Tag: Donald Trump

Throughout his presidency, I have waited for the moment when Donald Trump overstepped the mark, causing him to alienate a large part of his support base. There were moments when I thought he had reached such a point, but I was proved wrong each time. But the events last week in Washington are surely that moment. His presidency is nearly over anyway, of course, but he is surely unlikely to come back from this.

Of course an astonishing number of Americans thought that the storming of Congress was justified, but the Republican coalition is still breaking up, and it is likely to reform without Mr Trump in control. You could tell Mr Trump was in trouble when he read out his statement disowning the protesters and conceding that he would hand over to the new administration. He normally doubles down; he does not do light-footed manoeuvre.

What happened? It was very clear from even before the election that Mr Trump would try to cling to power if he lost. His plan to do so amounted to a coup, but one that maintained some vestiges of legality. He thought he could mobilise Republican Congressmen and state administrators, and sympathetic judges to annul the state election results he didn’t like, and substitute more congenial ones. For the most part they did not cooperate (the Congressmen being a shameful exception), because Mr Trump could not provide them with any serious evidence to work with, and they had too much respect for the rule of law, or at any rate understood that the risks for them personally were far too high. His last chance was on Wednesday, when Congress was due to ratify the election results. He organised a march of his supporters on the Capitol. What was Mr Trump trying to do? Here it gets murky. His hope may have been to intimidate the law-makers into overturning the election results. He may simply have wanted a spectacular demonstration of the strength of feeling on his side to sustain the betrayal narrative, from which he could build his comeback. If you want to build a conspiracy theory you can easily find enough to work on. After he lost the election Mr Trump cleared out the senior appointees of the Defence department and put in complete loyalists. The Washington National Guard was under the control of the Defence department, but it had not been mobilised for trouble, as it had been for the Black Lives Matter protests.

But it looks as if there was no clear plan. Once the protesters got into the building they did not know what to do. This was the worst possible outcome for Mr Trump. The protesters engaged in vandalism and showed general disrespect for one of the United States’s most hallowed institutions without achieving anything more than a delay to proceedings. This was fine by those of Mr Trump’s base driven by a hate for those institutions and of revolutionary intent: the white supremacists, the QAnon conspiracy theorists and the wild fringe in general. But a large part of the Republican coalition prefers to see these people as a tiresome sideshow. For many conservative Americans, having somebody dressed in a bison outfit leading the way is not a good look. Funnily enough, if the protestors had been met by a robust police and National Guard presence, it would probably have worked much better for Mr Trump – they could blame failure on the “deep state”. The plan had not been thought through and it lapsed into farce, albeit a farce in which several people were killed.

That is very revealing. Many people claim that Donald Trump is a fascist. It is perfectly true that there are many common threads between Trumpism and fascism. The cult of personality, the demand for personal loyalty amongst officials, the disrespect for the rule of law and political convention. The tactics were fascistic too: the use of elections to gain a foothold, the cooption and then subordination of establishment conservatives, and the indulgence of mob violence from supporters. But there are big differences. Fascists concentrate power in a militarised state, subordinating all other civil and private organisations. They adore administrative competence (Mussolini wanted to make the trains run on time; Hitler built autobahns). They are also driven by a clear, if fantastical, vision of where they want to take their country. Donald Trump worked to dismantle the state, not build it up. He let private corporations run riot, including ones he did not like. He has very little regard for administrative competence. He was not a warmonger either – he tried to end foreign wars, not start them. His supporters were not organised into paramilitary formations that could drive through a violent coup. Some of his supporters were heavily armed, it is true, but there was something anarchistic about them; they viewed their weapons as an extension to their personal autonomy, rather than part of being a soldier for a cause. Once you take the narcissism away from Trumpism, there really is very little left.

Which is why the coup failed and Mr Trump has been humiliated. There were no storm troopers ready to enter the Capitol and neutralise opposing Congressmen. There were no leaders on the ground with a clear idea about what they needed to do.

Very soon Donald Trump will leave office. So much of his power, and self-esteem, derived from that office that it will be difficult for him to come back, especially after this fiasco. But his popular base is still there, angry at the turn of events and convinced that it is they who are the victims of a coup. The new administration faces many difficult choices. Joe Biden wants to be a figure of healing and reconciliation. But can he simply let the forces of darkness reorganise with impunity? Republican leaders face hard choices too. Their no-prisoners resistance to the Democrats has unleashed a tiger that is consuming them. Is it time to change tactics in order to capitalise on the fears that much of the American public has of left-wing radicalism?

