We won’t know tonight just how effective Donald Trump’s acceptance speech was. At a record length and delivered at full throttle volume for almost all 74 minutes, Trump’s address was also the darkest depiction of American life heard at a political convention in memory. In Trump’s America, fear of crime and illegal immigrants, resentment of foreigners, wicked elites, and the suspicion that they’re always being tricked into bad trade deals dominates the political landscape. Trump’s Americans are scared and angry. They feel unsafe and insecure, and they don’t care about the conservative principles of limited government anymore than they like political correctness. They believe it when he says he is with them in contrast to a corrupt Hillary Clinton who asks her followers to be with her. They trust in the leader principle and aren’t asking Trump for too many details, trusting in his genius to see them through the dark night in which they live.
The question is if there are enough Americans who experience this nightmarish frame of reference to elect him president. Judging by the reaction of the Republican delegates in the hall and the praise he got from some of his usual cheerleaders, the answer is maybe.
The key statistics quoted by Trump supporters in the aftermath of the speech are the poll numbers showing that approximately two-thirds of Americans believe the country is heading in the wrong direction. A lot of them are scared and perhaps what they are responding to in Trump is the instinct to believe that a loud, strident strong voice promising “law and order” is what is needed to allay those fears. They may not even care about the fact that he provided little or no details about how he would solve the problems he laid out because what they want is attitude and recognition that they think the country is in decline the system is rigged, and he provided plenty of that.
There were perfunctory mentions of minorities and indications that Trump is embracing liberal stands on social issues as well as his daughter Ivanka’s similar attempt to pivot left in her speech. But other than that there was little in Trump’s address seemed aimed at expanding his voter base from the primaries. His target audience on Thursday night was the same white, working class voter that has rallied to him over the course of the last year.
In trying to grow that segment of the electorate that has shrunk every election cycle for decades, Trump has locked himself into a demographic box that may not offer an opportunity for victory. Since his share of the minority vote and that of women and young voters may be so low as to doom his chances no matter how many angry white males turn out for him, there may be a ceiling that he will not be able to break through.
In his favor though is the weakness of an opponent that seems to confirm all of the suspicions about elitism and corruption that Trump is so effective at exploiting. No one should underestimate Trump’s ability to mobilize fearful Americans or the instincts of Republicans to fall in line behind him if they think he actually has a chance to beat Clinton. In doing so, these Republicans are taking part in a fundamental transformation of the GOP into an isolationist and protectionist blood and soil faction that bears little resemblance to the optimistic and conservative party that Ronald Reagan led to victory a generation ago. Donald and Ivanka Trump both made promises that can only be satisfied by more government. If Trump wins or even if he comes close, Reagan’s Republican Party may really be dead. But we’ll have to wait until November to determine if Trump’s dark vision of America in the 21st Century is the place where the majority of us think we are living.
