The American media landscape is so disparate that networks cover what
will get the attention of the portion of the audience that is most
easily duped into spending money and spend the most time listening
to/watching their product.
In an era where the only way you keep this audience is through the
age old trick of making that audience feel victimized/held back/terrorized by "others" and being
charismatic enough to convince your idiot uncle that they, and only
they, are telling you the truth.
It's just a deviation on the Evangelical church model, really.
To that end, among this group of people, which is primarily white,
rural and aging, that make up somewhere between 9 and 12% of the US
adult population, Donald Trump is more or less their Holy Grail. In a normal
election, a Republican field filled with charisma sucking black holes
like Mitt Romney who have some cross demographic appeal would be fine. This
group would even grumble at an egghead like Ted Cruz or someone as vapid as Marco
Rubio (who would and will get slaughtered in debates like labor laws in a
Walker Administration) and fall in line.
But this time, they're being led by the nose by the Carnival Barker
in Chief, and there's no one who's going to talk them out of it.
Quite the dilemma for the GOP this cycle, wouldn't you say?
Is Trump going to be President? Not if the Democrats scrounge up even a
reasonable ground game. There's a zero percent chance he takes any
significant demographic slice out of the existing Democratic coalition, as unenthusiastic as it may be. The eight
remaining moderate Republicans, three of whom are wondering why they're still donating money to Jeb Bush's campaign, would likely either cross the aisle or sit it
out.
Is Trump going to get the Republican nomination? Unless he gets bored,
he has a decent chance of conquering the hinterlands and earning enough
delegates as part of the process to cause a serious schism in the party
at a national level, resulting in a brokered convention. Which makes me
glad I'm half an hour away from downtown Cleveland when the true believers set the Quicken Loans Arena on fire.
(And a good chance for Republicans to learn the consequences of the
Cleveland Police Department's 'shoot first and ask questions later'
police first hand).
Normally, I'm screaming at the Democrats for playing rope-a-dope, but
for once it's working brilliantly. The schism on the right Trump is
causing is absolutely consuming the news cycle and is destroying,
possibly once and for all, any hope the GOP had at image rehab someone
like Marco Rubio could employ with non-white people below the age of 50. And for that, we have Donald Trump to thank.
