Making Sense of Trump

"..the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish" - Isaiah 29:14

Nothing has caught the "experts" off guard the last year like the ascension of Donald Trump to the top of the Republican presidential nomination contest.  He was ignored, scoffed at, tossed aside.  The polls kept showing him at the top of the race.  This will not last, they said.  It did.  Trump went on to win primaries in New Hampshire, South Carolina and a caucus in Nevada before winning seven of eleven states in the Super Tuesday primaries this past Tuesday.  Even now, the commentary I see from the "experts" is so profoundly stupid, that I cannot learn anything about the race from them.  However, there are a few gems that actually make sense and start to analyze correctly what is going on.

"God must love the common man, He made so many of them" - Abraham Lincoln

Making America Great Again

Most of the asinine commentary from the most ignorant of the "experts" (I have to put that in quotes, otherwise the reader might infer that I believe them to truly be experts) revolves around the idea that Trump's supporters are only backing him because of his racist sentiments that he has expressed.  Has he made such statements?  Yes, of course he has.  Are his supporters backing him because of it?  I do not believe so.  Let us look at this campaign slogan, "Making America Great Again."  To break down this statement, it implies that America was once great, but currently is not great.  There are certainly plenty of numbers that back that up.  Face it, the economy has sucked for the past 15 years.  Currently, the nation is on a 10-year streak of sub 3% GDP growth, the only time in this nation's history that has happened.  Nobody is painting a rosy picture for 2016.  After the weak December retail sales report, economists of all stripes were busy revising their 2016 GDP estimates down. Wages are down during the current recovery, and entrepreneurship is in the toilet (more small businesses are closing than opening).

Who got us into this mess?  Hint: it was not the working class.  It was the elite, most notably the political elite of both parties, and their fellow collaborators on Wall Street.  And it was both working in unison.  The typical Trump voter has been identified as an older, white working-class man.  However, polls do also show that he garners higher levels of support from Hispanics and African-Americans than any Republican since George W Bush in 2004.  The typical Trump voter couldn't care less if he is a Republican or a Democrat.  What they see is a political system in which Democrats and Republicans have conspired to create for themselves a cozy relationship that enriches each of them while leaving a pittance for the rest of us.  It is a highly corrupt system, and Trump is the only one willing to take it all on.  They want to see the system blown up and in Trump they see just the guy to do it.

Much of the commentary also suggests that Trump's supporters have an irrational hatred of President Barack Obama.  Do they dislike him, even despise him? Yes, they do.  Do they loathe him because of his skin color?  The vast majority do not.  However, there is a lot more that defines the Trump supporter.  The base Republican voter is simply put, mad as hell at the Republican establishment and see it as an entity that needs to be obliterated.  The Republican voter elected large numbers of Representatives and Senators in the 2010 and 2014 mid-term elections to derail the Obama agenda.  What they got was a lot of nothing.  For all the rhetoric and bluster that has come from the Republican leadership, they have basically rolled over and died for President Obama.  President Obama has gotten everything he has wanted since the Republican takeover in 2014.  The Republicans have not lifted a finger to derail his agenda.  And that has the Republican voter very upset.  The Republican leadership has been more worried about the opinion of liberal commentators than their own constituents, which has put them in the situation they are in now.  If it was just a general dislike of President Obama, the base Republican voter would be more than happy to vote for the establishment candidate that vowed to undo his agenda (but ultimately wouldn't).

The one issue that really ignites the Trump voters is immigration.  Right now, our southern border is completely out of control, and the government does not want to do anything about it.  Democrats see more voters coming across the borders, Republicans see lots of cheap labor.  Meanwhile, the working class sees someone coming to take his job (you don't really think those people crossing the border will ever take the place of any of our current Congressmen or Wall Street CEO's, do you?), or at best, hold down his wages.  The experience in Europe really has not caught the attention of the politicians here. 

There are also foreign policy issues, where the general consensus is that President Obama's policy in the Middle East has been a disaster.  Syria is a mess, ISIS has made the President look foolish on multiple occasions, the Iranian nuclear deal looks like a one-sided beat down and Russia is taking the lead in the Middle East.  The average voter looks at this and sees that America is being beaten, and Trump re-enforces that notion by stating that we no longer win anything.  And people believe that. 

Now, let us get back to reality.  Trump is in way over his head with this one.  He has shown an amazing lack of grace, an amazing lack of knowledge about foreign affairs, and an air of the high school student who never cracked a book and is trying to pass the test by reading the Cliff Notes the night before.  For example, I cannot believe that he would order his generals, and the troops under their command, to commit war crimes by intentionally killing the families of terrorists.  Does he really think that Mexico will pay for a wall on the border? 

I will close by saying that I am not a Trump supporter.  However, I believe he actually has a good chance of winning.  And people better understand the phenomenon behind it.  Right now the "experts" have no clue - absolutely none.  I do believe that he can do some good things as President, especially as it relates to the economy and job creation.  His style, though, will wear thin and flame out quickly.  Deeper down, there are lots of dangerous under currents.  I believe that we as a nation are closer to a Civil War now than at any time since 1860.  Only this will be more like a revolution than a Civil War, and revolutions never end well for those in power.  The people are fed up.  As long as the power elites can point the finger at someone else and their supporters to believe it, they are safe.  But as soon as the people stop believing the finger pointing, it will get messy.  We are seeing the tip of the iceberg with the Republicans.  The time is coming for the Democrats and their supporters (I'm very surprised it has not happened yet with the Democrats).  At this point, keep your heads up, keep your eyes open, and listen to the small, still voice.  And tune the "experts" out.