OK, so before you think I've lost my mind, I do not want Donald Trump to be president. However, I do want him to win the Republican nomination.
I'm sure some of you can guess the reason why. I believe that Trump is the least electable of the GOP candidates competing for the nomination. To put in terms Trump would understand ...
If Trump is the GOP nominee, the Democratic victory will be HUGE in November.
Trump will be a DISASTER for the Republican party.
Of course, not all liberals feel that way. Lots of liberals are disgusted by Trump and wish he'd just go away ( I'm actually disgusted by Trump too, but I want him to stick around long enough to lay waste to the Republican party ). Some of these liberals are friends of mine. I discussed the issue of Trump's candidacy with two of these friends in person few weeks and on facebook about a week ago. I was thinking of sending them a facebook response to make the case that all liberals should be rooting for Trump to be the GOP nominee, but I decided the write a blog post instead.
Let me start by addressing one of the primary concerns expressed by one of my friends. This friend wrote ...
"Trump's candidacy is creating and environment that encourages not only hate speech, but outright hate crimes, and real people are getting hurt."
I can't disagree that Trump's candidacy creates an environment more conducive to hate speech and hate crimes, but I believe this negative effect is ....
1) far smaller than most people think it is.
2) several orders of magnitude smaller than the negative effect a Republican presidency would have.
Every person is influenced by their environment, and the media is part of that environment, so I'd never try to argue that the garbage Trump spews doesn't have any effect on people. However, I think we give Trump far too much "credit" when we claim that he's going to make violent racist people act significantly more violent and racist.
Conservatives have been claiming for years that violent videos games ( "You can't blame the guns for the deaths of all those kids Johnny killed at his school. This is all the fault of that Grand Theft Auto video game he was playing." ) make kids more violent and that popular music corrupts our youth ( be it Elvis and his suggestive hips, "satanic" heavy metal, or rap songs like "Fuck the Police" and "Cop Killer". ).
Liberals have correctly pointed out that conservatives are full a crap when it come to their views about video games and music. You can never say with certainly that the media has zero influence, but ...
1) Harris and Klebold probably would have done something terrible at Columbine even if video games had never been invented.
2) The sexual revolution of the 60s happens with or without Elvis's suggestive hips.
3) Most cop killers never listened to "Cop Killer" and 99.9999% of people who listen to "Cop Killer" will never kill a cop.
Just as you can argue that video games and music are not responsible for the level of violence in our society, you can argue that Trump's rhetoric will not have a significant influence on hate crimes. Does he have some influence? Yes. Is it a large influence? No. The kind of person who would commit a hate crime was conditioned to be a hateful violent bigot long before Trump ever threw his hat in the ring. Dylan Roof didn't need a Trump to inspire him; a legacy of institutional racism in the South was enough inspiration.
( Just in case somebody wants to make the ridiculous argument that Dylan Roof was inspired by Trump, I do acknowledge that the Charleston Church Massacre did happen one day after Trump announced his candidacy. However, Trump's candidacy was considered to be a joke rather than a real cultural force after the first day, and even if Roof happened to notice a news story about Trump's candidacy when he took a break from all the racists web sites he was spending time on, there is no way Trump's racists comments about Mexican immigrants had even one millionth of the effect on Roof as that the racist web sites did. )
OK, but let's assume for a moment that Trump's influence will be much greater than I'm assuming it will be. Let's assume there is a significant increase in hate crimes, and a few people even die as a result of those crimes.
That would be tragic, but nowhere near as tragic as a Republican presidency. If the GOP takes control of the White House in 2017, a very large number of people will be hurt and lot more than a few people will die. You might think I'm being sensationalist, but just look at what happened the last time a Republican was president, Thousands of American soldiers died in a Middle East quagmire we never should have entered and many more innocent people in Iraq and Afghanistan were killed as collateral damage ( To be fair, Democrats have pulled the USA into pointless costly wars in the past ( Vietnam ), but if you listen to what Republican candidates have to say about Iran, Syria, and ISIS, you can't help but conclude that the USA is far more likely to send troops to the Middle East if a Republican becomes president in 2017 than if a Democrat becomes president ).
Even if a victorious Republican presidential candidate avoids military misadventures while in office, I can still think of several other dangerous effects of a Republican presidency.
1) A Supreme Court with 2 to 4 more GOP-appointed conservatives will make decisions that will severely affect the health of women across the nation. If they ever manage to overturn Roe v. Wade, some women will most certainly die. It should also be noted that a GOP president will sign any anti-Planned Parenthood bill the GOP-controlled Congress wants to pass.
2) A conservative enough Supreme Court could potentially roll back some of the recent Marriage Equality decisions. At the very least, a more conservative Supreme Court will rule in favor of all "religious liberty" claims that will make it easier for businesses and employers to discriminate against LGBT people. A GOP-stacked Supreme Court could legitimize all sorts of discrimination against both LGBT people and women for decades. I think those effects will be far more damaging that any Donald Trump inspired hate crimes over the next 9 months.
3) A Republican president could help facilitate the gutting of both the FDA and the EPA. This will lead to a huge number of additional deaths from cancer as well as the occasional tragedy ( like Flint ) due to lax regulations.
