“We have expanded the Republican Party,” Donald Trump declared in Palm Beach, Florida, as he discussed his Super Tuesday primary wins. “We are going to be a much bigger party. We have done something that almost nobody thought could be done. There is nobody that’s going to beat us.” Trump’s string of electoral victories in the 2016 GOP presidential primaries has indeed stunned political pundits.
Their predictions that voters would see through Trump’s hollow bragging have fallen flat.
Trump won three of the first four states. On Super Tuesday, he won sweeping victories in the Northeast and the Deep South, taking seven of the 11 states decided. Far from precipitating his self-destruction, Trump’s boasting has helped catapult him to the top of the GOP’s 2016 presidential candidates.
A major secret of the reality TV star’s political success lies in his use of language, particularly his clever exploitation of the “winning” metaphor.
It was clear as he gloried in his Nevada caucus victory: “We won with the evangelicals. We won with young. We won with old.
We won with highly educated. We won with poorly educated – I love the poorly educated.” Everybody loves a winner, especially in the U.S.A. – where sports form an essential part of many people’s socialization and acculturation, to the point of obsession, according to some observers. The value of competition is inculcated in children from infancy and forms a basic component of the American character. Even the process of electing a president, the most exalted office in the land, is cast as a race, reflecting the ubiquitous power of the sports metaphor in framing American life.
Words matter. A metaphor induces a mindset – it evokes specific desires and elicits particular emotions. In sports, “Winning isn’t everything, it is the only thing,” averred UCLA Bruins coach Henry Russell (“Red”) Sanders (no relation to Bernie!).
For Trump, the worst thing to be is a loser – that is his ultimate putdown, his ultimate insult. Above all else, he must be a winner, or posture as one. In Trump’s playbook, this means to appear rich, successful and sexually appealing, with a glamorous woman on one’s arm.
Trump keeps insisting he is a winner, and so are those who support him, whom he “loves.” It’s others who are the losers.
Trump’s words arouse people’s unconscious processes that bypass their critical faculties and circumvent their rationality. How the race is won becomes less important: It is only the outcome that counts. Facts are falsified, stories are made up, truths are twisted – all for the appearance of winning.
The winner-loser schema that Trump incessantly invokes primes a seductive desire for victory among his supporters. It begets such strong identification with the “winner,” that it can suppress all reasonable objections to his message. It empowers the rationalization of outrageous excesses and preposterous proclamations.
How else to explain the fact that Latinos, whom Trump branded as rapists and drug dealers, extended him substantial support in Nevada, for example. He did better with Latino voters there than Mitt Romney, the GOP’s 2012 presidential nominee.
This also helps explain why Trump is leading among Republican women, though he has offended, sexualized and stereotyped so many women.
Some Trump supporters rationalize his extremist statements by claiming that he does not quite mean what he says. If elected president, they say, Trump would heed the counsel of the Republican establishment. “If Trump were to get the nomination,” argued a member of House Speaker Paul Ryan’s inner circle, he would “be looking to answer the question: ‘Where’s the beef?’ And we will have that for him.” The implication was that Trump’s actual political agenda is skin deep – and he would need to take policy advice from those who know better.
Curiously, Trump seems to concur: “When I’m president,” he said at a rally in Pella, Iowa, “I’m a different person. I can do anything. I can be the most politically correct person you have ever seen.” And his news conference on Tuesday night was remarkably mannerly.
Yet, Trump misses nary an opportunity to showcase his winner essence. In a capitalist society, this means material wealth – which Trump never tires of mentioning. “I am rich, I am really rich” he says over and over again. When he announced his candidacy for the GOP presidential nomination on June 16, Trump uttered the words “rich,” “money” and “net worth” 30 times in 45 minutes. He said his net worth is $8,737,540,000, which, according to some estimates, is grossly exaggerated.
He also constantly reminds voters that he is married to a gorgeous former model. By his standards, this is a hallmark of a true winner.
Nor is the winner-loser distinction unique to Trump’s campaign role. His reality-TV persona thrived on that dichotomy.
Trump relished his power on “The Apprentice” as a Godlike arbiter of people’s fates. He had the ability to elate contestants with the gift of winning or devastate them with the verdict of losing. Trump’s hit TV program, viewed over the years by millions of voters, amplifies and adds authority to his winner-loser language in politics.
Trump’s harping on the winner theme has elicited pointed ridicule from media and pundits, which have turned him into a butt of jokes. Yet, there is considerable rhyme and reason to his apparent obsessiveness. His strategic bragging is nothing if not highly effective.
Those who dream of derailing him had better understand it – else the ultimate joke be on them.
