I encourage all Daily Kos members to read Matt Taibbi's very insightful analysis of the Trump phenomenon:
Trump: No Ordinary Con Man
One of the key insights offered by Tiabbi is that Trump is able to flaunt many of the expected rituals and conventions of conservative campaigning because he has been able to effectively channel populist anger over business as usual politics.
The unexpectedly thrilling Democratic Party race between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, too, is breaking just right for Trump. It's exposing deep fissures in the Democratic strategy that Trump is already exploiting.
Every four years, some Democrat who's been a lifelong friend of labor runs for president. And every four years, that Democrat gets thrown over by national labor bosses in favor of some party lifer with his signature on a half-dozen job-exporting free-trade agreements.
It's called "transactional politics," and the operating idea is that workers should back the winner, rather than the most union-friendly candidate.
This year, national leaders of several prominent unions went with Hillary Clinton – who, among other things, supported her husband's efforts to pass NAFTA – over Bernie Sanders. Pissed, the rank and file in many locals revolted. In New Hampshire, for instance, a Service Employees International Union local backed Sanders despite the national union's endorsement of Clinton, as did an International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers chapter.
Trump is already positioning himself to take advantage of the political opportunity afforded him by "transactional politics." He regularly hammers the NAFTA deal in his speeches, applying to it his favorite word, "disaster." And he just as regularly drags Hillary Clinton into his hypothetical tales of job-saving, talking about how she could never convince Detroit carmakers out of moving a factory to Mexico.
Unions have been abused so much by both parties in the past decades that even mentioning themes union members care about instantly grabs the attention of workers. That's true even when it comes from Donald Trump, a man who kicked off the fourth GOP debate saying "wages [are] too high" and who had the guts to tell the Detroit News that Michigan autoworkers make too much money.
You will find union members scattered at almost all of Trump's speeches. And there have been rumors of unions nationally considering endorsing Trump. SEIU president Mary Kay Henry even admitted in January that Trump appeals to members because of the "terrible anxiety" they feel about jobs.
"I know guys, union guys, who talk about Trump," says Rand Wilson, an activist from the Labor for Bernie organization. "I try to tell them about Sanders, and they don't know who he is. Or they've just heard he's a socialist. Trump they've heard of."
This is part of a gigantic subplot to the Trump story, which is that many of his critiques of the process are the same ones being made by Bernie Sanders. The two men, of course, are polar opposites in just about every way – Sanders worries about the poor, while Trump would eat a child in a lifeboat – but both are laser-focused on the corrupting role of money in politics.
Scattered throughout the article, Taibbi notes, consistent with many other reports of Trump rallies, that his followers resonate with his attacks on political correctness and cheer Trump on for giving them license to "say what they think." This pattern is typically cited as evidence that the Trump phenomenon is, at base, a racist movement. While racism is certainly in evidence, like Taibbi, I don't think that reading explains the appeal. Taibbi highlights the idea that Trump is seen as an authentic alternative to the standard political BS of professionally managed, corporate funded candidates who use focus-group tested rhetoric to sugar coat policies that favor the 1% over everyone else.
However, another reason for the rise of Trump may have to do with a pattern that I uncovered several years ago in a research project that focused on the plight of white working class males. My colleagues and I were surprised at how much anger and frustration was expressed by these men toward the idea of political correctness. In probing deeper, we realized that animosity toward "PC" is how these men understood their relative degree of disempowerment; on the one side, they found themselves in a world where they had women bosses and were also competing with other non-whites and women for jobs, and where these "others" (in the managerial ranks) often had the power to lay them off. Beyond that, for those in an economically subordinated position, they vested considerable value in the white and male privilege that had once existed in their working class trades (and we had lots of references to the good ole days of their dads and granddads who could talk "freely" and tell "pollack jokes," etc. because everyone understood it was just in "good fun"). The ability to tell jokes and use terms that would now be coded and condemned as sexist and racist was a way to establish the symbolic boundaries of their white and gender privilege. In effect, "we can talk this way because we are safe in our private club and those others can't get in." In the age of PC, it is clear that the club is no longer their exclusive province and hence they have no claim to distinction--they are just another marginalized faction competing with other marginalized factions (the latter of whom are in turn seen as having taken something of value from them).
In terms of political rhetoric, the competing and bona fide anti-establishment candidate, Bernie Sanders, is focusing (rightly in the grand scheme) on economic inequities and trying bring all members of the working class together in a common cause (echoing MLK's latter career turn to mobilizing a poor people's movement that transcended race and gender lines). However, Trump is more politically savvy (or at least expedient) in recognizing that it is not just economics but also social distinctions and losses of white privilege and male privilege that energize many rank and file voters. As a consequence, he has an unprecedented degree of political freedom to flaunt the conventional oaths of fidelity to the religious right, to the shibboleths of neoliberal policies (as Taibbi details, such as an using tariffs and taxes to bring industrial jobs back to the US ) while on the very worrisome side, invoking calculated visual references to fascist leadership (who historically have often promoted economic populism).
In the current political climate, Hilary Clinton could be at a major disadvantage because she is readily cast as the Wall Street candidate and purveyor of what Taibbi characterizes as transactional (or third-way) politics. However, Sanders could potentially be at a disadvantage as well with Sanders appropriating his critiques of inequity and big money politics but reframing it in his cult of personality/strong man/Reagan on steroids image, rather the politically loaded rubric of democratic socialism.
I suspect that many on the Democratic side may adopt a strategy of waiting for Trump to implode. This strategy would be a huge mistake— this core of alienated workers who believe that Trump is giving them voice will be a strong and resilient base and many of the so-called independents who typically vote Republican will likely fold into the Trump camp, particularly if his momentum keeps building; in this case, the RNC opposition to Trump is dream PR. The Democratic game has to be simply outnumbering Trump supporters; the demographics are on our side, if we can overcome voting barriers and enthusiasm gaps. And the way the primary season is unfolding, neither of these alternatives is guaranteed.
Though I am all in for whoever wins the Democratic nomination, I do believe that a Sanders campaign (perhaps coupled with a dream VP pick of Elizabeth Warren) is more likely to mobilize the democratic base on an 2012 level and present an authentic alternative to the political status quo, which I think will be a vital tool to defeat a Trump candidacy.
It seems fitting to close with Woody Guthrie’s recently discovered ode to Donald Trump’s father, the real estate mogul Fred Trump:
I suppose
Old Man Trump knows
Just how much
Racial Hate
he stirred up
In the bloodpot of human hearts
When he drawed
That color line
Here at his
Eighteen hundred family project ....