I think the jury is still out over whether Donald Trump really wants to win the presidency. Back when he entered the race, several people pointed out just how close he had been to the Clintons for decades, and floated the idea that his role wasn’t to win but to make it possible for Hillary to win (by crippling or eliminating anyone on the GOP bench who could beat her in the general election). Since he won the Republican nomination, he has consistently made unforced errors that allowed the media to concentrate their fire on him, especially when something came up that might have hurt Clinton. Maybe Scott Adams will explain how this is actually Trump’s version of the “rope a dope” strategy, but right now it looks like Trump is doing everything he can to lose the election.
At Never Yet Melted, David Zincavage says that Trump’s supporters have been played as suckers:
Donald Trump isn’t a conservative. Donald Trump is not a down-home American like you. Donald Trump is a conniving, cynical New Yorker. He’s 70 years old, fabulously wealthy, already famous and already living a completely sybaritic life-style. For him, moving from one of his luxury residences to the White House and having to be president would be like moving down-market in housing and getting a full-time job. It would be a real bummer.
He is not into personal sacrifice. Donald Trump cares about political ideas the way I care about Olympic soccer matches. Donald Trump has no real personal political ideas or preferred policy agenda at all. He’s just a businessman, a total pragmatist.
Donald Trump is not your buddy and he is no kind of patriot. Trump likes money, tail, and Trump, period.
So we’re watching him campaign. He carelessly contradicts himself. He routinely takes one position and then the opposite one. He constantly offends rival candidates and significant potential voting blocs. He does exactly as he pleases, casually taking time away from campaigning, often spending no money, doing no advertising and no fund-raising. He behaves like a crazy person, defying convention, political correctness, and rather frequently ordinary good manners and civility as well. He says something embarrassing or outrageous several times a week.
One is obliged to conclude that either Donald Trump is crazy and the most incompetent candidate for office in human history, or he is motivated by something other than winning.
Since we know that Trump is a close friend of the Clintons, on the whole, I like best the theory that contends that Trump has really just been running, all along, in order to kill Republican chances in what ought to have been a landslide Republican year and to make possible the impossible: Hillary’s election.
He’s having lots of fun. He’s soaking up the limelight and laughing at all the dopes supporting him, while mischievously dropping another turd in the electoral punchbowl every now and then and watching the commentariat have fits over what they think is a gaffe.
Update: After I had this post queued up for Saturday morning, I noticed this tweet from Megan McArdle:
If the Clintons *had* cooked up a scheme w/Trump to get the nomination & dump the election, how would that look different from what we got?
— (((Megan McArdle))) (@asymmetricinfo) August 11, 2016
Can anyone cite any evidence that Trump can bear to lose anything? Even an exchange of words on Twitter? Without such evidence, it seems we are being asked to chose one part of a false dichotomy.
Comment by steve muhlbeerger — August 13, 2016 @ 08:38
The closest he’s come to acknowledging that defeat is an option was a few days back, where he said he’d take a long vacation if he didn’t win in November. I’m sure if he’d said anything more explicit than that, the media would have eagerly brought it to our attention.
Comment by Nicholas — August 13, 2016 @ 10:08