Ian Leslie in New Statesman:
In the last two weeks Trump has viciously and repeatedly abused a Mexican-American judge, who ruled against him on a law suit concerning his fraudulent ‘university’, as being unfit to pass judgement because he has Mexican parents. The very definition of racism. He followed that up by referring to a supporter as “my African-American”– pretty much the dumbest thing a white American can say. Those senior Republicans who, like Paul Ryan, trusted they would civilize the savage, are already looking foolish. So are those of us who thought there was a Trump beyond the Trump we have. I think Josh Marshall is right, and that Trump is essentially trapped inside his own invective. The more violently he attacks Clinton, the more unstable and unlikeable he seems. He does not have a plan B. He is not thinking coolly or strategically. He is a dyspeptic gorilla in a cage, and on the evidence of a veryeffective opening salvo, Clinton knows exactly how and what to poke through the bars. Electorally, that means that Trump is not going to expand his appeal greatly beyond his existing constituency. Of course, he will pick up some of the Republicans who didn’t vote for him in the primary but will take the party line whoever the candidate, especially when the alternative is Hillary Clinton. But he won’t make in-roads into independents, among whom he only gets more unpopular, the more they see of him.
He certainly won’t make progress with non-white voters. If he wins as many Hispanic and black votes as Romney did – and he very probably won’t – he’ll have to win nearly two thirds of white voters to get to a majority. I just don’t think there are nearly enough angry racist white men in America to get him to the White House. It will soon become apparent that the big mistake of this whole electoral cycle was not, “We had no idea how popular Trump could be.” It was, “We had no idea how removed a large segment of the core GOP electorate has become from the rest of the nation.” Another factor is that the American media – finally, belatedly – have him in their sights, and they smell blood. Befuddled and dazzled by his rise, they didn’t scrutinize him aggressively, or call out his racism (and neither did his political rivals). Eager to make amends, they are now starting to make up for it. Interviews like this or this are just the beginning.
More here.
