Trump:
EVERY New Year’s, in a spirit of self-examination, I try to catalog my worst blunders from the preceding year. But this year, like almost every pundit in America, I have one mistake that overshadows all the others, one confession that makes my other faults seem venial by comparison.
I underestimated Donald Trump.
To
really make a clean breast on this issue, I have to reach back earlier than
2015 (some forecasts take more than a year to be disproven), to a column I wrote in the far-off days of the 2012 campaign, when Mitt Romney flew to Vegas,
baby, to accept an endorsement from the Donald.
This
struck me, at the time, as a needless move by Mitt, because it left him sticky
with the tar of Trump’s birther nonsense while delivering little in return. The
idea that Romney needed the kind of voters excited by Trump’s flamethrower
style, I wrote, confused “the existence of a fan base (which Trump certainly
has) with the existence of a meaningful constituency (which he almost certainly
does not).” And even if there were real Trumpistas, Romney would win their
allegiance eventually: “Anyone who thrills to Trump’s slashing attacks on the
president probably isn’t sitting this election out.”
As a
third-party candidate, I went on, Trump might pose some danger to Romney’s
general-election chances. But Trump’s “third party rumblings are like his
birther bluster — sound and fury, signifying only ego.” And Romney would risk
little with conservatives by giving him the stiff arm. “Trump isn’t Rush
Limbaugh or Sarah Palin: His conservatism is feigned, his right-wing fans are
temporary admirers with no deep commitment to his brand or cause, and hardly
anyone in the conservative media is likely to rise to his defense.”
Now, if
I were the sort to engage in special pleading, I would note that this may not
have been technically wrong as an analysis of the status quo in 2012. I still don’t
think Trump would have run third party if Romney had stiffed him, for instance,
and I’m quite sure that right-wing talk radio wouldn’t have backed him if he
had.
But
don’t let the technicalities fool you: I sold Trump wildly short, and his
entire campaign to date has proven it.
First,
Trump has had a very easy time turning his celebrity fan base into a meaningful
constituency. Exactly how meaningful remains to be seen, but for months far
more Republicans have told pollsters that they intend to vote for him than have
rallied to any other banner. They may not all be Trump voters in the end, but
that there is a significant Trump faction in our politics no sane observer can
deny.
Second,
that faction has turned out to include precisely the kind of voters Romney
needed in 2012 and who stayed home instead: Blue-collar whites with moderate
views on economics and a weak attachment to the institutional G.O.P. (So weak,
a recent New York Times analysis makes clear, that many are still registered
Democrats.) These “missing white voters” might not have put Romney over the
top, but they certainly would have helped his chances in states like
Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan — all places where Trump is running strongly at
the moment.
Third,
even as he’s wooed the disaffected and non-ideological, Trump has also won over
or at least neutralized an important segment of the conservative media. He
isn’t Rush Limbaugh or Sarah Palin, sure, but they’ve both been covering for
him, as have a raft of performers who like to portray themselves as keepers of
True Conservatism’s flame. And this cover has enabled Trump — no True
Conservative himself, to put it mildly — to put together an unusual coalition,
a mix of hard-right and radical-center voters, that’s unlike anything in recent
politics.
Now if
I wanted to avoid giving Trump his due, I could claim that I didn’t
underestimate him, I misread everyone else — from the voters supporting him
despite his demagoguery to the right-wing entertainers willing to forgive his
ideological deviations.
I
certainly overestimated poor Jeb Bush, whom I wrongly predicted would profit
from Trump’s rise. But for the rest — no, I had a pretty low opinion of the
right-wing entertainment complex to begin with, and I’m not remotely surprised
that the white working class would rally to a candidate running on populist and nationalist themes.
I am
very surprised, though, that Trump himself would have the political savvy, the
(relative) discipline and yes, the stamina required to exploit that opening and
become that populist. And for that failure of imagination, I humbly repent.
Of
course I’m not completely humbled. Indeed, I’m still proud enough to continue
predicting, in defiance of national polling, that there’s still no way that
Trump will actually be the 2016 Republican nominee.
Trust
me: I’m a pundit.
(And
I’ll see you in the confessional next year.)
