Why Trump is Winning
By Daniel Greenfield
SultanKnish.com
As the long slow race to beat Hillary drags on,
there will be a thousand conservative stories and
blog posts demonstrating beyond a shadow of a doubt
that Donald Trump is a hypocrite, that he supported
illegal immigrants, Hillary, abortion and higher
taxes. And few of them will leave our small bubble.
Trump may indeed be a liar and a hypocrite, though
he wouldn't be the only candidate in the race who
has moved to the right or abandoned previous
positions, but he understands what the others don't.
The Republican field is a mass of highly qualified
and talented people with poor media skills and worse
communication skills. Some consciously choose to
play it safe. Others seem to have no clue how to win
a debate or a drive a message home.
Donald Trump has been a joke of one kind or another
for most of his adult life, and until now he's been
an incredibly successful joke. He is burning the
empire that allowed him to enjoy a highly privileged
lifestyle by marketing his brand as a blatant luxury
item that anyone could have.
Trump made wealth populist. He made a seeming upper
class lifestyle appear accessible in all its
ridiculously tacky glory. He might be betting that
he can get it all back once the furor dies down and
his run becomes another chapter that keeps him in
public view. But he's betting a lot as the
corporations that enabled him to play billionaire
are cutting their ties with him.
And without those companies marketing his brand,
he's a moderately wealthy man with a lot of debts
and a troubled business plan.
So Trump is taking a huge gamble. Whatever he
believes, he appears to be betting that he can
become president. Unlike some other candidates, this
doesn't come down to speaking fees. If no company
will touch his brand, being able to charge a few
thousand more per speech won't make up for his
losses.
Like the Confederate flag, the more he comes under
fire, the more conservatives rally around him. It's
a perverse dynamic that the media feeds on. The
media would love to see Trump in the race long
enough to make it come down to him and Jeb Bush.
They might regret that, but they probably won't.
Conservative punditry is mourning a field in which
talented and promising Republican leaders are being
ground under. And they have a point, but if those
Republicans were really so talented and promising
they wouldn't be falling behind to a man whose big
talent is brash self-confidence.
Brash self-confidence, an outsized personality, a
willingness to take great personal risks are what is
absent from the Republican field. And those define
Trump's brand. They may be fake, but in an age where
the camera defines truth, your messaging is only as
good as your acting and your sales skills.
Donald Trump is a great salesman. His Republican
rivals aren't. Some are talented lawyers. They
understand policy and political tactics. But they
couldn't sell a discounted heater to Eskimos.
His entry into the race may be an important wake up
call.
If the genuine conservatives can't outsell Trump,
they're not going to be able to outsell bland
corporate brands like Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton.
It won't matter who is left standing because no one
will be left standing.
Like most great salesmen, Donald Trump is an
instinctive populist. He knows how to get people's
attention and how to promise them a better life.
Those are also the skills of a good politician.
And like most salesmen, plenty of people hate him
instinctively. Others are willing to believe in him
all the way.
Trump has changed the race from a huddle of
politicians trying to lock down distinct blocs and
lines of appeal in the party, Evangelicals,
libertarians, candidates who can appeal to
minorities, youth votes, to blatant populism. Trump
doesn't appeal to any blocs. He has the FOX News
sensibility of shouting the right sorts of things at
the right time with a fake working class edge.
In short, he's Bill O'Reilly.
The more he does it, the more he's identified with
genuine conservatism. The liberal backlash feeds
into his image because he's doing what none of the
candidates seem to consistently do, which is fight.
Like Bill O'Reilly, Donald Trump is probably fake.
But it doesn't really matter. Politics is itself
fake. Trump's entry moves it from a race about blocs
to a race about issues. It shows the other
candidates what they aren't doing.
The gifted populist knows how to echo the anger of
the people, to speak for those who feel
unrepresented, to offer the common sense responses
that most people think they would offer in his
place. That is what some of the candidates have
tried to do, it's what Trump is actually doing.
The Republican field is filled with candidates who
offer workshopped solutions. Even the best of them
don't quite channel the public outrage, the sense of
persecution that so many people feel.
They're sensible, reasonably personable, somewhat
articulate, possessed of a measured sense of humor
and all those things that Mitt Romney couldn't
figure out how to be in front of a camera.
By 2012 standards, they're a vast improvement. By
2016 standards, that may not be enough.
A lot of people are going to embrace Trump because
he says what they're thinking and feeling. They're
going to nod along to Ted Cruz or Scott Walker
without feeling engaged in the same way.
That's just human nature.
Trump is a wake-up call that conservative candidates
need to take it to the next level. That doesn't mean
moving to the "right" of Trump. If Trump is willing
to say anything, there may be no such place. It
means connecting with people at a deeper level than
just the rhetoric. It means doing more than
retelling their own compelling personal stories.
People need someone to fight for them. They need
more from a politician than a great story. They need
the feeling that the politician will do everything
he can to fight for their way of life.
If they want to win, they are going to have to
silence their inner lawyer, shut down some of the
skills they learned as politicians, and learn to
project what their audience is feeling. A good
politician knows what you want to hear. A good
salesman knows what you want to feel.
Trump isn't fighting this as a battle of ideas or
policies. He's talking about what people feel.