TRUMP

APPENDIX 291
tion. It fell apart completely in 2008, and has barely held together
against the longest of long shot candidates. No matter how likely she
may be to win the primary, things do not bode well for a general
election, whomever the nominee may be. As H.A. Goodman put it
in Salon:
Please name the last person to win the presidency alongside
an ongoing FBI investigation, negative favorability
ratings, questions about character linked to continual
flip-flops, a dubious money trail of donors, and the genuine
contempt of the rival political party. 35
The “contempt” bit of this is obviously silly; we all know levels of
contempt have reached their world-historic high point in the Republican
attitude toward Obama. But the rest is true: it’s incredibly hard
to run somebody very few people like and expect to win. With the
jocular, shrewd Donald Trump as an opponent, that holds true a million
times over.
Nor are the demographics going to be as favorable to Clinton as she
thinks. Trump’s populism will have huge resonance among the white
working class in both red and blue states; 36 he might even peel away
her black support. 37 And Trump has already proven false the prediction
that he would alienate Evangelicals through his vulgarity and his
self-deification. 38 Democrats are insistently repeating their belief that
a Trump nomination will mobilize liberals to head to the polls like
never before, but with nobody particularly enthusiastic for Clinton’s
candidacy, it’s not implausible that a large number of people will find
both options so unappealing that they stay home.
A Clinton/Trump match should therefore not just worry Democrats.
It should terrify them. They should be doing everything possible to
avoid it. A Trump/Sanders contest, however, looks very different indeed.
Trump’s various unique methods of attack would instantly be made