Abandon Trump? The Republican Party Dilemma

No question more perplexes political pundits, the news media, and Democrats than “When will
Republicans abandon Trump?  The simple answer is that the odds of Republicans–both those in Congress and his base–abandoning Trump is like waiting for Godot.  In both cases, one can hope that Godot appears or the Republicans will flee from Trump and impeach him, team up with Democrats, or do something else, but the reality is that it just may not happen.
Now nearly six months into the Trump era the carnage of his presidency persists.  This week the Russian connection revelations continued to mount, depicting  patterns of illegal or unethical collusion between Trump campaign officials and family and Russian nationals if not the government.  Revelations of Trump family conflicts of interest intensify, Trump embarrasses himself and the USA across the world, his travel ban takes another court hit, and his policy agenda including efforts to repeal Obamacare look like one mistake after another.  Allegations  of obstruction of justice engulf the administration as the FBI probe continues, and to many, Trump tweets and alternative facts simply add to a narrative of a largely failed presidency unable to get anything done.  With the Republicans tasting policy victory last fall and only to see it slipping out of the fingers now and facing a potentially fatal 2018 election, why haven’t Republicans abandoned Trump?
Many look to the lessons of Watergate as hope that the GOP will reject Trump.  Back when Nixon was president his resignation was the product of not just political pressure by Democrats but also by notable Republicans in the House and Senate calling for his impeachment or resignation.  Public opinion support for Nixon also eroded, and he could not count on his base to support him in sufficient numbers to prop up his presidency.  Even his own Supreme Court abandoned him in U.S. v. Nixon and the mainstream media was nearly of one voice in going after Nixon. Surely, some assert, this should be Trump’s fate any day.  Not necessarily.
The 1970s is a different era from today.  Most significantly, the level and strength of partisanship today is far more powerful today than then.  Back in the 1970s about one-third of the members of Congress came from swing districts, those which were capable of flipping from one party to another.  The percentage of swing voters–those who split tickets voted or switched from one party to another when voting was about 15% of the electorate.  The Republican and Democratic parties were ideologically more mixed and straight party-line votes the exception and not the rule.
Today, there are fewer than 20 or so seats in the House of Representatives that are swing.  The number of seats  where Clinton won the presidency but a Republican in Congress is very small.  Party-line voting is the norm and not the exception in Congress and the Republicans and Democrats are so polarized such that the most liberal Republican in Congress still votes more conservatively than the most conservative Democrat in Congress.  The percentage of swing voters has dropped to about 5%, with swing meaning now swinging into votes or not voting, and not split ticket voting.  Partisan preferences have hardened, especially at the presidential or national level, and political scientists now note how individuals will change their policy preferences to conform with their party identification, and not vice versa.
Why is all this important?  Despite all of Trump’s problems, partisanship is more powerful than presidential performance.  Republicans have embraced Trump as their president, flaws and all.  This was no different from what the Democrats did with Clinton in 2016.  Despite all the clear warning signs that Clinton was a flawed candidate, Democrats stuck with her no matter what.  Democrats went down with Clinton as the captain of their ship, Republicans may do the same here.
Don’t count on Republicans abandoning Trump.  They still support many of his policy objectives and see a better chance of getting what they want if they are with as opposed to him. They still want to repeal Obamacare and may still succeed.  Consider some one such as Senator Susan Collins.  Depicted as a moderate, yet whenever push comes to shove, she votes the Republican line.  The same might be said of John McCain.  Right now they oppose the yet again revised version of the Senate health care bill and it looks doomed, but the same was said a few months ago about the House bill.
Moreover, don’t count on fear of what could happen in the 2018 elections as a motivating  factor for Republicans.   The latest public opinion polls (Gallup)  still show that 38% of the voters support Trump.  This percentage has not varied much in two months. His core base is still with him.   The Democrats are defending 25 Senate seats in 2018 (23 Democrats and two independents) than Republicans at eight, and there does not seem to be too many swing seats for Democrats to pick up in the House.  Trump’s core base is concentrated in enough congressional seats such that fleeing him there would invite Republican primary challenges from the right.  Finally, Democrats lack a narrative, plan, and strategy for 2018, they are still counting on Trump’s unpopularity to the springboard to victory.  This is Clinton’s 2016 mistake all over again.  Finally, the news media is not universal in  its condemnation of Trump; Fox national news provides alternative facts to the Trump base that reinforces partisan support.
It is possible that the Republicans will abandon Trump, but it is equally possible they will not.  Hoping it will happen is simply like waiting for Godot.

