On Trumpian Strategy

Have you perhaps wondered what’s going on in Georgia? What’s up with Trump and his supporters not only continuing to pursue their claim that the election there was fraudulent, but even going so far as to call for his supporters not to vote for the two Republican Senatorial candidates unless they join in with his attack on the election’s credibility? Does he not risk undermining their campaign by driving many Republican voters away from the polls? Would not such behavior be self-destructive? Let me suggest why not, and why Trump may not only not care if the Republicans are re-elected, he may actually prefer that they lose.

The usual interpretation is that Trump would not want to act so as to weaken the Republican Party. But I think another game may be at work here. I think Trump is playing the traditional game of the mob boss. He is seeking to insure that he controls the Party. And that anyone that crosses him will pay the supreme political cost: defeat, even ridicule, and perhaps even threats to their person and family. Sort of a political version of Don Corleone. 

It doesn’t matter how supportive, even obsequious, one has been. Any failing at complete subservience will be met with devastating consequences – and you will pay the ultimate political price. A power he can effectively exercise precisely due to his cult-like following of so many Republican voters. Remember Jeff Sessions. 

And if the two Republican Senators fail to publicly attest to the fraudulent nature of the past election – no matter how absurd the claim – they will serve as perfect sacrificial examples of what happens to you if you cross the Boss. 

In fact, the very absurdity of Trump’ electoral challenges is key to the strategy. It’s just like the gang leader making a new recruit engage in an outrageous and personally compromising act as an initiation process by which the recruit testifies to his or her complete loyalty and subservience to the Boss. Thus intimidation is key to the emerging Trump’s MO to control the Republican Party. 

We should not downplay the significance of his continuing absurd challenges to the recent election. Nor to the intimidation strategy by which he is seeking to insure his complete control of the Republican Party. And thus to the fundamental threat posed to the possibility of the continuation of our democratic institutions and processes when one of our two major parties – and one considered legitimate by all official sources – is controlled by a gangster mobster, with a mass mobilized following of more than 70,000,000 voters.