For Carib New 8/24/16
Donald Trump is like a raging bull hell-bent on conducting a presidential campaign that was doomed to failure. The polls clearly demonstrate that he is losing ground and that the American electorate questions his fitness to hold the highest political office in the land.
Trump presumed that the campaign style waged in the Republican primary would be sufficient to obtain an electoral college majority of over 270 votes. Two weeks before Labor Day, reality has dawned on the reality television star.
Under the new management of Kellyanne Conway, Trump has offered something of a contrite statement of some of the pain that he may have caused others. Rather than speaking extemporaneously, Conway has confined the rambunctious candidate to speak from a script using a teleprompter.
In the midst of the failing campaign, Trump has begun giving speeches appealing to the African American and Hispanic communities. Polls have shown that other than Ben Carson and a few other Uncle Bens, Trump has approximately one percent support in the African American community. In the Hispanic community, his polling numbers are way below that of Mitt Romney who obtained twenty-seven percent of the Hispanic votes in 2012.
Trump began his quest for the White House as a convert to the extreme right wing movement personified by Breitbart News. These folks like the late Andrew Breitbart and the new Chief Executive Officer of the Trump Campaign, Stephen Bannon, advocate a new form of white wing nationalism poured into old wine bottles. They are vehemently opposed to immigrants of color and are frightened by the browning of America. They are similar to the right wing fascist groups that have sprung up all over Europe and are fiercely opposed to globalization.
Trump started off his campaign by slandering all Mexicans as rapists and criminals. In his subsequent speeches, he would make the erroneous case that murders in America were being driven by undocumented immigrants. The fact is that immigrants commit less crime than indigenous Americans. Beginning in the 1990s, the murder rate in America has declined from 24,000 to approximately 13,000. Violent crime in America has declined even though in some of the larger cities in 2015 there had been an increase but not in the same proportion that existed in the 1970s and 1980s. Trump has extreme difficulty processing and contextualizing complex data and invariably distorts reality.
The Trump campaign is like a ship that is unable to steady itself in stormy, uncharted waters. His initial campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, was fired and replaced by Manafort who was expected to bring some level of professionalism to the campaign. Manafort is a veteran political operative and during his stint in charge, Trump sounded almost like a clone of Putin. In the Republican platform, the section on arming and supplying lethal weapons to the Ukraine to withstand Russian encroachment was excised.
Trump made grave missteps in speaking about relations with Putin’s Russia. In one interview, he displayed his ignorance in foreign policy in not knowing that Putin’s Russia had already invaded the Ukraine and had also annexed Crimea, an integral part of the Ukraine.
Manafort had worked as a political operative for Viktor Yanukovych who was the President of Ukraine and a Russian ally until he was eventually ousted by a popular uprising. Yanukovych ran a corrupt regime and there is some evidence revealed in an investigative report by the New York Times that Manafort received $12.7 million in cash payment. The new government in the Ukraine is looking into what appears to be a corruption scheme. Manafort has denied that such a transaction took place but in the stormy weather surrounding the Trump campaign, Manafort was sacked.
Ms. Conway is trying to bring some calm to the failing Trump campaign. As the new campaign manager that will travel with the candidate, the veteran Republican political operative is trying to widen Trump’s appeal to the general electorate. But there are contradictory signals creating more confusion. Stephen Bannon, the former executive editor of Breitbart News, is the newly appointed Chief Executive Officer to the Trump campaign. Bannon comes with a reputation of someone who is a strong proponent of a scorched earth approach to politics. Bannon rejects mainstream Republicanism and is a strong advocate of right wing populism. He has used Breitbart News to attack Mitch McConnel, the Republican Majority Leader in the Senate and Paul Ryan, the Republican Speaker of the House.
Much of Trump’s ideological posturing during the Republican primary was taken wholesale from the Breitbart-Bannon playbook. The notion of America first, bashing immigrants, building a wall and blaming African-Americans for crime are features of this neofascist white nationalist movement.
The less than veiled white supremacy messaging has not worked for Trump in the general campaign. At this juncture in his new campaign structure, he has Kellyanne Conway representing mainstream Republicanism and Stephen Bannon representing the raw, take-no-prisoners populist right-wing nationalism. How does Trump reconcile those contradictory worldviews?
Mr. Trump’s appeal to the African American voter will fall on deaf ears. The Republican Southern Strategy adopted from 1968 has alienated the black community. In recent years, the state legislatures have undemocratically passed legislation to suppress the black vote. That is evident in North Carolina, in Texas, In Ohio and numerous other states. It has become abundantly clear to Mr. Trump and his strategists that the white community is not homogeneous and appeals to white racism is no longer a winning strategy in a multi-racial society.
