Mande Wilkes: Trump is the poor man’s President

In an effort to appeal to “Joe the Plumber” — that proverbial voter who personifies normal Americans — politicians like to fake humble beginnings. It’s usually a total farce, of course, and people can see right through it. It’s pretty hard to rub away the sheen of years of boarding school and good breeding.

And then there’s Donald Trump, for whom there’s no pretending. His wealth is the reason we should trust him, says he. Of his money he reminds us constantly. Meanwhile, the rest of the presidential field pretends they’re eating beans and brown-bag lunches every day.

Counterintuitively, the public seems resoundingly to prefer Trump’s amplifications. Most counterintuitive of all? It’s the least wealthy who like him most, and the most wealthy who like him least.

Trump himself called this one way back in the spring, before he was even a serious candidate. “Rich people don’t like me,” he declared, noting that his support would come not from his peers but from people whose lifestyles are much different than his.

Since then, polls have validated this. Statistics gathered by CNN and ABC News, among other organizations, have illuminated Trump’s political “base.” He’s overwhelmingly popular with Americans who don’t have a college degree, and conversely he underwhelms those who are college graduates.

And he pulls it off, somehow, by boasting and bragging and showboating. He’s like the redneck who wins the Powerball lottery — he lives at the country club but still visits his old trailer park.

Scott Walker, boring governor from Wisconsin, centered his presidential candidacy on the perception that he’s “one of us.” Nobody fell for it, and he exited swiftly. Rick Perry, cowboy-governor from Texas, followed a similar strategy and yielded the same result: dead on arrival.

For their part, the leftists are toeing the “populist” line too. Bernie Sanders, goofy senator from Vermont, is an avowed Socialist who pledges fealty to the downtrodden. Hillary Clinton, white-bred and well-heeled, harbors a pathological obsession with poor people.

Trump, meanwhile, deploys a strategy of braggadocio and narcissism — precisely the opposite approach of any U.S. politician, ever.

From Trump, according to Trump — and I believe this is the key to his appeal — you’ll get a guy who has the answers. He’s smarter than you, more aggressive than you, knows all the right people, buys all the best things. He’s not a man among men, he’s a leader. A prophet, even.

The media criticize him for his lack of specifics, but his supporters don’t need policy proposals. They don’t want to be bogged down in details, they just want to know that there’s a guy at the top who knows what to do. Isn’t that freeing, to not have to differentiate between this tax plan or that one, between this war strategy or that one? Especially for those who aren’t educated or esteemed, there’s a relief in electing someone who’ll take care of the nitty-gritty.

Luckily for Trump, there are lots and lots of tuned-out and turned-down people in America these days. In large part that’s due to failed U.S. policies, so the irony is that if Trump ends up delivering on his promises, his base of support will shrink.

Donald Trump isn’t for the smart voter or the informed voter or the well-off voter. N’er-do-wells are his niche, and so far it’s working out for him.

Are you following me, here? I’m going to guess that you’re shaking your head, glassy-eyed and annoyed. You’re a newspaper subscriber, after all — you know your stuff, hot stuff, and you even made it to the end of this article.

But many (most?) people don’t read past the headlines. To them, Trump is the hot stuff — he knows his stuff so they don’t have to.

Even the way he speaks is designed to evoke trust in his simplicity. Recently I read where The Washington Post broke down his speeches, finding that his sentences are very short — just a few words long — and very straightforward. Ready-made for the headline-skimmer and the sound bite-follower.

Welcome to the downside of democracy.

This story was originally published October 3, 2015 at 9:42 AM with the headline "Mande Wilkes: Trump is the poor man’s President."