And all the while the pandemic runs riot. What a moment to become President. But it will not do to underestimate Joe Biden.

Like many Britons who follow politics, I follow US politics enthusiastically. But I don’t like to comment so much on it here. I have no special connection to the US zeitgeist,and it seems to be a bit rude to comment on somebody else’s politics. But we can’t help but be affected by the US, so I feel I must comment from time to time. The big question is whether Donald Trump will be reelected as President this November.

At the start of the year Mr Trump’s position looked strong. The economy was doing well, he was delivering to his base, and all of his potential Democratic opponents had limitations and weaknesses. He easily saw off impeachment, successfully portraying it as a manifestation of partisan politics. Mr Trump’s divisive style never made him a shoo-in in this year’s election, but he was the betting favourite. But then things started to go wrong. The Democrats resolved their selection race with unexpected speed, in favour of Joe Biden, the candidate, apparently, that Mr Trump most feared. And then came the Coronavirus epidemic, which saw Mr Trump conspicuously flailing. This was followed by the Black Lives Matter explosion after the murder of George Floyd, and more presidential flailing. Mr Biden has a steady and growing poll lead both nationally and in the battleground states, a lead that is bigger and steadier than Hillary Clinton achieved at this stage in 2016. But we have over four months to go, and a lot can happen.

To win, what Mr Trump needs to do is to motivate his base, demotivate the Democrats’ base and win over independent voters. The first part of this is going well enough for him. Mr Trump’s base has two main components: his fanbase and anti-liberals. The fanbase consists of less well-educated white people, who have felt excluded by political elites for decades. Mr Trump speaks their language and expresses what they feel. They experience a sort of euphoria when Mr Trump expresses their values from the top of the political system; they are happy to disregard incompetence for the sheer joy of seeing one their own in charge. And with Mr Trump, unlike many other populists, what you see is what you get; there is no guile about him. This increases the bond of trust. The anti-liberals, on the other hand, are not admirers of Mr Trump personally, but they love him because because he is a bastion against the advance of liberal values. They are passionate about such things as stopping abortion and maintaining complete freedom over the ownership of firearms. They don’t believe in a strong Federal state, apart from having strong armed forces, so they aren’t bothered by Mr Trump’s evident incompetence. This group is diverse, but religious groups are prominent. They also include many business owners who dislike government regulation and taxes, and seek opportunities for cosy deals. For this group Mr Trump has delivered on his promises, most notably in the appointment of Supreme Court (and other) justices, but also with tax cuts for companies and the neutering of federal regulation; he has also held the line against gun law reform, in spite of a spate of mass shootings. For the anti-liberals the Democrats pose as great a threat as ever, and there is no sign that their enthusiasm for reelecting Donald Trump is fading. Doubtless Mr Trump’s partisan approach to the Covid crisis and the BLM uprising helps motivate this group too. They are on fire.

How about the Democrats’ base? Their main weakness is their candidate. He’s been around for a long time, and there is lot of grey in his record, not least around claims of sexual harassment. Before the BLM explosion there were signs that younger voters were becoming demotivated by all the questions being raised by his record. But Mr Trump clearly doesn’t get why people are so angry about the Floyd murder. To him this is just an isolated crime, and not evidence of a systemic failure. He doesn’t feel the pain of decades of being fobbed off with talk of progress. In fact his behaviour has given succour to the forces of darkness. He has thus become a channel for anger across the Democrats’ base, and has managed to fire them up.

And how about independents? This is a harder group for people on this side of the Atlantic to read. Mr Trump picked up many independents in 2016, because his campaign to undermine Mrs Clinton’s credibility was so successful, and her campaign to reassure them was so weak. Mr Trump fitted the American model of a successful and admirable businessman much better than the European one, so people there were prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt, while most Europeans had written him off as a nutcase. It is probably this group that is gradually coming over to Mr Biden as Mr Trump showcases his incompetence. But they are doubtless wary of the Democrats too.

So what next? The campaign hasn’t really got started yet. We know that Mr Trump will try to make it about Mr Biden and not himself, by hammering on his weaknesses. He already refers to him as “Sleepy Joe”. But this is surely not as effective as “Crooked Hillary”‘; voters are tired of hyperactive and hyper partisan politics; “sleepy” doesn’t sound so bad. But there are plenty of cracks in Mr Biden’s candidacy, so the attack could work. A further issue is whether the need to keep his base fired up moves Mr Biden into tricky policy territory. The demand to “defund” the police may not be as bad as it sounds, but it sounds like an invitation to criminals.

