Trump derangement syndrome

I have written in the past about Bush, Cheney, and Palin derangement syndrome. It is a psychiatric defect suffered only by Democrats. Now we have Trump derangement syndrome. He is the Republican presidential nominee. Paradoxically, this syndrome afflicts only former Republican elites.

Apparently these folks thought they owned the Republican Party. However, because they need 70 million voters to win in November every four years, they led the rank-and-file Republican voters to believe that THEY owned the party and got to choose its nominee.

It is fair to say that the Republican Party elites regret that they did not create a huge number of super delegates, namely themselves. I think it’s fair to call George Will and Brett Stephens and Thomas Sowell and Mitt Romney “undocumented Republican super delegates” who are really pissed that they do not now have the power to overrule the rank-and-file Republican primary voters.

Early in this campaign, they demanded that Trump sign a pledge to support the Republican nominee. He did. So did all the other candidates. Trump commented at the time that it had to be a two-way street. He was assured it was. The only person who might not support the Republican nominee was said to be Trump.

Those with Trump derangement syndrome claim two problems: 1. Trump will lose in a landslide in November taking the Republican Congressional majorities with him. 2. Trump is vulgar and uninformed about issues.

For a year, people have been predicting that Trump would lose in a landslide in his efforts to win any nominating convention delegates. They were wrong—by a mile. Why does it not occur to them that they might be wrong about the general election?

I believe there were similar fears in 1980 when Reagan won the nomination. The elites that year favored George H.W. Bush. Reagan won 489 electoral votes to 49 for Carter. In 1984, Reagan won reelection by 525 to 13 over Mondale whose campaign manager was Bob Beckel, now an “expert” on MSNBC.

If the experts are as wrong about Trump in the general as they were in the primaries, Trump will win a historic victory in November, maybe exceeding Reagan’s number of electoral votes and carrying downticket Republicans with him.

America is a democracy. Universal suffrage. Someone told Democrat presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson in the 1950s that “all thinking men are with you.” “That’s not enough,” Stevenson replied. “I need a majority.” So does Trump. The American people as a group are vulgar and uninformed about the issues.

As president elect, Trump will do what he has been doing since he graduated from college: figure out how to achieve what he wants. He has spent his whole adult life figuring out how to achieve his various successes and learning from his various failures. His main skill is hiring, training, and retaining good executives. His enterprise is too vast for him to be the kind of one-man band he is often accused of being.

He is now being pilloried by the likes of George Will and Thomas Sowell for incompetence. While their literary and academic accomplishments are many, neither of those gentlemen have ever met a payroll or built a building or starred in a long-running TV show—or won an election. You would think they might, as a result, have more of the humility they now demand Trump acquire immediately.

The big fear has been a “broken” convention. Trump fixed that in spite of no help from the Establishment—indeed they spent millions to stop him from eliminating the broken convention. Now the Republicans have a self-inflicted broken elite, including Speaker Paul Ryan. And they claim Trump is the one who is nuts.

Unifying behind the party’s nominee has gone without saying for 150 years. What in the name of God is the goal they expect to achieve by refusing to support the nominee of their party?

They are welcome to resign from the party in protest. That would be the honorable thing to do—if there is honor is psychiatric disorders. But no, instead, they remain in the Republican kitchen so they can urinate in the Republican Party Soup to punish the rank and file for not voting for the candidates their betters told them to vote for—the “low-energy” guy.

Donald Trump is not some guy who fell off a turnip truck. That is the implication of all this criticism about his vulgarity and ignorance. He is one of the most accomplished and versatile celebrities or citizens of the U.S. He grew up in Queens and still talks like “Archie Bunker,” a fictional character also purportedly from Queens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archie_Bunker

Here’s a video of Archie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lDb0Dn8OXE

Okay, Trump’s not that bad, but you can see where he came from in “Archie.”

Bill O’Reilly is another Long Island guy who got educated and became rich and prominent, but defiantly did not let anyone take the Long Island out of him. It is a viable, legitimate personal choice.

I went the other direction. As a DJ in college, I was horrified when I heard my South Jersey accent in a tape of my show. I decided to lose the accent and did. (I can still do it as a comedy routine.)

I am from South Jersey, but abandoned almost all that came with that. (Chris Matthews is probably the most prominent Philly area celebrity who did not lose the accent.)

I did not become aristocratic and Ivory Tower like George Will. I just got rid of the distraction of the South Jerseyisms. I became a generic American—West Point had guys from every nook and cranny of America—not an aristocrat. It would probably have been better if Trump and O’Reilly did the same, but it is not required.

And there sure as hell is no requirement that you adopt the aristocratic affectations of “elite” guys like George Will or John Kerry or Bill Buckley. Trump is unaffected. That’s a good thing, not a catastrophe.