Published: Question of the Day (August 10, 2015)
Should Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy be taken seriously? In terms of whether or not he can get elected: Absolutely not.
Even though polls currently show him in the lead against his fellow Republicans, his advantage is nowhere near large enough to be insurmountable. The most recent polls give him a lead of between 21 percent and 26 percent. By comparison, Hillary Clinton has consistently received the support of more than 50 percent of Democratic primary voters.
Lead margins notwithstanding, Trump also has the significant disadvantage of being widely considered a surefire loser in the 2016 general election, falling far behind all of his Democratic rivals regardless of whether he runs as the Republican nominee or a third-party candidate. If he actually appears to be in striking distance of the nomination once the primaries begin, it’s a safe bet that the Republican establishment will unify behind one of his moderate rivals (most likely Jeb Bush or Scott Walker, Trump’s nearest rivals) in order to preserve their chances of winning. This would hardly be unprecedented, as the Republican establishment did this during the 2012 presidential election when it looked like Rick Santorum might get nominated over the comparatively more electable Mitt Romney. Although he could overcome this opposition and win the nomination anyway, no Republican nominee has successfully bucked the GOP establishment’s wishes since the 1964 presidential election.
That said, the fact that Trump is unlikely to get nominated and can’t get elected doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be taken seriously.
For one thing, his current popularity offers a disturbing commentary on the mindset of the Republican electorate. As Jeffrey Tucker of Newsweek explains, Trump’s surge in Republican polls occurred because his rhetoric tapped into “every conceivable resentment (race, class, sex, religion, economic).” While Tucker then argues that Trump is a fascist — a hyperbolic charge, considering that fascism is a complex ideology and should not be conflated with ordinary right-wing racism — it’s undeniable that his rhetoric has been playing on bigotry. In the last presidential election, it was the covert racism embedded in the conspiracy theory that President Obama wasn’t born in this country; this time around, he has been garnering support with his xenophobic remarks against Mexican immigrants. Despite the improbability of Trump actually winning the Republican nomination, the fact that these tactics have played so well reveals an ugly side of the conservative base.
Trump’s 2016 legacy
The Craziest Parts Of Donald Trumps Candidacy Announcement
On a more practical level, Trump needs to be taken seriously because of his potential to spoil Republican chances of winning back the White House next year. In addition to being unelectable as the Republican nominee, polls have shown that he would take far more votes away from the Republican candidate than he would the Democrat if he ran as an Independent. Not only would this make him a surefire spoiler — doing to the Republicans in 2016 what Ralph Nader did to the Democrats in 2000 — but he would significantly increase the Democrats’ chances of reclaiming the Senate and House of Representatives (this would also be true if he was the Republican nominee), as the outcomes of presidential elections usually have some effect on what happens in closer local races.When the history of the 2016 presidential election is written, the likelihood is that Trump will be recorded as this decade’s equivalent of George Wallace (the segregationist governor of Alabama who ran as a third-party candidate in 1968 and sought the Democratic nomination in 1972 and 1976) or Pat Buchanan (an outspoken racist who sought the Republican nomination in 1992 and 1996 and ran as a third-party candidate in 2000). Depending on what he and the Republican primary voters choose to do, he may also be remembered as the spoiler who kept his party out of the Oval Office for a third consecutive election. That said, there is one thing he will never be remembered as: the 45th President of the United States.