A big question hangs over the future course of the epidemic. Mr Trump is playing on the idea that the threat was exaggerated and lockdown measures were overdone (by Democrat governors and mayors), and he is supporting the lifting of the lockdown, even though many think this is premature. This builds on the different experiences of the epidemic across America. It has been devastating in big, crowded cities, such as New York and New Orleans, but much less so in less densely populated places. By and large Republican voters’ experience has been much less severe than that of Democrats. So if the disease retreats even as the lockdown is removed, and the economy bounces back, the Republicans will claim vindication while the pain of many cities will be forgotten as they will vote Democrat anyway. And the administration’s financial management of the crisis has been perfectly competent, largely because Mr Trump has been happy to leave that to others, and not disrupt it.

On the other hand, the disease could boomerang, hitting Republican areas hard, and disrupting the economic recovery. This is particularly likely as Autumn approaches and the weather cools: i.e. just as America approaches the vote. This could create a perfect storm for the Republicans. Mr Trump’s plan to hold mass election rallies in defiance of social distancing and mask-wearing looks especially risky.

And that points to something that I think will be the deciding issue against Mr Trump. He has become very dependent on his own judgement. When he was first elected, it was expected by many that he would surround himself with competent people, and let them do most of the work. And that seemed to be what was happening, with the recruitment of many generals to his administration, and with Steve Bannon advising on political strategy. But Mr Trump hates to be managed and he has replaced almost everybody with more compliant people who will go along with his madnesses, with the interesting exceptions of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve. This has made Mr Trump much more likely to make mistakes. Mr Biden, on the other hand, while gaffe-prone, surely knows how to ask for and accept advice.

But four months is an eternity in this crazy year.

I was astonished a week ago when the US President, Donald Trump, launched a Twitter attack on Democrat Congresswomen, telling them to “go back to where they came from”. My first reaction was that he had lost the plot. Since then he has doubled down on this attack, incorporating it into a central theme of his campaigning. I have read and heard quite a number of comments on this from neutral and unsympathetic commentators. They all say that this is a clever strategy by the President, and makes life for the Democrats more difficult. This view is so widely held that I am compelled to challenge it. Mr Trump has blundered and is compounding his mistake.

Why is this comment so shocking? Rather too much hot air is being expended on whether or not it is racist or merely xenophobic. This type of comment is a favourite line of attack by racists, and can be taken to shocking extremes, as we see with the Burmese attack on the Rohingyas – an ethnic group that has lived in the country for many generations, but whom ethnic Burmese regard as being “from” Bengal. But you don’t have to be ethnically separate in order for people to think that you aren’t really “from here” and that your home is somewhere else, even if it isn’t. Mr Trump’s supporters don’t regard themselves as being racist, since they don’t think that it is ethnicity that they are attacking. But it really doesn’t make much difference what name you call it: it touches a very raw nerve on the part of anybody of immigrant stock. It says that however hard you try, you are not accepted as belonging. It says that the accuser is making no effort at all to be inclusive. It is particularly shocking in a country that is founded on immigration. No serious British politician would say such a thing intentionally (although I would not put it past The Brexit Party’s Nigel Farage, now that Mr Trump has blazed the trail).

Why do so many commentators think Mr Trump is being clever? First they say that it fires up his core supporters. That is clearly true. They are the type of people who think that it is a perfectly fair thing to say about somebody from a first or second generation immigrant background whom they disagree with, and they adore the way Mr Trump flouts the rules of political correctness. But Mr Trump needs more than his core support to win. In 2016 he persuaded many others that he stood for a fresh start against an under-performing political establishment. Stoking up fear and loathing does not get through to these voters.

The second thing that the commentators are saying is that the four congresswomen at the heart of Mr Trump’s assault are to the left of the Democrats and that by drawing attention to them he will put centrist voters off the party. But Mr Trump is drawing more attention to their ethnicity than he is to their political views with his “go home” attacks. He is attacking their views too, of course: I heard on the radio part of Mr Trump’s recent campaign rally implying that one of them was an Al-Qaeda supporter, inciting chants of “send her home”. Perhaps there is a parallel with his “lock her up” attacks on his 2016 opponent Hillary Clinton, but this served to reinforce his claim that there was something dodgy about her, rather than distract from it. Once again, it’s a great way to fire up the base, but it is far from obvious that the attack will be effective beyond that.

