Opinion
Meet President Donald Trump
By Ian Baize ’18
March 10, 2016
Tags opinion
To begin, I would like to include some disclaimers. As a founder and co-president of Hamilton for Bernie Sanders, I do not want Donald Trump to be president, nor do I agree with him on any subject save the corrupting influence of campaign contributions. His candidacy is a farce, his success a disgrace and his election would be an unmitigated disaster. However, given the primary results so far, the nature of this race as a whole and the likelihood of a Hillary Clinton nomination, Donald Trump just might be our next president.
It is easy to dismiss Trump’s appeal as coming exclusively from widespread, hateful ignorance. And this no doubt plays a significant part; his campaign has long reeked of racial fear mongering, especially in his discussions of illegal immigration, police conduct and even Middle East intervention. The other side to Trump, however, is that he plays the anti-politician, and has so much money that he can claim immunity from whatever paltry sums potential campaign contributors might offer him. In an era when Congress exists only to prove the conservative talking point that government doesn’t work, it’s hard to blame people for being frustrated. The RNC’s brilliant strategy to stump the Trump—a campaign against their most popular candidate featuring such anti-establishment heroes as Mitt “Everyman” Romney—only adds fuel to the Trump fire, as it reeks of desperate panic and reinforces the narrative that Trump is an outsider not beholden to traditional political rules or interests. To take FDR hopelessly out of context, he welcomes their hatred.
Enter Hillary Rodham Clinton. Bernie supporter that I may be, Hillary’s significant superdelegate advantage and the DNC’s tilting the scales in her favor mean that she’s likely to be the Democratic nominee come the summer. She will enter the race with one of the most impressive CVs in modern electoral history, a playbook perfecting over 25 years of presidential politics and a well-oiled political machine with deep political, economic and media ties. By all rights, she should absolutely “schlong” Donald Trump.
Not that simple. For all her qualities, Hillary Clinton comes with some very significant liabilities. Right wing conspiracies and total fabrications aside, it’s still safe to say that she is a scandal-prone candidate, no doubt due to the fact that she operates at the highest echelons of wealth and political power and has always tended to push the boundaries of the ethical and the legal.
All of which would be fine if she were better at dealing with said scandals. Her responses to the issue of her paid speeches to Wall Street already raised in this tame primary process, have floundered to say the least. She has defended her ludicrously well-paid speeches at various points by claiming that’s simply what they offered (funny, then, how no one ever “offered” any less than $225,000) and then, claiming that she would release the transcripts of said speeches only when first, Bernie (who doesn’t have any) and then all the Republican candidates do the same — an interesting strategy for someone constantly claiming to hold herself to a higher standard. If that’s how she deals with an easily foreseeable line of attack, who knows what will happen once she’s against a general election opponent whose defining trait is his rapid-fire unpredictability?
As a candidate, Trump is good at two things. In addition to his dominance of the news cycle, Trump has mastered the single-label takedown, as Jeb “low-energy” Bush can attest. If Trump already destroyed an establishment favorite candidate with deep pockets, a famous last name and a relatively benign record, all bets are off for what will happen once he has his pick of skeletons from the deepest, darkest closet in the race. Trump hinted at how he might go after Hillary in his Super Tuesday victory speech/press conference/televised Chris Christie hostage crisis. “She’s been there for so long,” he said, “if she hasn’t straightened it out by now, she’s not going to straighten it out in the next four years.” It’s classic Trump. While totally misrepresentative, it turns Hillary’s greatest strength into her greatest weakness, and very well might capture the mood of a frustrated electorate who do not think that America’s problems can be solved by a family that has been at the forefront of American political life for decades now.
In Hillary Clinton, Trump would face an opponent who, though formidable, is very vulnerable, particularly to attacks on her long yet controversial record and especially if those attacks come with Trump’s trademark lack of concern for facts or common decency. And that’s not even the half of it. It’s hard to overestimate how much people dislike Hillary Clinton, and the email scandal, overblown as it might be, can only hurt her more, as any developments provide ammunition for the Trump attack machine. The possibility of a contentious Democratic convention, particularly one decided by superdelegates and the party brass, would also go a long way to souring many of her potential voters. So while calling winners eight months in advance is a dangerous game, particularly in an election that has broken every rule in the book, a Trump presidency might be a lot closer than you think.