The mainstream media has been flummoxed by Trump’s rise, floating analyses that all depend upon the same fundamental error, an error propagated by pollsters. Political polls depend upon identity categories: women, Hispanics, African Americans, voters under 25, high-school graduates, and so on. The assumption is that the common denominator in these groups is what binds them together and makes them act in the same way.
But the mechanisms that underpin group identification often have little to do with these categories, as the phenomenon of “throwing one’s lot in with the winner” easily demonstrates. Groups form not because everyone in the group identifies in the same way—there is no common denominator used by pollsters that explains political choice--but rather because the point of identification encourages people to identify in their own personal, idiosyncratic ways. The cementing commonality of the group is an illusion.
The “Trump” who attracts racists is not the same “Trump” who attracts people who like success stories, nor is the “Trump” who insults women the same attractant as the “Trump” who wants to punish businesses who move outside the US. There is no pollster identity trait supplying the common denominator among these “Trumps” or their supporters. The “Trump” standing at the podium is only a place-holder for these multifarious identifications.
Analysts repeatedly admit that they don’t understand why Trump’s contradictory positions (including his lies) and policies don’t undermine his effectiveness. The truth is that the more inconsistent his positions, the more likely he is to garner adherents—but not because his supporters are stupid or don’t see the contradictions. They simply don’t care about the contradictions or his “unprincipled” stances.
Why? Because in Trump they have found many ways to legitimize their aggression, aggression that is free-floating. Mainstream talk about voter anger implies that voters are angry about specific conditions, suggesting that their anger can be appeased by concrete changes: a better economy, more jobs, more pay, a more responsive government, a government that doesn’t “interfere,” and so on. The Sanders campaign attracts people who are angry about specific conditions and who will feel better if those conditions change. But the truth is that, for many people, being angry is their only way to feel powerful and autonomous. Such people—and they are many—seek out reasons to feel angry. Righteous indignation, whether “objectively” justified or not, is the response to feeling that you don’t count. Violence is one way to affirm one’s power.
However, we know that society punishes people who act out their anger. Mr. Trump understands how to provide angry people not only with targets but more importantly with an example of someone who is invulnerable to social opprobrium or punishment. What makes Trump popular are not his positions, such as they are, but his ability to foster the fantasy that, by joining forces with him, you too will be free to act aggressively whenever you wish, free from constraint or cost to yourself.