The morning after Super Tuesday, a guy on his way to work was getting a soft drink at a local convenience store and holding forth on how The Donald has captured the hearts, minds and votes of so many Americans. He was excited, animated, waving his soda around to make his point.
"People are tired, tired of politicians lying," he said. "They are tired of the news media. They are tired of government. They want somebody who will tell the truth and get the country back on track, somebody not afraid to do what's right. And they are terrified of him. He's got so much money, nobody owns him."
It was so very hard not to scream, "Are you nuts? The only person scarier than Trump is Hillary Clinton, or maybe Bernie Sanders," but, instead, uncharacteristically, I opted for discretion. Let the guy enjoy the moment. The entire country may be screaming soon enough.
As pundits predicted, Trump, a New York real estate mogul and reality TV host who routinely shatters traditional political canons as he busily divides the Republican Party, won big in Super Tuesday's GOP balloting across 11 states. Amid record turnouts, he won seven states; Sen. Ted Cruz took three, including Alaska; and, Sen. Marco Rubio netted one. In the Democrat faceoffs, Clinton pocketed delegates from seven states to Sanders' four.
If you are wondering what political swamp spawned Trump, the truth is obvious: Democrats' contempt for law and the Constitution created demand for a Donald Trump among frustrated, disillusioned voters; the so-called Republican establishment, which lost its backbone in dealing with President Barack Obama, breathed life into the monster; and, the media keeps jolting, mocking, ridiculing it to keep it angry and alive.
The politically incorrect, brash and trash-talking billionaire -- even the extent of his wealth is debatable -- has, since the 1980s, periodically dipped a toe in the presidential pond, forming exploratory committees here, doing research there, hiring pollsters, making noises like somebody about to jump in -- he did once, in 2000 as a Reform Party hopeful -- only to take a powder.
His style, or lack of it, makes many conservatives bonkers -- Mitt Romney called him, among other things, a fraud -- but he drives liberals absolutely wild. Attached to a piece by Sam Levine in the left-leaning Huffington Post, and headlined, "Donald Trump And Hillary Clinton Already Sound Like They're Running Against Each Other," was this caustic editor's note: "Donald Trump is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist, birther and bully who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims -- 1.6 billion members of an entire religion -- from entering the U.S."
Who is Trump? What does he stand for? What of his "Alice in Wonderland" foreign policy? What would he do domestically? "I'm a winner; he's a loser" seems an iffy plan. Is Trump even conservative? Many say no. Where is he on the issues? He has been on all sides of most of them. After Obama's eight years of bumbling, who actually believes Trump has the chops to lead the free world? Can he even be trusted? Romney warned: "His imagination must not be married to real power." Another mystery: Who is turning out in droves to support this guy?
Every political prognosticator has a theory. Early on, it was Trump is a fad; his antics mesmerized angry, disaffected, low-information, Palinesque voters.
The Washington Post, in December polling, focused on demographics. It found Trump's support strongest among white males without college degrees who make less than $50,000 annually and identify as conservatives or nonevangelicals.
Derek Thompson, in a March 1 piece in The Atlantic, "Who are Donald Trump's supporters really?," looked at evaluations of Trump support and found four indicators.
"The single best predictor of Trump support in the GOP primary is the absence of a college degree," he wrote. The second predictor, found in a Rand Corp. survey: a feeling of "powerlessness and voicelessness." A third, fears of terrorism and foreigners, and, the fourth, Trump support comes from "parts of the country with racial resentment."
Fear plays a huge role in Trump's popularity. Fear of terrorists. Of immigrants. Of economic collapse. Of the nation becoming something unrecognizable. Fear of things not getting better. The yearning among Trump followers for him to be a man on a white horse, a strong leader -- in the worst imaginable sense -- is almost palpable.
The guy at the convenience store had a lot right about what is feeding Trump's popularity. The anger. The frustration. The sense of powerlessness. He and too many others desperately want a champion to do whatever it takes to fix it all, to make things right.
That is exactly where things could go so very wrong.
Paul Jenkins is editor of the AnchorageDailyPlanet.com, a division of Porcaro Communications.
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