Meanwhile, consider the damage that he is doing to his own and his party’s standing. His attack could not be better targeted to anger or worry voters of Latino or Asian background, and their friends. The picture may be a bit more complicated with black voters, but the racist undercurrent won’t be lost on them either. Mr Trump is crafting his appeal to white, less educated and older voters, demographic groups that are all in decline (if you take the age criterion as being defined by a particular birth date, which seems applicable in this case). He is doing so at the cost of winding up everybody else. This is a strategically disastrous course for his Republican party, recalling the attack by that party on Latinos in the 1990s in California, which has proved catastrophic for them. The Presidential and Congressional elections of 2020 are more about tactics that strategy – but it is hard to see how the Republicans can do well without at least apathy amongst better-educated, younger or non-white voters. Stirring them up will make that harder.

A final line of defence for Mr Trump is that the attack is a “dead cat” – a tactic to distract attention from something that is more profoundly damaging. But there is no imminent election: it is hard to see what he is trying to distract people from and why it should be now.

Of course Mr Trump is not to be underestimated. In 2016 he showed a real mastery of the art of creating doubts about his opponents. He can point to enough success in his term to say that he has proved sceptics wrong: in many cases the disastrous nature of his policies will only be evident after 2020. His robust attitude to America’s trading partners, especially China, draws praise; the economy seems to be doing well enough to boost wages; he has made conservative appointments to the judiciary, which appeals to a sizeable chunk of the electorate. But the xenophobia takes voters who might be impressed by all this to a different place. He has not made his reelection impossible, but he has surely made it harder.

Some commentators suggest that his best chance of success is if the Democrats select a candidate from the left of the party. But after this episode one wonders whether amongst Mr Trump’s many remarkable achievements will be making a candidate from the left electable.

To judge from the headlines in the liberal press, or liberal commentators on the BBC, you would think Donald Trump’s presidency in the US was on its last legs. This follows the conviction yesterday of two of his (formerly) close advisers, and his being implicated by one of them in an illegal pay-off. But these commentators have failed to understand how the Trump phenomenon has rewritten the rules of US politics. Provided he maintains his health, Mr Trump will surely last until the end of his term in 2020. And if his liberal opponents continue to underestimate him, he could well win a second term.

The first point to make is that Mr Trump is utterly shameless. He is not the least bit embarrassed by anything that he has done. Call this narcissism if you like, but he will fight on. The second point is that his base of support both remains solid, and maintains a grip on the Republican party.

To his base, Mr Trump is the man who has delivered. Evangelicals have their conservative judges. Business leaders have their tax cuts and roll-back of tiresome regulations. Conservatives everywhere are enjoying are enjoying the rout of liberal values: it feels like fresh air. And the bad behaviour? That is utterly unsurprising; they knew the sort of man they were taking on. So long as he is doing the job of battering ram, they will forgive everything. Corruption is something that happens to liberals, in their eyes, and not to politicians on their own side. Indeed in they seem to think that corruption is less about illegal payoffs and more about the process of political compromise with people who are not like them.

So neither Mr Trump nor his base will be shaken by recent events. Legally the President looks secure too. There is debate as to whether it is possible to indict a sitting president with a crime – but if that came to be tested the Supreme Court has shown no appetite to challenge Republicans on anything important. It is unlikely that the special prosecutor, Robert Mueller, will even try. Everybody else in Trumpland is either dispensable or Mr Trump can use his powers of pardon. There is pretty much nothing Mr Trump would not do rather than admit defeat.

Which leaves the danger of impeachment, which is essentially a political process. It is looking likely that the Democrats will take control of the House of Representatives in the mid-term elections in November. That would allow impeachment to proceed. If there were grounds to do so against Bill Clinton in the 1990s, there will be more than enough against Mr Trump. But success depends on the votes of two-thirds of the Senate. Which means that half or more Republican Senators will have to turn against him. Given Mr Trump’s hold on the party grassroots, and his ability to undermine the credibility of any given opponent by a constant process of smearing, he looks secure. He will paint the impeachment as a politically tainted process, and not without a degree of justice. This is politics, and Mr Trump has proved to be America’s most effective politician.

