By Marc Fisher:
Donald Trump ran against himself and won. The Manhattan billionaire who for decades boasted of his playboy lifestyle, stiffed contractors and vendors, hired illegal immigrants, eschewed churchgoing, embraced liberal causes, and counted Hillary and Bill Clinton as friends and allies pulled off one of the most brazen pivots in American history, selling himself to American voters as a populist hero who understood their frustrations and guaranteed a blizzard of wins.
Trump did it the way he’d said he would for more than 30 years: He ignored the rules of modern politics and spoke to Americans in plain, even coarse, everyday language, without massaging his words through the data-driven machinery of consultants, focus groups and TV commercials. He scoffed at ideologies, preaching a tough, blunt pragmatism fueled by unbridled, unashamed ego. He told people what they wanted to hear: that a rapidly changing and splintering society could be forced back to a nostalgia-drenched sense of community and purpose, that long-lost jobs could be retrieved, that a pre-globalized economy could be restored.
Trump ran against the elites and won. Never mind that he was born rich, flaunted his wealth and lived like a king. He defined the election as a people’s uprising against all the institutions that had let them down and sneered at them — the politicians and the parties, the Washington establishment, the news media, Hollywood, academia, all of the affluent, highly educated sectors of society that had done well during the time when middle-class families were losing their bearings. He swore he would turn Washington upside down, that he would “drain the swamp,” and the crowds so loved the image that they would shout the words before he even opened his mouth to say them.
The Full Story (November 9, 2016)
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