Two Simple Reasons Donald Trump Hasn’t Pivoted to the General Election Yet
In about a week, Donald Trump will officially be named the Republican nominee for President, but don’t be surprised if he’s still talking about his primary season triumphs even after he’s crowned.
He clinched the nomination mathematically in June (really, earlier), so it’s been confusing to see him re-litigate his primary victory (while rankling his party’s biggest influencers) instead of turning his fire power squarely toward Hillary Clinton, the main boss of the big battle.
It’s maddening for Republicans who are waiting to see even the baseline competency of a campaign. At a time when Clinton is on the mat over emails and the FBI, Trump is praising Saddam Hussein and reliving the glory days of pummeling Ted Cruz and the Gang (a horrible 1970s funk outfit no one wants to remember). It has also bewildered pundits and the politically active so much that people are starting to buy the theory that Trump is intentionally attempting to throw the election. The ship is taking on water, and he’s already humming his greatest hits.
In any other cycle, with any other candidate, this would be bizarre behavior, but there are two clear, Trumpian reasons why he’s become the sorest winner.
One: He still hasn’t convinced the party to support him
He’s got work to do. That’s fair. How can he truly move on from the primary when a portion of the party keeps looking around the dance floor for literally any other partner?
In Trump’s world, this situation probably feels a little bizarre, too: constantly feeling the need to remind the party that picked him that they picked him. He won. He beat all those other candidates. By winning. He did all that winning. Can’t they see that?
Usually that’s enough to get Team Red behind the top of the ticket, and since it hasn’t, Trump has to keep reminding the reluctant of his transcendence. Since a ton of GOP members won’t be at the convention in Ohio, he’ll probably have to keep shouting about how much he won, raising his hands in the air, wondering deeply why the people he savagely disparaged aren’t giving him any respect. Hello? Your nominee is speaking here.
His major primary opponents (Rubio, Kasich, Cruz) also refuse to endorse him, which pisses him off, so until they swallow their pride (unlikely for all), they’re chum for a hungry pro-Trump crowd.
But if bashing Marco Rubio more isn’t working, why not pivot to a different argument to earn their support?
Two: Trump’s only argument is that he’s a winner
This has been apparent from the beginning. The ultimate bandwagoneer, he argued that people should vote for him because a bunch of other people were going to vote for him. He talked about being a winner, he pointed out polls that showed he was a winner, and he kept winning. He luxuriated constantly at big events in primary/caucus results that favored him, and it worked curiously well. When asked about policy specifics, he’d wave you off. He’ll explain later. Sure. But did you notice he’s winning?
And if your main logic for why you should win is that you’re winning, what do you do when the polls all show you’re losing?
As a loser, Trump is now forced to talk about past victories like a beer-gutted high school football quarterback rounding the gray edges of middle-aged oblivion. He used to be somebody. He threw touchdowns. People cheered.
With approval numbers and polls dipping, Trump is forced either to sing, “When somebody loved me, everything was beautiful” in a dark corner, tears dripping into a really great taco bowl, or to get crowds fired up about a time when he was winning.
This is what it looks like when you depend on your fire to produce your fuel.
Or maybe he really is trying to lose this thing.
