Guess who this is describing?
He is preaching to the converted. He is lashing out at anyone who is not completely loyal. He is detaching himself from and delegitimizing the institutions of American political life. And he is proclaiming conspiracies everywhere — in polls (rigged), in debate moderators (biased) and in the election itself (soon to be stolen).
Scary, isn’t it, that a candidate for president, watching his prospects slowly slip away, circles the wagons so the only voice he hears, the only ideas that anyone supports, are his own?
In the presidential campaign’s home stretch, Donald Trump is fully inhabiting his own echo chamber. The Republican nominee has turned inward, increasingly isolated from the country’s mainstream and leaders of his own party, and determined to rouse his most fervent supporters with dire warnings that their populist movement could fall prey to dark and collusive forces.
This is his plan going in the final three weeks of the campaign: rally his supporters with as many lies about Hillary Clinton, the media and the political system as possible and hope that the scorched earth policy motivates his base even past Election Day, especially if he loses.
Many Republicans see the Trump campaign’s latest incarnation as a mirror into the psyche of their party’s restive base: pulsating with grievance and vitriol, unmoored from conservative orthodoxy, and deeply suspicious of the fast-changing culture and the consequences of globalization.
Departing from the norms of American democracy, Trump appears to be laying the foundation to contest the results, should he lose, and delegitimize a Clinton presidency in the minds of his followers.
Sixteen years ago when the U.S. Supreme Court effectively handed the presidency to Republican George W. Bush after the butterfly ballot debacle, Vice President Al Gore accepted the verdict and the nation enjoyed a peaceful transition of power. Trump seems committed to the opposite.