America's obsession with celebrities, wealth, success, popularity, and social media all come together in the Donald Trump candidacy in the 2016 Presidential election.
Pundits from every part of the political spectrum remain flummoxed by his success. But they've been looking at Trump as though he were an ordinary political candidate. It's actually not all that shocking that the reality TV show host and tabloid favorite raced to top of the Republican field in late July and stayed there.
To be fair, no other politician would last long were they to behave like Trump. The bombastic pronouncements, rude insults, and outrageous positions would result in a quick exit.
But not only has this behavior not hurt Trump, it's part of his winning formula.
Voters have been drawn to Donald Trump not just because he talks about middle class concerns, but because of how he talks about them. He says things other politicians would never dare say.
That makes Trump a sensation - ideal for cable news channels hungry for ratings and sharing on social media.
In many ways, Trump really is in the right place at the right time to make his run for the White House.
Here's what I mean...
What's Behind the Donald Trump 2016 Election Campaign Success
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One unusual aspect of the 2016 presidential election race is that it has very much been about "outsiders" - people with little or no elected experience, or who otherwise reject the political establishment.
In the Real Clear Politics poll average, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson and former Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) CEO Carly Fiorina sit right behind Trump. On the Democratic side, nonconformist Bernie Sanders has gone from hopeless underdog to legitimate contender.
Trump rose to the top quickly because of his near-universal name recognition - the result of being in the public eye since the early 1980s.
Yet even that doesn't fully explain Trump's high levels of support. Here's why the Trump campaign has had so much success...
There are several pieces to this puzzle:
- The Less You Know, the Better Trump Looks: A Pew Research Center study in 2013 showed that Americans in the 67-84 age group spend an average of 84 minutes a day consuming news, while millennials (ages 18-31) spend just 46 minutes a day on news. For millennials, 61% of their news comes via Facebook.
- Trump's Campaign Is Great Reality TV: In recent years, Trump has become best-known for his reality television show "The Apprentice," in which candidates compete to land a job with the real estate mogul. He knows only too well that his unpredictable and outrageous behavior makes for compelling TV.
- The Trump Reality Distortion Field: As the CEO of Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL), the late Steve Jobs was said to have a "reality distortion field" - an ability to make his version of reality seem utterly convincing. Trump has his own version, built from his blunt talk, his star power, and the eagerness of his listeners to buy into his populist, nativist vision.
And ignorance of basic civics is widespread. When Newsweek gave 1,000 Americans a standard U.S citizenship test in 2011, 38% failed, with 70% not knowing what the U.S. Constitution is. An Annenberg Public Policy Center study in 2014 found that only 36% of Americans could name all three branches of government and 35% could not name even one.
The rise of the less-sophisticated voter has proven fertile ground for Donald Trump. A recent U.S. News and World Report poll showed Trump had relatively low support among the most engaged voters, and the highest support among the least politically engaged. Other polls have shown that Trump draws comparatively more support from those who did not attend college.
"I thought I'd have spent $10 million on ads, when so far I've spent zero," Trump bragged to Rolling Stone. "I'm on TV so much, it'd be stupid to advertise. Besides, the shows are more effective than ads."
He understands the power of his brand in a world where TV ratings and Internet page views equal money. That's why you're getting a steady diet of Trump in the media at the expense of all the other candidates. Consider this: With Trump center stage, the GOP debate on FOX News drew 24 million viewers; the one on CNN drew 22 million. The primary debates in 2011 drew between 4 million and 5 million viewers.
Trump's campaign is a 24-hour reality show multicast on television, the Internet, and social media. This is far beyond "The Apprentice." It's "The Truman Show," but with the main character - Donald Trump - in full control. And America can't look away.
Boil it down, though, and he's just another politician telling people what they want to hear. And much of what Trump is saying is impractical and dangerous.
For example, he claims he'll bring back the jobs that have gone to places like China and Mexico. As appealing as that sounds, the global economic forces that have driven jobs out of the United States are much too great for even a president to reverse. Trump's proposals to levy tariffs on foreign countries and punitive taxes on corporations not only will fail to bring back those jobs - they'd trigger a crippling recession.
The question no one can answer - because we've never before seen a phenomenon quite like Donald Trump - is how long this perfect storm of a candidate can keep churning.
The Trump Tax Plan: Donald Trump's economic plan has yet to be revealed. But he has offered some ideas in his speeches, and a 2011 book contained even more details. Based on what we know, here's what Trump's tax proposals will look like...
Follow me on Twitter @DavidGZeiler.
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About the Author
David Zeiler, Associate Editor for Money Morning at Money Map Press, has been a journalist for more than 35 years, including 18 spent at The Baltimore Sun. He has worked as a writer, editor, and page designer at different times in his career. He's interviewed a number of well-known personalities - ranging from punk rock icon Joey Ramone to Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Wozniak.
Over the course of his journalistic career, Dave has covered many diverse subjects. Since arriving at Money Morning in 2011, he has focused primarily on technology. He's an expert on both Apple and cryptocurrencies. He started writing about Apple for The Sun in the mid-1990s, and had an Apple blog on The Sun's web site from 2007-2009. Dave's been writing about Bitcoin since 2011 - long before most people had even heard of it. He even mined it for a short time.
Dave has a BA in English and Mass Communications from Loyola University Maryland.