10-12-2016, 05:42 PM
A narrow loss, a terrifying prospect..
Quote:The election is far more likely to take a familiar shape: partisan, nasty, and a nail-biter. Hillary Clinton may well come out on top, but her victory will probably be too narrow to give her a conclusive mandate for change. And that outcome, from a certain perspective, might actually serve Trump better than winning.Worst-Case Trump | New Republic
As president, Trump—a con man who traffics in dark fantasy—would quickly find himself constrained by the realities of actual government. The Constitution makes it difficult to pull off the kind of Putinesque strong-arming that Trump admires. Instead, he would be forced to try, and ultimately fail, to be what he is not: a capable and measured leader, his power subject to the checks and balances of a democracy. Congress has its own political stories to tell. Supreme Court justices, unlike reality-show apprentices, can’t be fired.
President Trump would face, for perhaps the first time in his life, an environment in which the law—not his word—is the law. Top military and intelligence officials have already vowed to disobey Trump if he ordered them to commit war crimes, as he has promised to do. Try to imagine Trump negotiating the finer points of public policy, even with a Republican-dominated Congress or Senate. His loyal followers will become disillusioned because he will be unable to deliver on his promises to build a wall and deport everyone without documentation and make the rest of the world bow before America’s might. Or they will become disillusioned because he won’t even try to deliver on his promises, which were nothing but lies in the first place. Or they will become disillusioned because their entire political philosophy requires them to reject the very existence of government, and Trump will be the CEO of the world’s most powerful government. Whatever the scenario, a single term beckons—assuming that Trump can evade impeachment that long. In Trump’s victory lies the defeat of Trumpism, as his wish-fulfillment agenda comes crashing, finally and inevitably, to earth.
But a narrow loss would hold no such pitfalls for Trump. Robbed by Crooked Hillary and a rigged election, undermined by politically correct wusses and Mexican rapists, Trump will don the mantle of martyrdom. Nothing is more central to Trump’s brand than a sense of grievance, and nothing will make him and his followers feel more righteously aggrieved than losing to Hillary Clinton in a close election. In defeat, his power and appeal will grow a thousandfold.
Even worse, that sense of grievance may find its ultimate expression in the form of TrumpTV. Free from the responsibilities and limitations of the presidency, Trump would be his new channel’s greatest star, a pretender-president expounding in prime time from a mock Oval Office. Imagine the network’s all-star lineup, personally recruited by Roger Ailes and Steven Bannon: Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter. Trump will be president in the same way he is a successful businessman: He will play one on TV. The ultimate source of his power has always been ratings, and a narrow defeat by Hillary Clinton will send his ratings through the roof, enabling him to proclaim his message more loudly than ever.