Why Trump Won't Win
He's Yesterday's News....And Boring.
I remember vividly when Trump took the golden escalator down Trump Tower and made his announcement speech that he was running or President.1 With every word he uttered, he demonstrated why he shouldn’t be President, how he didn’t understand complex domestic and international policy and how he genuinely had no clue about government altogether. I thought his campaign would last about as long as that speech did. So did most commentators at the time.
Republicans panicked. They didn’t want Trump embarrassing them in a winnable contest. They forced Trump to sign a candidate pledge and fall into line. Voters couldn’t want this orange buffoon as President, could they?
But they were wrong. Trump was the best show in town. People watched his speeches, not out of belief, but because they wanted to see what he would say next. It was exciting try to anticipate what this nut would say. He was part comedian, part carnival barker, part crazy uncle Bob, part geriatric idiot. He would ramble, sometimes far too long, but he was interesting. His crowds were different. People mistook his unpolished ravings as “genuineness” when in reality it was just incompetence. To Democrats and Republicans alike, he certainly wasn’t boring. Nobody had any clue how this story would turn out.
Republicans couldn’t let this lunatic win. They re-configured a debate to keep him off the stage. Did it bother Trump? Not one bit. He held a competing rally that had ratings better than the debate. The Republican candidates were dull, bland, lifeless. Trump had energy, moxie, originality. The Republican Party was fractured, splintered across a large field. Trump was a Great White Shark gnashing and gashing them all one at a time. He rode that freight train of a campaign all the way to the nomination, and then the White House.
Fast forward to 2020. Four years of Trump’s mindless diatribes, lack of any sensible competence in the job, and complete failure as a President had numbed the public. COVID had prevented him from the one thing he coveted— his crowds. Trump lost.
So come 2023, after Trump obtained the one title he hates (“Loser”) he decided he was going to run for President, again. This last weekend at CPAC he gave a speech in front of some of his most loyal supporters. The CPAC crowd was smaller, the Republican Party has moved on. Only the most diehard MAGA nuts remained. Trump improved a nearly two hour stream of consciousness free association that was incomprehensible at times. But unlike in 2016, it had no spark, no life, no interest. Trump had become boring.
We’ve seen this movie before. We’ve spent 4 years watching it. We watched as he disparaged our military. We cringed when he sided with Putin over our intelligence services. We collectively gasped when he tried to blackmail Ukrainians to dig up dirt on Hunter Biden. We grew uncomfortable watching him tear gas protesters in Lafayette Square for a photo op. We were personally offended when he leaned on the Georgia Secretary of State to “find” enough votes for him to win. And we were horrified when incited a mob of miscreants, insurrectionists and traitors to storm the Capitol Building. We’ve seen it all before. We know how this story goes. Does anyone really want to go through all of that again?
Trump now is a known commodity. Sure, he’s got his supporters. But many more now want nothing to do with him, including the bulk of the Republican Party. People think his numbers don’t reflect this, but in truth, they are just providing pollsters with the most well known name until they get a feel for the other potential candidates. Come September, Trump won’t be in the top three. Come Iowa, he may not even still be on the ballot. If he is, the Republican Party has no chance up and down the ballot in 2024. Period. The crowd to which he calls to is getting older and smaller by the day. There is no math that leads to 270.
Listening to him on stage this last Saturday, he seemed more pathetic than energetic. He seemed more reminiscent than offering a vision for the future. He played all the old hits and they didn’t have the freshness that they did in 2016. What we saw was Willy Loman lamenting about how time has passed him by. What we saw was a high school hero reliving his glory days. He’s the “has been” who ruined the USFL, the failure who couldn’t make money running a casino. He’s the fraud who inflated his property values for Forbes, while writing them down for the IRS.
Trump can’t win. His heart isn’t in it anymore, and neither are Republicans’.
PurpleAmerica’s Recommended Stories
I’m not the only one who thinks this way right now. While putting this together I heard of two stories essentially repeating the same things.
Here’s McKay Coppins of the Atlantic.
And here’s Charles C.W. Cooke of the National Review Online
PurpleAmerica’s Obscure Fact of the Day
The day Trump rode his golden escalator in Trump Tower to announce his presidency was June 16, 2015. Almost 8 whole years ago. What else was going on then?
Golden State Warriors won their first NBA title since 1975.
Rupert Murdoch announced he was stepping down as CEO of 21st Century Fox (yet he still seems to be around).
Jurassic World beat The Avengers opening record earlier that summer to be the biggest weekend debut.
PurpleAmerica Cultural Criticism Corner
As a basketball fan and a football fan, we are right at the time of year where self described “Braketologists” or “Mock Draft Experts” spend every waking minute sorting out who is going to make the NCAA Tournament Bracket/NFL Draft First Round and where.
It’s a fool’s errand and a stupid one at that. I have yet to see anyone pick either right. Ever. All it is is wishful thinking that this team does as you would want them to do, usually to the benefit of your favorite teams. Does the NCAA selection committee/teams go that way? No. Of course not. They have their own standards in this regard and usually do a good job of it (my one quibble with the NCAA is that they can put less mediocre power conference teams in and more very good mid-majors that can play spoiler, but its 50/50 either way really). Not to mention, the first time a team trades in the NFL Draft, everyone’s draft board is shot.
So please, don’t pay any attention to these lunatics who have way too much time on their hands. Nothing screams “I have nothing better to do” than putting together your own “7 Round Mock Draft!” or “Up to date NCAA Brackets for 3/8, version 4!”
Outstanding Tweet
After a busy stressful day, nothing is better than just listening to Bob Ross talk.
Footnotes and Parting Thoughts
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As a side note, I never thought he would actually run; I didn’t think he’d want to reveal his taxes, shady business dealings, public scrutiny and all the rest that comes with a job that pays less than what he made in a month. But he did and he’s dug a hole with every reason I thought why he wouldn’t, and here we are…