2015, the Year of Trump

He will have been the center of all the attention this year. Donald Trump will have won his bet to be in the media spotlight as he has never been before. Whether he wins a few primaries or not, even if he wins the leadership of the Republican Party, over several months he will have preoccupied all the political spectators and spread panic among his rivals who did not see him coming. Last July, nobody believed that he would survive the summer, but he is still here, leading the polls and managing to impose his topics and his campaign tone on the elections. Of course, the opinion polls are very different from the primaries which will start in a month. The former will allow each and every person to offer an opinion without greater consequences, whereas the latter is decisive in choosing who — unless there is a huge surprise — will run against Hillary Clinton in November 2016. In a poll, everyone can express an opinion, whereas it is the heart of the party’s electorate which decides in a primary, which makes a big difference. Trump’s current popularity does not mean that the voters really want to see him get into the White House.

What makes Trump so likeable? Above all, it is his rejection of the system and the elite that are already in place, which, paradoxically, he is attempting to join in running in the presidential election. He proclaims that the he doesn’t have to answer to anyone as he takes pride in financing his own campaign. This will be difficult because although he is a billionaire, he is no match for the super PACs of his main rivals, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush. A campaign requires television commercials and a huge grassroots movement, as it is all about seducing interest groups, the commercial sector and local communities, especially religious and ethnic ones. We should bear in mind that the Hispanic vote will be decisive.

The property tycoon’s provocations are entertaining, and are even seen as a form of verbal courage. His racism, his misogyny and his ravings about China and Mexico are part of the show. As I said before the summer, Trump is a sort of American Jean-Marie Le Pen. He likes to be in the spotlight, he loves to exercise his eloquence. The more he is criticized, the happier he is. But there is a step from that to saying that he wants to be in power. He is motivated by the smooth running of his business. He is a businessman first and foremost.

From a political point of view, he is pulling the Republican Party toward the right, toward its populist extremities, particularly concerning Islam and the economic leadership of the United States in the world. However, with regard to immigration, issues of morality, or taxes, his rivals are just as conservative, but under the influence of the Republican establishment, they avoid “sound bites” because they remember the precedent of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.

The War against ‘Political Correctness’

More profoundly, Trump embodies the American conservatives’ attack on “political correctness,” an attack which has strengthened since Barack Obama came into office in 2008. According to conservatives, it’s “political correctness” which has guided Obama’s policy, particularly with regard to the subject of Islam. He has supposedly been too complacent on the fight against terrorism out of concern about clashing with Muslims across the globe. This apparently has led to the Boston and San Bernardino attacks.

“Political correctness” is also the “colorization” of the elite, thanks to access to education. Republicans thus successfully attack affirmative action on all sides. This kind of society, which is becoming inevitably multicultural and multi-ethnic, is unacceptable to both the heart of the electorate and conservative leaders, who are nostalgic for an America that was white, Protestant and, of course, patriarchal, as demonstrated by the resistance to women’s access to abortion and the rejection of gay marriage.

The reluctance of the candidates for the Republican nomination to criticize racism in American society — the Charleston massacre, police violence – and their defense of the Confederate flag, a symbol of the era of slavery, are two particularly remarkable recent examples. The message of union and of assembly of the American nation is not, nowadays, the same as the Republicans’ message, which plays on fears and relies on social divisions…with or without Trump.