Trump Is Viable in a General Election and Has Left-flanked Hilary
2016 FEBRUARY 7
tags: Donald Trump
by Ian Welsh
Donald TrumpHe’s a nativist populist.
Yesterday, during the debate he said that he wanted something even better than the single payer that Sanders is offering. Then he said that people are dying on the street (from poverty) and that he’d make that stop.
If Trump is the general election candidate, he left-flanks Hilary on economics. It is not even close. He wants bilateral trade deals (if you are anti-“free trade,” you want this too.) He does not want to diminish Medicare and SS. He wants universal health care.
His policy platform is pitched to appeal to the working class. They don’t like immigrants, and under the current economic regime, that makes sense: They are competing for the same jobs, and there aren’t enough jobs. I favor immigration, but you have to have an economy set up to deal with it. Right now the US does not.
Trump’s got a minority problem. They aren’t going to vote for him.
But he has the ability to mobilize huge swathes of the white working, lower and middle classes.
He’s also less of a hawk than Clinton on foreign affairs.
A lot of people think he can’t win the primary, and he can’t win the general. I’m really not sure. He has the potential to be a real phenomenon. He parses as an outsider. He feels like a “conservative,” but his actual economic policies are left-wing and populist.
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He gets past, then, as many Americans desire to vote for the conservative. He will peel off a chunk of people who would usually vote Democratic for economic policy reasons. He is more credible on SS and Medicare than Clinton, which will appeal to the olds.
Steal Bernie’s free college plank (or offer something close to it), and he could clean up amongst youngsters as well.
Nothing’s guaranteed, but…
And, for the record, I think he’s more palatable than Cruz, the other front-runner. It isn’t like either of them are good candidates from my point-of-view, but Cruz is saying even crazier things than Trump, without any of the good stuff, and appears far, far more severe.
Both, are, of course, scum. Trump fell over himself to talk about how he’d torture yesterday, and I’ll have no truck with such.
But amongst evils, he’s not the worst, and that’s what American elections are about.
Pick yer poison.
Trump Is Viable in a General Election and Has Left-flanked Hilary | Ian Welsh
