The pundits who didn’t predict Donald Trump’s ascendancy, including me, are now rushing to explain it. I’ve identified about 37 different explanations in the past 48 hours as I’ve trawled through the commentariat’s first drafts of history. A top explanation is that ratings-hungry TV networks gave Mr Trump non-stop, to-die-for coverage. Even when there were 14 other candidates for the Republican party’s nomination, he was getting half of all air time. In total, he received the equivalent of $1.9 billion of free TV advertising exposure. Producers who receive handsome bonuses if they increase viewer numbers wisely chose to put the man with incendiary soundbites on air rather than the AN Other candidate with an ever-so-fascinating policy idea on childcare provision.
The danger of explanations like this — and there are many others that focus on the campaign environment and the (many) tactical missteps of Trump’s rivals — is that they miss the fundamental cause of the most extraordinary thing to happen in US politics for many decades. Here’s a question for you: would you have been so surprised at Trump’s success if it had occurred in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 financial crash?
The post-crash period was a moment when many, on the left and right, expected a backlash against the capitalist system. It didn’t happen. Frightened electorates voted for calm, reassuring people. Obama-Biden over McCain-Palin. Angela Merkel. David Cameron. Stephen Harper. Phase I of the post-2008 period has largely been the Boringsville era. Well, friends, phase II may have arrived and politics isn’t boring any more. Revolutions occur when the peasants have been fed but the memory of injustice still burns and when the middle classes are feeling the pain, too.
Everywhere you turn in America there is evidence of financial distress. On the cover of the May edition of Atlantic magazine is the photo of a middle-class man with a paper bag over his head. Inside, Neal Gabler admits that he’s ashamed to be one of the 47 per cent who do not have the spare cash to fund a $400 personal emergency; 116 million Americans couldn’t find £276 without having to borrow or sell something. Gabler’s essay explains how he has survived on a diet of eggs for days. How he had to tell his daughter that he probably couldn’t afford to help pay for her wedding. How he had to borrow money to buy heating oil.
If the US economy had motored ahead after the crash the anger might have dissipated but the Obama recovery is weaker than any recovery of the modern era. White House protests that the US is doing better than Europe may be statistically accurate but they don’t pull the 47 per cent of people without $400 back from the edge. Americans are more pessimistic about the future than Brits or Germans (and we aren’t very optimistic). America’s middle classes know that automation will soon be replacing their white-collar jobs as it has already replaced so many blue-collar ones; 56 per cent of Americans think free trade agreements have been, on balance, bad for US prosperity. Only 23 per cent thing they’ve been good.
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“Everywhere you go in America there is evidence of financial stress
So when, in his understated manner, Mr Trump claimed that “China is raping this country” and “killing” the US with its trade policies, he is speaking to a large majority. A larger percentage of Republicans are now anti-trade than Democrats. My experience of speaking to people at Trump events in Virginia, South Carolina, Florida and Georgia is that they are far from convinced that the now almost-certain Republican nominee will make a difference to their situation. But they were certain that Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush and the other defeated establishment types definitely wouldn’t bring change.
And herein lies the danger for Hillary Clinton. “Crooked Hillary”, as Trump has taken to calling her, represents the establishment. She is as close to Wall Street and big money as any Republican. She is closer to the easy-if-not-open borders policies that working-class Americans partly blame for their plight. And Trump’s success isn’t just an economic phenomenon. As he set out in a foreign policy speech last week, he has completely repudiated the Iraq war and the interventionist policies of George W Bush. Choosing “America First” as his catchphrase — last used in the 1930s by Charles Lindbergh and other opponents of US involvement in the war against Hitler — he promises that putting US troops in harm’s way will never be his first resort. He wants to deal more closely with Putin and force Nato allies to pay more for their defence. Hillary, he reminds people, was an author of the Libyan fiasco and a supporter of the Iraq war.
Forget Mike Tyson versus Lennox Lewis or Floyd Mayweather Jr vs Manny Pacquiao, the presidential debates between Clinton and Trump are going to be bigger, nastier and bloodier than anything ever seen in a boxing ring. When a 14-year-old Hillary complained about being bullied at school by a bigger girl, she got no sympathy. Her mother told her to punch the bully and Hillary did. Roll up, roll up, the greatest political fight of all time is about to get underway. At least that’s how the TV networks want us to see it.
Trump won’t be unhappy either. As much as I think a Trump presidency remains unlikely, he has seen off 14 Republican candidates by taking the low road. Hillary? She lost again on Tuesday. In Indiana. To a 74-year-old democratic socialist. She’s beatable.