AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill
It is beginning to dawn on Republican Party operatives that Donald Trump may well be their nominee. Three reasons:
First, no matter what he says he keeps gaining support. As a populist rather than a conservative, he articulates the raw anger that a lot of voters feel, and the details don't matter. He has said things that would sink an ordinary candidate, but that's not who he is or the basis for his appeal.
Second, the fragmented Republican field plays to Trump's advantage. Nobody else can get traction.
And third, recent changes in the GOP party rules favor Trump. Under provisions mandated in 2014, states with primaries after March 15 may operate winner-take-all elections. That means Trump doesn't have to win a majority; he just has to get more votes than the second place candidate-and he gets all of the delegates from that state.
It now appears that a majority of delegates to the Republican National Convention will be chosen under winner-take-all rules. The problem for the rest of the Republican field is that nobody seems to be emerging as a single anti-Trump who could beat him in a head-to-head race.
The field will winnow down, but consider this: Many of the candidates most likely to drop out, such as Ted Cruz, Bobby Jindal, Mike Huckabee, even Rand Paul, are those with populist appeal-whose voters will likely shift their support to Trump.
So the winnowing down will help Trump more than it helps his opponents. If by April the field is narrowed to Trump plus, say, Bush, Fiorina, Rubio, Kasich and Carson, Trump still comes in first in most primaries-and collects all of the delegates of those states.
Trump may be a total boor, but in many ways, Trump isn't much of a Republican. He may be very tough on immigrants, but he doesn't hate the public sector, and doesn't hate unions. He has had kind words for national health insurance.
Populism is more a mood than an ideology. So Republican leaders are crying in their beer for two reasons. Trump certainly isn't one of theirs. And if he does get the nomination, he is probably too whacky to win the general election-which will set back the GOP.
On the other hand, Democrats shouldn't be too cocky. A Trump-Clinton general election would not be a slam-dunk for Clinton. The flipside of Trump's populism is that given the general state of political disaffection, some independents and even some Democrats might find Trump appealing. Whatever Hillary Clinton is, she's not a populist.
Populism is one of those ambiguous words with contradictory layers of meaning. Some populists are rightwing demagogues with little regard for facts. They trade purely on emotion. That's Trump.
But there is also a tradition in American of progressive populism-radical reformers articulating the pocketbook frustrations of ordinary people and building social movements to drive change. In the economy of 2016, a Democrat who is a progressive populist would do much better than one who is a Wall Street centrist.
Such a nominee would be a more effective candidate against Donald Trump, or for that matter against a conventional business Republican.
For more than a year, I've been suggesting that Hillary Clinton might not be the Democratic nominee after all, and recalling what happened in the fateful year 1968. Lyndon Johnson was the seemingly impregnable incumbent and inevitable nominee. But then a group of insurgents led by the late Allard Lowenstein, appalled by the Vietnam debacle, organized what was indelicately called the Dump Johnson movement. For those who did not live through it, here is the timeline:
Summer 1967: Dump Johnson is organized, looks for a challenger to LBJ.
October 1967. Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy agrees to run.
November 30, 1967: McCarthy formally declares against Johnson, enters four primaries.
March 12, 1968: McCarthy gets 42 percent of the New Hampshire vote to LBJ's 49 percent.
March 16, 1968: Bobby Kennedy, seeing LBJ's vulnerability, enters the race.
March 31, 1968: LBJ announces that he will not seek reelection.
June 5, 1968: Bobby Kennedy overwhelmingly wins the California primary, and is assassinated.
This just might be the craziest political year since 1968. Like all historic analogies, this one has its limits, but you might say Hillary Clinton is in the role of LBJ-the certain nominee. Bernie Sanders is in the role of Gene McCarthy-the challenger who demonstrates the vulnerability of the leader, but who probably can't be nominated.
Who is in the role of Bobby Kennedy?
As Clinton's support weakens, sooner or later there will be a challenger stronger than Bernie Sanders. It could be Joe Biden, it could even be Elizabeth Warren. I've long felt that Warren would be more effective in the general election than Clinton.
That's even more the case if the Republican nominee is Donald Trump. Despite appearances, the Democratic race could be even less predicable than the Republican one.