Donald Trump and the Corporate Media Bias in America

Prophecies of Trump’s demise are like waiting for Gadot.  For months establishment media and political operatives have declared that his comments on McCain, women, Mexican immigrants, and now Muslims would do him in.  They have not.  Instead, they have done little more than fortify his status.  So what is going on?  There is no one answer, but understanding both the corporate biases of the media and the ability of Trump to bring traditional marketing strategies to politics are critical.  They also explain why Sanders is stuck in the polls.
Ranging from the New York Times, Washington Post, the Economist, to pundits on television such as FOX or NBC, Trump’s rise is attributed to many factors.  Some link him to Orban in Hungary and Le Pen in France, seeing Trump as appealing to nativism and political and economic anxiety arising out of both the declining economic fortunes of white middle and lower middle America and the renewed fears of terrorism after the Paris attacks.  Trump also benefits hugely from his name recognition, the mediocrity of his rivals along with their lack of media sophistication.  All of these are reasonable explanations. But Trump also is served well by his understanding of marketing and media bias.
Pick up the standard book on business marketing–Philip Kotler’s Marketing Management.  He and others will tell how FUD–fear, uncertainty, and dread–are the cornerstone of how to sell products.  “Am I pretty enough?  Does this car make me look like a jerk?  What will my friends think?  Am I attractive enough to women?”  Much of American consumerism appeals to ours fears, uncertainities, and dread.  Anxiety sells as does vanity, envy, and worry.  The seven deadly sins are better motivational tools than the four cardinal virtues.  Trump knows that, and he also knows how to use the media to convey his message.  He has done that for a career.  The rest of the Republican field are hacks by comparison.  In fact, most elected officials dread the news and media, fearing they only time reporters want to speak to them is to report on bad things.
Trump, as the Washington Post reported, is not unhinged and his statements not unplanned.  He has tested marketed them on Twitter and in speeches before going mainstream with them.  What Trump understands is how presidential politics is more about narratives and marketing than it is anything else.  He knows how to speak to the camera, turn a phrase, appeal to FUD.  His success is simply in better understanding the media and marketing than others do.
He also understands how at least in this early stage of the campaign even bad media coverage is better than none.  So much of the polling and success is simply about name recognition.  It is about branding.  Those who denounce him simply feed into his persona.  Attack him and it supports his image of being an anti-establishment populist.  He feeds on the same distrust of the media and government that Spiro Agnew spoke of when he railed against “effete intellectual snobs” and “nattering nabobs of negativism.”
But the other factor benefitting Trump is media bias.  For years conservatives railed against a liberal media bias.  If that were the case Bernie Sanders would be leading Clinton and be a household name.  The media bias in America is not liberal but a corporate one.  All of the major news networks are owned by larger for-profit corporations which generally share a pro-business bias.  Trump’s ideas get play because they both generate profits for the news industry (he is a good headline that sells soap) and because he political views do not challenge a basically pro-corporate business world view.  Unlike Sanders, Trump does not challenge economic inequality, corporate power, or even the legitimacy of capitalism.  He does not rail against Wall Street and contrary to his image, Trump is no friend of working class America.  Trump is ratings success and safe coverage for the corporate media.
So is Clinton.  She is a Wall Street Democrat.  In a different era she would have been a Republican with the positions she has.  She gets coverage for many of the same reasons as Trump–her name sells soap and she is not anti-establishment.  Yet unlike Trump, Clinton is not a master of the media.
Now image a different world.  What if Sanders received as much coverage as Trump?  The fact that he does not ought to be proof of a media bias against real liberals or those on the left.  He is marginalized by the mainstream media despite the fact that his poll numbers within the Democratic Party are better than Trump’s in the GOP, and that there are more people identifying as Democrats than Republicans.  In effect, more people nationally probably support Sanders than Trump.  But Sanders is not media savvy and he offers a message that challenges the corporate media.
Overall, Gadot may arrive and Trump may collapse.  We re still six weeks from Iowa.  There is no indication of a Trump ground game and his success seems all air wars and marketing.  But at some point he needs to show he can deliver the votes. But for now Trump will continue to thrive because of his better understanding of the media and marketing, and the advantage is enjoys from a corporate media.