Reality Isn’t Popular

It has been exceptionally difficult to get a handle on the Donald Trump Phenomena. We have been a bit better than most in seeing his electoral potential and yet we haven’t explained it fully. Now that the general election season has come and it is looking at least somewhat close (for the time being), it is time to dig deeper into the Trump appeal. (This is not to say we believe Trump is going to win; it is still a very hard climb for him.)

The force that is pulling this race closer and that made the Democratic primary closer than was otherwise anticipated can be captured in a simple phrase: Reality isn’t popular. 

The physical and political realities of the world have a constraining effect. This does not make voters happy. They would rather believe that the constraints are not real, that they are a mere artifice of a corrupt elite. For a politician, talking this way is more popular and brings in more votes. 

 What Donald Trump excels at is creating an almost entirely different reality. Often times that different reality fits exceptionally well with what people already wish to believe. Birtherism, (the claim that President Obama was born in Kenya) is the perfect encapsulation of that desire. We don’t like President Obama, we don’t wish him to be President. There must be something about this unpleasant fact that makes it illegitimate. And off to the races we go. In the end, about a third of Americans believe in Birtherism and it’s because they want to. Those voters also built a huge platform for Trump to start his drive for the presidency. He highlighted Birtherism in 2012. Even though he backed off this year by not speaking about it, he made enough gains with those who believed the lie to boost him throughout the primary. Hatred of Obama was the number one quality that Republicans wanted from their nominee and Trump had it in abundance. Birtherism was the beginning, not the end of Trump’s reliance on unreality. He did it with just about everything, constructing a version of reality that best suited his voters’ fears and hopes regardless of feasibility. If the reality Trump constructs is better and seems more real than actual reality, he can win.

In a much different way and with much different values, Bernie Sanders embarked on a similar effort. Republicans in Congress are the constraining reality for Sanders accomplishing his policy goals. Yes, there are Democrats who are not as left as Sanders and could block his efforts, but the opposition from Republicans is far more lethal to his goals. Sanders and his supporters responded to this very real constraint by saying that if Democrats were more principled the opposition would fall away or the people would rise up and demand their policies. This response has very little basis in fact. The Republican opposition’s willingness to do unpopular things and then completely get away with it is a huge reason for the political gridlock we have.

Leaving aside how he planned to overcome opposition, there were other constraining realities Sanders ignored. Sanders wanted to do three huge things all at the same time. He wanted to break up the big banks, provide single payer healthcare and fundamentally alter our nation’s global trading system. Even if one grants the premise that each of these is an excellent and worthwhile policy goal, it would seem absolutely necessary to do one at a time because of how disruptive they would be to people’s lives. Changes in each of these sectors would in the short term put millions out of work. But the idea that all of that could be done and all at once presented an alternate reality that appealed to millions of people. For them, the super rich’s power over their lives through large corporations, banks and global trade is too much to take and needed to be defeated.

Trump’s and Sanders’ networks of supporters take thing even further. Roger Stone, a Trump surrogate, has begun the process of turning Gold Star Father Khizr Khan into someone with links to the Muslim Brotherhood -- without any evidence. With far less backing from the Sanders campaign, certain outlets insist that the primary was stolen from Sanders -- also without evidence. Both sides are building realities that they like or makes them feel better. When reality interferes, it can just be ignored. In the end, such plans ultimately do run into the hard wall of reality but that often comes long after the political decision can be changed. The advantage of not having to be constrained by reality is that the candidate’s message can more easily fit the voters’ mood.

Conclusion

This may not work for Donald Trump. Despite his mastery of ignoring reality, Trump swings at too many low pitches and gets into too many fights he shouldn’t. His reality is very appealing to 14 million Republican primary votes. It is less appealing to the 60 million or more general election voters he is going to need. The fear is that someone more skilled at avoiding the low road can learn the Trump lesson that reality is not popular. Fighting outside reality’s confines gives candidates incredible advantages.