There is a question on my mind that is something that can perhaps only be answered by Donald Trump when he writes his memoirs many years from now or by his closest confidantes and that is the following: When he decided to enter the race last June, did he really think he would do so well and get this far and throw the Republican party into chaos? Or did he just do it for the laughs, thinking that he would make a big splash initially by making outrageous statements and insulting others, grab some newspaper headlines, and then go back to his regular life when the effort fizzled?
If the second, at what point did he think, “Damn! I could really win this thing!”?
I know that Trump has a huge ego and that would argue for the first option but my feeling, based on no evidence whatsoever, is that the second is true, that he initially did not think he would get this far but that by the end of July when his polls numbers had shot up and stayed up, he realized that he had tapped into something that had been dormant.
Trump may act like a buffoon but he is not a fool and even he must have been surprised that people would lap up his incoherent, scattershot, xenophobic, message the way they have. Could his entire campaign have started out as an elaborate prank on the Republican party, the indulgence of a vain and wealthy man, that has ceased to be joke and turned into reality?
Anyone else want to engage in this mindless and totally useless speculation?
Wherever we might find the truth on this question, it won’t come from Trump’s memoirs.
Why? There’s a very significant constituency out there for exactly that sort of thing, and they’re not really getting it from anybody else. He spotted a gap in the market and went for it.
Dunc,
You are crediting him with a level of political acumen that is very high, to spot something that others did not. If so, he should get out of the real estate business and go into political consulting. He’d be a lot better than Karl Rove.
Mano Singham @ # 3: … a level of political acumen that is very high, to spot something that others did not.
Consider this: 5 Ways Donald Trump’s ‘Entertainment Factor’ Hijacked American Politics.
I am no longer able to believe that Trump had come this far in the nomination race by sheer dumb luck. I now suspect that everybody has been drastically underestimating him, his ability to appeal to people disaffected with mainstream politics, and both the size and potential importance of that constituency. It’s long past time to start taking him (and them) seriously.
Mindless and totally useless speculation? OK. That’s what this is.
I have been struck by how similar Trump’s behavior is to a family member who was diagnosed with NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder). She constantly told us that everyone loved her. She would say one thing and in the very next breath say the opposite, and if you dared to contradict her she would simply claim she never made the first statement. It was as if, to her, life was a play all about her, starring her, and the rest of us were just props to be used or discarded at her will. I get the same sort of feeling from Trump.
Absolutely useless and mindless speculation. No idea if the guy is actually NPD or not; I’m simply struck by the similarity in behavior. Of course many world leaders of the past are thought to have been NPD, but I doubt there is any way to actually know without a diagnosis and that will never occur. It will remain useless and mindless speculation, but since there’a a thread for it, what the heck.
Trump’s motivation: Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
The level of cognitive dissonance on display here is hilarious.
First:
That, right there, should have been in bold italic block capitals. You’re explicitly stating that your reaction to Trump is non-intellectual, emotional, based on your feelings and not related to the evidence. THAT is how he gets you. That is how he gets everyone. He’s short-circuited your critical faculties, and you know it, yet you still can’t see past it.
Actually, no -- I’ve been mentally preparing myself for President Trump since some time in January. I was just phrasing it more diplomatically because I tend to find that shouting at people isn’t a very good way to get them to reconsider their positions. YMMV.
Nevertheless, your choice of words is telling. And Trump has been the frontrunner for the nomination since mid-July. But let’s not get into an “I saw it coming first” contest -- nobody here wins that.
What’s interesting about Trump’s progress has been that pointing calmly to the evidence of reality hasn’t been a very good way to get people to reconsider there positions either. Even more interestingly it’s the self-declared rational people who are hardest to reach, railing angrily against the poll numbers for eight or nine months or so and never, it seems, stopping to ask themselves whether they might have missed something.
My amateur speculation is that the reason for that is not that they’re being deliberately obtuse or selectively stupid or anything. Rather, they’re an audience to a magic trick, unaware that what they’re watching is an engineered performance -- they’re reacting to the appearance of what they’re seeing, and giving no thought whatsoever to the machinery going on behind it. That’s not necessarily a reflection on them -- the performance is specifically engineered to obscure the engineering. That’s a large part of how it’s supposed to work. My reference above to David Blaine was not flippant -- Trump’s rise has been a performance, but not the kind of performance people are used to seeing in this context.
Where Trump is concerned, there doesn’t seem to be a good way to get people to reconsider their positions… unless you’re Trump. I was in the “joke” camp until about September, when Bush’s meltdown was already well underway and the only person who was polling half Trump’s numbers was Carson. It was only then I started to see what I he was doing, and how. Once you see it, properly, you cannot even for a second entertain the idea that it’s accidental. That’s no more credible than the idea that a magician manages to extract your chosen card from the pack by luck. And once you see it, you (or I, at least -- YMMV as you say) have to admire the elegant artifice of it, and the deftness and instinctiveness with which it is delivered. Even if you don’t like him or agree with him, you can’t with any integrity say he’s not very, very smart and good at what he’s doing. Where we may disagree is on what it is he’s doing…
What’s going to be interesting is the next stage of the trick, the one where, having done his rabid dog act to secure the nomination, Trump tones it down and brings on board the people who were previously writing him off as too extreme. Obviously he doesn’t need to get everyone -- just enough to win the election. But watch for a toning down of the rhetoric and a courting of the more reasonable elements of his potential audience. Watch for former “joke”rs coming round to believing he’s not so bad after all. Your card was the three of clubs, and it’s in your inside left jacket pocket.
He may be much craftier than we give him credit for. This was a very interesting read: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/02/how-donald-trump-did-it-213581
If you read about the Mercers and Bannon, you know that he was being pushed to the White House by people who had the end game in mind--destroy our govt. Trump may never have wanted to do the President’s job, but, apparently, they convinced him he’d never have to--and perhaps he is only in it until he passes his legislation destroying health care (stick it to Obama), and the EPA (Obama again) and the State Dept (Hillary this time). Then, he can pack-up and go home…..leave the place in shambles--a true libertarian dream. I don’t get what Russia has to do with it beyond getting him elected--and Comey did that, not Russia. Anyone who worked on Hillary’s campaign knows that. Perhaps it’s just his payback to them for all the cash they’ve given him.