasize. What doesn’t seem warranted is to reject the idea completely that Trump is following his political intuition when he does things like attack black athletes or Puerto Ricans or Mexican-American judges or Muslim refugees. These things have not only worked for him, they are what worked for him. If, at some point, he reaches the point of diminishing returns or goes too far and suffers the kind of backlash that actually harms him electorally, that won’t mean he was wrong all along. It will just mean that there is a limit or boundary.
It’s fine to point out that Trump exhibits some pretty obvious psychological traits. For example, he doesn’t take criticism well and feels compelled to answer it. He’s most inclined to respond to criticism from people he feels are inferior, like women or people of color. We can see this and use it to predict his behavior. We can note how it sometimes takes him off message. What we can’t do is show how it’s caused him to lose appeal among the groups that provided him his margin of victory.
The real threat to Trump lies elsewhere. It’s his inability to deliver on his promises that makes him look weak and stupid to his supporters. And the explanation for his failure is largely a failure of the people advising him and of the congressional leaders to provide him with a workable plan. When his fans blame Ryan and McConnell, and people like Reince Priebus, they aren’t wrong. Those people assured him that if he followed their plans, he’d have success. He attempted to follow their advice and got nothing but humiliation in return.
Of course, the truth isn’t something Trump’s base would like to hear, because the truth is that Trump overpromised and his advisers overpromised. His fans love Trump for his disrespect and brashness, but they’re not loving his ineffectiveness and they don’t understand at all the cause of his ineffectiveness. It’s not the fault of Priebus and McConnell and Ryan that they failed to produce. It’s their fault for saying that they could.
Yet, it’s still the case that Trump’s in-the-now impulsiveness jibes well enough with what the electorate wants that it’s a mistake to think he ‘s not following a plan when he fails to stop and think.
In the simplest formulation, enough people wanted an asshole for president that being an asshole became the winning formula. In particular, being an asshole about gender, religion and race became a winning formula when it was combined with an economically populist message.
Finally, I want to point out that beginning before Trump was even a rumored candidate, I predicted that the Republicans would move or be very tempted to move in this direction.
The GOP is Moving in the Wrong Direction, July 2nd, 2013.
A Deal with the Devil, May 5th, 2014.
Trump and the Missing White Voters , December 9th, 2015.
Trump’s Narrow Path to Victory, September 20th, 2016.
And, right after the election, I wrote Avoiding the Political Southification of the North .
Those who argued against comprehensive immigration reform in the aftermath of Obama’s reelection were arguing that the Republicans could win, despite growing demographic disadvantages, by polarizing the white electorate against the Democratic Party on the basis of race and religion. Trump merely executed that plan. He’s still executing it.
People ought to be sick by now both of underestimating Trump and overestimating the character of the American people. No one wants to hear either of those messages, but I’m sick of losing and we’ll keep losing if we keep lying to ourselves.
Is Trump a cleverly disguised genius? No. Not at all. He’s not even minimally sane. He’s very bad at following instructions, sticking to a plan even of his own making, or executing more than two steps ahead. This is dangerous enough in the foreign policy sphere that he should be removed from office for that defect alone.
But he says spontaneous assholish things not only because that’s who he is but because that’s how he’s had success. It’s still working for him where it counts. And it’s not clear that it will ever stop working for him where it counts. What will stop working for him is everything else.