I DID put a lot of stock in his ability to claim the initiative, tear the media a new Overton Window, get inside liberals\u2019 OODA loop and put them on the defensive, but even I\u2019m a little slack-jawed lately.\n\n\nI\u2019m not terribly worried though, for two reasons.\n
\nFirst, Trump\u2019s made very clear for decades that he thinks of himself as a negotiator first and foremost. And that one of his go-to tactics is to open with an absurd ask, backed by an adamantine self-confidence that means he can\u2019t be laughed or shamed out of the room.\n
\nSo to the extent there\u2019s anything here, I think it\u2019s just a refusal to do the \u201cnegotiating with yourself\u201d - making preemptive concessions in the mere hope that your counterpart will reciprocate - that first-term Obama caught flak for.\n
\nSo if a President Trump did anything with this, I expect it would be to say \u201cHere\u2019s this thing I\u2019ve got enough support to make a decent run at that you really, REALLY don\u2019t want. Now am I married to it? No. So. What\u2019ll you give me in exchange for ruling it out?\u201d\n
\nHonestly I think it\u2019s the same with immigration. When your offer is as far from the status quo as \u201cdeport everyone immediately, Mexico pays for a wall\u201d, you\u2019re opening a lot of space for compromises where everyone leaves satisfied, your team feeling triumphant and the other guys like they held a defensive action.
\n\nNow, if you picture yourself on the other, liberal/Democrat side of the deal you could sniff that given our traditions and institutions you shouldn\u2019t HAVE to give anything up in return for not registering and/or deporting ethnic and religious minorities.
\n\nFair, fair. And going into 2015 conservative/Republicans thought that given those same things they wouldn\u2019t HAVE to spend any power upholding the principle that full civic and economic inclusion shouldn\u2019t be conditioned on willingness to participate in blasphemous parodies of the holy rites of the nation\u2019s traditional and still majority religion.\n\n
\nSo learning experience for everyone.
\n\nSecond, I don\u2019t think he has a deep enough following to bend American institutions to his unimpeded will even if he got elected and tried - he has some high profile majordomos and allies that could lead initiatives, and at his rallies a ton of dedicated foot soldiers, but he doesn\u2019t have, as far as I can tell, a corps of loyal professional (political and/or technical) middlemen of sufficient size or scalability. Assembling such a corps is a big part of why political parties (and within parties, party elites) are so powerful.\n
\nIn his business dealings Trump\u2019s offloaded that stuff on mercenary institutions like building trades unions, contractors, investment banks, New York Mafia families, and media companies, but I can\u2019t see that working at national scale.
11/23/2015
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