The problem for liberals is that they persist in judging Mr Trump and his supporters by their own standards. Mr Trump’s behaviour would kill a liberal politician’s career. But Mr Trump does not need liberal votes. Instead he is playing an altogether different game: the politics of emotion, victimhood and identity. It is something liberals really don’t get.

But Donald Trump is politically vulnerable. His base is as loyal as ever, but it is a minority. He is making little attempt to win over anybody else: indeed he enjoys antagonising large sections of the US nation. This is one reason why it looks as if he will do badly in the mid-term elections. Another is that there are some cracks in his record for some of the people who had supported him.

To his supporters Mr Trump is a breath of fresh air because, unlike politicians before him, he is delivering on his election promises. That is true in the sense that he is doing things that mainstream politicians have not dared to do: notably the ratcheting up of the trade war, which has widespread public support. There are broken promises aplenty, of course, but these are either on secondary issues, or easy enough to pass off blame onto others. But I think there are two sources of trouble. One is healthcare reform. This is fiercely complicated, and the Trump administration is unable to do anything complicated. His attempts to push through a reform last year collapsed. That itself is not a problem: there are plenty of people to blame it on. And if he had succeeded it might actually be worse for him. The problem is that for many working class Americans, getting decent and affordable health care insurance is becoming impossible. A Republican reform of healthcare would not have helped. But the slow decay of the Obamacare system is making things worse. That is enough to create doubts for a lot of Trump voters, who increasingly realise that the Republicans are not on their side.

A second problem comes with the trade war. The process itself may be popular, but as it progresses it will create more victims. Already many farmers are worried. It may be enough to help the Democrats hold on to Midwestern Senate seats that would otherwise have been near impossible to hold.

This may be enough for the Democrats to overcome gerrymandered boundaries and win the House of Representatives, and even the Senate (tricky because the previous contests were six years ago on a Democratic high water mark). But the path to the presidency in 2020 is much trickier. Once Mr Trump is able to concentrate his political skills on undermining a single opponent, all bets are off. A lot of people blame his victory in 2016 on the Democrats choosing a weak candidate in Hillary Clinton. But in many ways Mrs Clinton was a strong candidate. Mr Trump would have successfully undermined any Democrat opponent, just as he did with his Republican opponents in the primaries.

And there is a trap for Democrats. It is tempting to follow the Republicans into the politics of victimhood and identity. There are plenty of people who feel victimised by the Trump regime. But that takes them away from many of Mr Trump’s less committed and more sceptical supporters. He may be able to rally them again. The Democrats need to show that they are standing up for these voters too, on healthcare and jobs in particular.

I continue to hope there will be a moment of revelation to Trump supporters, akin to what Hurricane Katrina did for George Bush Jnr. But the man has survived so many knocks, that I doubt this will happen. After that I just hope that the Democrats can choose a candidate with high ethical standards that can convince all working class Americans that she or he is on their side and Donald Trump isn’t.

It is two months since my last post. This may be the longest period of silence since I started this blog in 2011. This is mainly because I have been consumed with the process of getting 39 local election candidates nominated for council elections here in Wandsworth, and all the attendent duties of being agent and local party Treasurer, officer and volunteer. Along with other duties as school governor and party officer at regional and, now, even Federal Party level. Plus the occasional bit of time off and some family care issues.

Meanwhile the newsletter section of the blog was subject to over 1,000 fake subscriptions consisting of Russian web addresses. This was only stopped by implementing Captcha, which was somewhat trickier (and more costly) than I expected. In any case, the oncoming election, and my senior role in one borough, has constrained my ability to comment as freely as I like this blog to be. And it isn’t over. The election itself happens in a week’s time. After that I have to prepare and submit 39 expense returns. All I will say on these elections for now is that I have been involved in local elections in Wandsworth for 32 years, and in that time they have proved a graveyard of predictions. I will comment when it is all over.

Meanwhile there has been plenty else going on. In Britain we have had a kerfuffle in Labour over antisemitism. And there has been the so-called “Windrush Scandal” in which the Home Office has hounded legal immigrants with incomplete paperwork. I want to comment on both in due course. And politics in America continues its sinister course, with the Trump administration subverting institutions of the Republican Party, the US Federal state, and the world’s trading and diplomatic architecture.

Which draws me to today’s topic. Looking back over the last two years it is striking how liberals and established politicians have consistently underestimated Donald Trump. It has been easy to dismiss him as stupid and immature. And yet he has proved wily and dogged and he has always ended up on top. His critics need to understand him better if they are to devise an effective counter.

