America, Trumped

Ah, The Donald. On the left, on the right and in the center, everyone has something to say about Donald Trump.

His early successes in the polls have left most of us — I trust — completely flabbergasted. In this country in 2015, you just don’t label Mexican immigrants murderers and rapists; you just don’t mock Senator John McCain’s experience as a POW in Vietnam; and you just don’t give out Senator Lindsay Graham’s (actual) mobile phone number in a stump speech.

You just don’t. Especially if you think you’re running for president.

Yet somehow, Mr. Trump prevails, amassing a bigger following and raising more money every day, casting a towering shadow over the rest of the 2016 candidates on both sides. This obviously begs the question: how is he pulling this off?

Listening to The Donald speak reminds me of family gatherings from my childhood. I come from a large Sicilian family with roots in Brooklyn. Mr. Trump hails from Queens. I remember this one extended family member who would win every argument at the dinner table, never once supplying an iota of data to support his often-wildly inaccurate claims. Instead, he did something magical with his gritty outer-borough accent, subtle changes of tonality and non-sequitur, under-the-breath mutterings of “stupid, stupid people” (and other such near-subliminal nonsense) to drive his point home.

Getting so caught up in my relative’s snake-charmer rhetoric, I would overlook his irrationality and find myself agreeing with him, never realizing that he was just playing ping-pong with my emotions.

Using a similarly-persuasive oratory style, Mr. Trump casts a net of demagoguery, capturing the hearts and minds of the far right and spreading dangerously close to the center.

The media help him every step of the way. By printing Mr. Trump’s words, stripping away the context and obscuring the tone-shifting, journos create story after story about the outlandish claims he seems to make every time he opens his mouth. People from across the political spectrum condemn. But Mr. Trump doesn’t apologize; rather, he digs his heels in and redoubles his attacks.

As a result, something terrifying is happening:

Everyone is talking about Donald Trump.

One part of me warns: stop paying attention to him; cooler heads will prevail; just ignore him as much as possible.

Another part of me has come to realize that — if The Donald is a threat to anything — he’s more of a threat to Republicans than to Democrats. If Mr. Trump captures the Republican nomination — or runs on a third party ticket —that will almost certainly put a Democrat in the White House.

Even if he doesn’t win the Republican nomination, he’s hurting the GOP immeasurably by dragging right-leaning conservatives out to the extremist right fringe, a strategy that reminds me of building a Bridge to Nowhere, right?

President Clinton and, to a lesser extent, President Obama showed us that shepherding both sides toward the center is the best way to capture the hearts, minds — and votes — of the American people.

The media will always focus on the extremists of the right and the left, but — with or without the Trump card — the 2016 election will be won in the center.