Just Don’t Panic

After Donald Trump’s Super Tuesday success there’s little to prevent him from getting the Republican nomination. But his aggressive strategy can’t win a majority of U.S. voters.

Trump’s star is ascending even though his rivals haven’t all thrown in the towel yet. Dire warnings that the authoritarian billionaire poses a threat to American democracy have appeared in some U.S. media. The party’s over. No more jokes about orange hair. When Trump is in attack mode – and he often is – it turns ugly but it goes over well with his fans. If he says he would like to punch a protester in the face, his audience laughs and applauds.

A New York Times commentary referred to Trump as a “modern Mussolini” and, looking across the Atlantic at the outrage over Trump, said, “As Europe knows, democracies do die. Often, they are the midwives of their own demise.” An anti-Trump editorial in The Washington Post warned after Super Tuesday, “… you don’t have to go back to history’s most famous example, Adolf Hitler, to understand that authoritarian rulers can achieve power through the ballot box.” It went on to cite Erdoğan in Turkey and Chávez in Venezuela as examples.

For all that, Trump is an American phenomenon and right wing demagogues are common in the United States; the name Sarah Palin comes immediately to mind with her speech “Real America.” The Ku Klux Klan was at one time a widespread U.S. phenomenon and one can recall how large persecution during the civil rights movement was. Racism has often stood at the center of right wing demagoguery. African-Americans, Latinos and — since 9/11 — Muslims. Today’s tea party movement was born out of protest against a black president and Trump was the main spokesman for the idea that Obama lacked a birth certificate proving he was born in the United States.

Now in 2016, Republicans are predominantly white citizens longing for the legendary good old days and disappointed because America doesn’t work for them any longer. And since they come from the working class and are now “losers” in Donald Trump’s world, they’re right. Trump promises them salvation like a television evangelist preacher, fortified with threats of violence against outsiders and dissenters. But Trump’s Super Tuesday victories have to be looked at in context: Participation in primary elections is low. Trump failed to reach 50 percent in any of the states he won. Political mass movements look different than that.

Demagogue Trump is dangerous but he has no majority in a general election provided the Democrats and progressives in the United States can motivate their members. That seems totally possible against a man who fits the definitions of racist and sexist as if they were tailor-made for him. A man who can talk about nothing other than being powerful. That and, of course, his Mexican wall. These tactics won’t produce a winning strategy against the Democrats in November. Nearly one-third of Democratic voters are African-American, Latinos and Asian-Americans and many whites are tolerant people.

As of March 1, Hillary Clinton had clearly more delegates pledged to her than Bernie Sanders, who had a rough time in the southern state primaries where African-Americans made up a majority of the Democratic voter base. Bernie’s people say it’s not anywhere close to being over yet; votes have only been cast in 15 of the 50 states even if Hillary’s rhetoric has already shifted toward whichever Republican she will face in November.