By Jerry Mooney
Last night’s debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump fell squarely in the predictable category. Ho hum. Trump is incoherent. Hillary is obviously credentialed. Nothing that Hillary said will sway an ardent Trump supporter and anyone considering Trump either has the capacity to rearrange his word spew into meaningful thoughts through some form of conservo-babel fish, therefor his ramblings were somehow encoded.
Regardless, there was rarely anything said that was enlightening. I was surprised to hear that Trump and Pence disagreed on our use of military in Syria, but at some level this felt normal from him. It was obvious that Hillary was well prepared as well and experienced in all of the subjects discussed, whereas Donald Trump pointed his rage-machine at the red meat that riles up his base. There was one pleasant surprise, however. Anderson Cooper ask Trump right out of the gate about the recently leaked video where he bragged about sexually assaulting women. I expected this to be politely ignored, probably because my expectations have been lowered substantially. But there it was. When we consider that it ranked as the number one subject on all 5 social media engagement metrics over the previous 48 hours, it demanded attention.
As usual, Trump deflected and trivialized the subject. This may have been an effective tactic, but it opened a new window of vulnerability. He basically confessed that he didn’t find the subject meaningful. This is exactly the mindset that enables rape culture. By suggesting that it was merely ‘locker room talk’ suggests that there is a safe place to discuss violating women and in that place it is acceptable. This is the wrong message. Trump effectively told half the country that it was acceptable to joke about assaulting them. And it’s not just that he said it, but that he doesn’t seem to understand that it’s an issue.
What’s really amazing about this story is how completely unsurprising this development is. After his war of words with Rosie O'Donnell, his litany of misogynistic rants, his unfiltered tweeting and his inability to not interrupt Hillary when she’s speaking reinforce an image of a man who is oblivious to his privilege and sheltered reality. When we look at his rhetoric comprehensively it becomes clear that Donald Trump is not only super rich, but he lives in an insulated reality where consequences don’t exist. He brags about taking advantage of a regressive tax system, by hiding behind that secret language of accountants. He indicates that it makes him smart.
What he misses is how this all is heard outside of his bubble. He is privileged. He is unsympathetic. He is selfish. He is chauvinistic. He is misogynistic. He is basically a junior high boy at a private boys’ school whose development was arrested by the fact that he was never required to experience adversity. It seems like we all knew this already, but there is a faction of us willing to overlook these obvious character flaws because, ‘He’s good with business’. As his character continues to reveal itself, however, it becomes more obvious to the less astute that there is more to being president than taking advantage of your privilege to profit at the expense of society.
I never expected the Trump candidacy to be taken very seriously. In the light of Brexit I have been very cautious about underestimating self-sabotaging voters. But Trump’s recent revelations are so viscerally disturbing that most of us can’t rationalize it away and therefore I suspect Hillary now has a clear path to the White House.