The first thing to say about Mr Trump is that his intelligence is of a different type from that we are used to in our leaders. It is very right-brained. We have traditionally adored and respected the left-brained virtues of logic, computation, complicated language and rules. But the right brain handles values, emotions, context and seeing thing as a whole. A healthy mind keeps the two in constant dialogue. We see Mr Trump’s left-brain deficiencies as fatal flaws; and yet neglect of right-brained virtues by liberal intellectuals is just as serious a deficiency.

Now let’s be more specific. Mr Trump’s world consists of competing individuals and groups who win, or lose or strike bargains with each other. It’s a world divided between adversaries and trusted insiders. To the former you must be merciless; to the latter you must show and expect unquestioning loyalty. In this way of looking at the world, the liberal system of collaboration and shifting coalitions with its infinite shades of grey is simply weakness. There is an acute sense of victimhood: that honest Americans have been made monkeys of by outsiders who have outmanoeuvred the country’s establishment.

Another aspect of the Trump view is that rules are a means to an end, and should not be elevated to an end in themselves, as liberal intellectuals do when they set the rule of law on a pedestal. Liberals say that the rule of law protects the weak; but does it really? The Trump alternative is for people to be part of a group with strong mutual loyalty and leadership that focuses on results.

The problem for liberals is that the Trump view is very widely shared, especially amongst less-educated people, but, clearly, not just them. Liberals tend to worship institutions that favour educated people through an unseeing meritocracy. They then try to compensate for this by offering handouts to the less fortunate, which creates a patron-supplicant relationship that undermines human dignity. Many on the left, who rail against “austerity”, just don’t understand why so many poorer people hate state benefits.

A further problem for liberals is that Mr Trump’s methods will produce enough results to justify the faith his supporters are putting in him. The tax reforms in 2017 were a huge coup, whatever we my think of them objectively. The pressure he is putting on China, North Korea and Iran may well yield some short-term results. His approval ratings may not be good in comparison to other presidents a year into office, but they are not particularly bad in absolute terms; they may not suffer the sort of middle-term decay that those predecessors were subject to. And he knows how to rally the sceptical floating voters when he needs them, not least by casting doubt on his opponents.

So what could stop him? The pundits predict that the Republicans could lose their control of the House of Representatives in November, though the Senate looks more secure. That would limit his ability to pass legislation. And yet it will also give Mr Trump a scapegoat on which to blame his failures. Nobody knows how to milk victimhood like Mr Trump. It may even give him a chance to reshape the Republican Party into his instrument in time for the next round of elections in 2020.

A further problem for Mr Trump is a declining base. This base is core to the Trump phenomenon: it is the loyalty group that is central to his identity. It is white, working class and ageing. It will be impossible for Mr Trump to form such a strong bond with other voter groups, and these are growing faster than his base. But in the medium term Mr Trump can keep this threat at bay by suppressing it, through promoting scepticism and apathy, plus changing electoral rules through things such as voter ID. In the longer term Mr Trump bumps into term limits and old age. But he can do a lot of damage before then.

I think there are two more important threats to Mr Trump, because these concern his base. The first is trade policy. Mr Trump’s narrative on trade is very appealing, but if he follows through by starting trade wars it will threaten the working class jobs of exporters. In the Trump narrative, of course, many more workers will benefit. But in the short term these benefits will be much harder to see. Midwestern farmers, who have been strong supporters, are already starting to wonder. Still, Mr Trump loves brinkmanship, and he may well feel he can strike bargains and claim victories before any serious damage is done.

The second problem is health insurance. One of the driving themes of Mr Trump’s presidency is to dismantle anything his predecessor, Barack Obama, put in place. Mr Obama’s crowning achievement was his health insurance system, and Mr Trump is desperate to dismantle it. And yet Obamacare tackles a genuine working-class problem of basic healthcare becoming unaffordable. Abolishing it would cause anger and hardship. Replacing it is the sort of massively complex enterprise that the Trump White House is incapable of. And, unlike tax reform, there is nothing like a Republican consensus on what any replacement regime should look like. Mr Trump will try to blame the Democrats as Obamacare gradually breaks down through neglect – but for once this line of attack will be hard to sustain.

So Mr Trump’s revolution may fail. But liberals, and not just in the US, would do well to ponder how to broaden their appeal so that they are not so vulnerable to right-brained populists like Mr Trump.