Donald Trump could win the election, despite his long rap sheet. His 1997 book holds clues for how he works

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Donald Trump could win the election, despite his long rap sheet. His 1997 book holds clues for how he works

时间：2024-11-04 04:00 来源：未知作者：admin 阅读：次

analysis

Donald Trump, for all his sins, has proved himself to be an astute politician.

If the normal rules of politics applied, this presidential election race should not even be close.

Not even remotely.

Not when one of the candidates is a twice-impeached convicted felon who has threatened to terminate the US constitution and turn the US military on to his political opponents. And that's before we get to Donald Trump's racist attacks on immigrants and the lies that routinely litter his rambling campaign speeches.

But what is happening in the United States now is far from normal.

How else can we explain how the former president, with his long rap sheet and penchant for inflammatory rhetoric, is running neck-and-neck with Kamala Harris and stands a good chance of returning to the White House?

Sure, the vice-president has had limited time to establish herself with American voters and is marked down for her connection to an unpopular president and an administration that an overwhelming majority of Americans say is taking the country in the wrong direction.

But Donald Trump, for all his sins, has proved himself to be an astute politician with an unerring ability to dominate the news cycle and garner attention. As he would see it, all publicity, no matter how awful, really is good publicity. People take notice of what he says and does, and while many Americans would recoil in horror, many more are willing to consider giving him another go. And that is why he has edged ahead in a lot of the national and state-based polling.

Nostalgia for Trump's first term

His recent visit to a Pennsylvania McDonald's was a case in point. Sure, it was a contrived media stunt, but the images of Trump in his apron cooking French fries and serving drive-through customers would have resonated with a lot of voters. One in eight Americans have worked at McDonald's (including Kamala Harris, despite Trump's false claims she didn't), and a much bigger proportion regularly eat there. It allowed the billionaire to appear relatable.

Also running in the former president's favour is a certain nostalgia for his time in office. Trump regularly polls higher than Harris when it comes to who best can run the economy and handle immigration.

According to analysis by the Wall Street Journal, prices are nearly 20 per cent higher than they were when Trump left office (even though inflation has recently cooled). Americans are still feeling the pain when they visit the supermarket or the petrol station, and the Biden/Harris administration is copping the electoral heat.

On border control, Trump simply has to point to the surge in undocumented immigrants under Biden and Harris to make his point to the voters for whom this issue is a deciding one. His promise to deport millions of illegal immigrants would also have a visceral appeal to a segment of the American electorate.

Clues to Trump's resilience

Foreign policy is not up there as a key issue for voters, but Trump has been making the potentially seductive campaigning point that the world was a lot less chaotic when he was in power.

Russia hadn't invaded Ukraine, the Middle East wasn't in flames and tension with China was not nearly as high as it is today.

Joe Biden's disastrous withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan is a foreign policy disaster that Trump has been more than willing to also hang around Kamala Harris's neck. Yes, Trump was fond of cosying up to dictators like Vladimir Putin, but he argues it helped keep the world safer (just not the Ukrainians).

Another key to keeping the race tight has been Trump's ability to ramp up support among white working-class Americans in battleground states like Pennsylvania and Michigan. His promise to bring back a golden era of prosperity to those who have too often suffered the impact of America's manufacturing decline is a tantalising one, even if it's impossible to achieve. Similarly, Trump has been effective in peeling away black and Hispanic voters from the Democrats. In a race this close, these defections could prove critical.

Some clues to Trump's resilience can perhaps be found in his aptly titled 1997 book The Art of the Comeback.

It contained 10 tips for success the former president seems to be following nearly 30 years later. Among them: "Be passionate", "Be paranoid", "Go with your gut", "Be lucky" and, ominously, "Get even".

Because, when it comes down to it, Trump's pursuit of the presidency is all about righting what he sees as the wrongs of the 2020 election. Election denialism runs strongly in the Republican base. And when Donald Trump tells his supporters he will be their "retribution", it is proving to be a powerful motivating force.

What this means for the country if Trump triumphs this week, is another thing.

By：ABC

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