"Donald Trump has not tapped into something mystical," ventures former Romney adviser Stuart Stevens to The New Yorker's Benjamin Wallace-Wells. "He’s just running against campaigns," added Stevens, "that aren’t running against him."
There's an imperishable truth to that observation, even if those who did run against Trump have perished themselves. From Jeb to Jindal, they're gone; victims, it is said — mostly by Trump himself — of the frontrunner's ferocious attack machine, rolled out on Twitter, at rallies, in debates and network interviews. Yet never has any anti-Trump force matched the firepower, relentlessness or sheer malignity that Trump has unleashed.
Jeb, with his hapless hundred million, would occasionally belch that The Donald is a "jerk" or some such thing, and that would be that. Only a few coins in his war chest were ever spent against Trump. The GOP's craven big-money boys disingenuously "cite the lack of success of the few super PAC attacks that have already targeted Trump as evidence that such attacks have not ― and cannot ― halt his momentum." Those super-PAC attacks, however, were feeble and indeed few.
Whats more, Christie concentrated on flattening Rubio, Cruz didn't wish to offend the Trumpeteers Club, Carson was and remains catatonic, Kasich is still playing his warm aw-shucks routine, Graham was always a dismissible joke and Fiorina a conspicuous fraud — and who can even recall the others?
Tonight there's yet another Republican debate, about which, ABC News mirrors Stuart Stevens: "Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz have so far shown little willingness to take on the former reality television star when the national spotlight shines brightest." That may change this evening; the odds, though, favor another Rubio-Cruz spat over which is the bigger liar — even as the prince of populist gibberish stands right in the middle, grinning like a Napoleon over self-digging foes.
Back to Mr. Stevens: "The way to beat Donald Trump is to go after the essence of Donald Trump" — that being, indisputably, that "Trump is a ridiculous figure." The anti-Trump forces (if they can be called such) have instead engaged in internecine slaughter. "It’s like some mass hysteria — it’s like the tulip mania of politics," says Stevens, referring to the crazed, 17th-century Dutch bubble of flower-bulb competition. And as these diminishing forces are concerned with cutting each other up? "Trump," notes Steven, "is concerned with winning the election."
Which brings us to the point of this post. While all the non-Trump Republican forces were concentrating their firepower on one another, Trump was slipping through their lines rather generously unscathed. He was swelling up like a bullfrog as his party ate its own, and his partisan opposition — i.e., on the Democratic side — is committing precisely the same error.
As Trump gathers more and more electoral power by dispensing in buckets the magic of populist fantasies, Clinton and Sanders are engaged in a whopping and increasingly hostile debate about absolutely nothing: Which of their presidential fantasies are better suited to a White House that will be gutted by Republican obstructionism as of 21 January 2017? If theirs were a battle about which should take supremacy in the Democratic Party's future — realism or idealism — and if the latter possessed any authentic chance of delegate supremacy and thus the nomination, then perhaps the blood would be worth it. But the latter has no such chance; Bernie's struggle is as futile as Jeb's.
And that, as I noted a few days ago, leaves Democrats with only one objective: to pull together, win the White House, and protect Obama's successes. Their internal struggle is, for now, nothing but internally injurious. The longer they bicker and squabble and direct their attacks inward, the more time the "ridiculous" Donald Trump has to amass electoral power — unscathed.
The odds of a President Trump are about as slim as they come. But do Democrats really want to risk awaking some morning, say, in mid-summer, and finding themselves in those "other" Republicans' shoes? — fighting a heaping onslaught of gullible populist mania? I'll say it again: In the face of delegate futility, Bernie should withdraw.
But he shouldn't quit. He should instead deploy his considerable skills in motivating and mobilizing the dispossessed to vote in November against every "R" on the ballot in every purple state and congressional district.
He won't withdraw, of course, because ideologues never stop dreaming — even though their lofty dreams can turn to unthinkable nightmares. So, so much for "shoulds." Sorry to bother you.