4) A Republican president could sign several policies into law which would be disastrous for the poor. Foods stamps could be cut, welfare could be cut, unemployment benefits could be cut, family leave policies that help new parents could be changed, the minimum wage would be kept ridiculously low, the National School Lunch Program could lose funding ( Remember that the Reagan administration tried to cut school lunch expenses by classifying condiments like relish as a vegetable serving. ). I'm not saying a Republican president will do all these things. Congress has a big say in this of course, and even a GOP-controlled Congress would have trouble getting a filibuster-proof super-majority to do the most radical stuff. However, there is no denying that a Republican President is far more likely to implement policies that will hurt the poor than a Democratic president. Let's face it, Republicans are more more likely than Democrats to ignore poverty, and ignoring poverty while poor children go hungry and crime runs rampart in communities without hope will hurt poor minority communities far more than than any hate crimes Trump supporters could dream up.
5) Oh, and I almost forgot about Obamacare. The anti-Obamacare policies of a Republican president could make millions of people lose their health care. This may not be as dramatic as a Trump-inspired hate crime, but lack of healthcare will kill far more people than any Trump inspired hate.
So, with all that in mind, I don't know why a liberal would rather face the risk of a GOP presidency rather than the risk of Trump-inspired hate crimes unless they believe ...
1) Trump has zero chance of actually winning the GOP nomination and his attacks the other GOP contenders will not do lasting damage to them.
2) there's nearly a 100% chance Hillary or Bernie will win in November regardless of the who the GOP nominee is.
3) Donald Trump has just as good a chance of winning in November as all the other GOP candidates who might win the nomination.
If any of the 3 statements were actually true, I'd want Trump to go away immediately, just like lots of other liberals do. However, none of the statements above are remotely true. The poll numbers cited in this recent article show both #2 and #3 above are false. The polls suggest that Hillary or Bernie would have a tight race against either Rubio or Cruz, but would easily defeat Trump.
Even if you think the GOP establishment will never let Trump win the GOP nomination, his continued presence in the GOP race will certainly damage the other GOP candidates. We already have proof that he can destroy a viable GOP presidential contender. Back in mid-2015, Bush was polling even with Hillary in some national polls, and now he's got no chance be on the ballot in November even if Trump disappeared off the face of the Earth tomorrow. Every time Trump attacks Rubio or Cruz, he helps the Democratic party. I want Trump going after those guys for as long as possible, even if Trump doesn't wind up being the eventual GOP nominee.
I'll admit that I don't think Trump will be the GOP nominee, but I certainly want him to be, and I'll be rooting for him to do well in Iowa on Monday.
I'll close this post by considered one last argument against my position on Trump. I know that some readers must be thinking "Rich, be careful what you wish for. If Trump wins the GOP nomination and the presidency, you're going to feel really stupid about rooting for Trump in the GOP primaries."
Well, while I'll admit that there is a chance that GOP nominee Trump could be become President Trump ( at most a 5% chance ) , I don't think the idea of President Trump is significantly more scary than President Any_other_Republican. Both President Trump and President Any_other_Repblican will rubber-stamp any bills approved by the GOP-controlled Congress and will appoint several conservative justices to the Supreme Court. The only significant difference between President Trump and President Any_other_Republican would be the rhetoric, and President Trump would surely tone down his rhetoric to increase his chances of winning a general election in 2020. So President Trump doesn't scare me much more than President Any_other_Republican, but candidate Any_other_Republican scares me much more that candidate Trump, because candidate Any_other_Republcan has a good chance ( roughly 50% ) of winning in November while candidate Trump does not. I know rooting for Trump in any kind of election seems to be in violation of liberal principles, but the practical reality is that rooting against Trump in the GOP primary is rooting for Marco Rubio's presidential prospects to improve. President Rubio would be a HUGE DISASTER, so I'll be one of Trumps biggest fans in the GOP race.
Rich
P.S. I finished writing this post very late on Saturday, January 29th, but didn't have time to proofread it before I went to bed. I was out with my family until about 2:30 PM on on Sunday, so I didn't get a chance to revisit this blog post until Sunday afternoon. In the interim, I started to imagine how some some of my liberal friends might respond to this post. I feared that some of them might consider my position about Trump and hate crimes to be heartless and immoral. While I made it clear that I found it unlikely that anyone would die as a result of Trump's rhetoric, I also coldly asserted that I thought the deaths of those who might be killed in Trump-inspired hate crimes would be more than made up for by the people who would be saved down the road by keeping a Republican out of the White House. It occurred to me that my position is similar to the position most people take with presented with the classic "Trolley Problem" ethical dilemma. Most people, when given a choice to pull a switch that will send a train down a track to hit one person will gladly do so when the alternative is to let the train continue on its current path and hit 5 people. Of course, an argument could be made that my position regarding Trump-insprired hate crimes is more akin to the "fat man" variant of the "Trolley Problem" ( in which you have the option to push a fat man off a bridge and into the path of the train to save five people from being hit by the train ). If you feel that way about my position, I won't hesitate to agree with you. When it comes to politics, I'd be willing to push that fat man off the bridge every time.
