One of the less appealing characteristics of the blogosphere is its ephemeral nature. Posted today, out of mind tomorrow. Had Abraham Lincoln blogged the Gettysberg Address, his famous disclaimer, "The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here," might have been literally true.
There is nothing to be gained from fighting the zeitgeist, but I am going to make a prediction about Donald Trump and the 2016 Presidential campaign, and I invite you to recall it in twelve months' time in order to judge whether I am correct.
Here it is: If Donald Trump is nominated by the Republican Party next July [no longer an Alternative World impossibility], I predict that he will move sharply and unapologetically to the center of the political spectrum, rediscovering his Pro-Choice inner self, embracing the undocumented eleven million, calling for higher taxes on financial types, and leaving Hillary Clinton no room to move to her right.
Why do I make this apparently implausible prediction? Because Trump is a deal-maker with absolutely no ideological convictions whatsoever. When he was wheeling and dealing in New York City, which is a Democratic town, he was a Pro-Choice Democrat in favor of universal health care -- whatever it took to get his foot in the door and make his deals. Now that he is running for the Republican nomination, he is the scourge of the undocumented, ready to round them up and throw them out of the country with their citizen children.
My first father-in-law was a bush-league version of this sort of business man -- a chameleon who was a Vice-President of Sears, Roebuck, Chair of the Catholic Boy Scouts of America and a Knight of Malta, and yet could chat with David Riesman at my wedding reception as though he had been a Harvard Square leftie all his life.
Trump is a hollow man without convictions or even prejudices, but he is no fool, and he will immediately discern where the votes lie.
Just wait. You'll see.
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