'The End' for Trump, a media creation?

Washington

IT may be too early to write the political obituary of Donald Trump. As the cliche of the 2016 presidential race suggests, anything can happen in this crazy election campaign. It's possible that the Donald could "win" this week's third and final debate (thank God for small mercies), revealing his inner Cicero and demonstrating that all this time he was really a great orator and prose stylist.

Or perhaps the real-estate magnate from New York would end up discovering a cure for cancer in the last days of the campaign. Or a new WikiLeaks report would expose Hillary Clinton as a member of Al-Qaeda. But short of divine intervention, it does look that it's mostly over for the Republican presidential nominee.

Mr Trump did better than expected in the second televised debate and may have temporarily stopped the electoral bloodletting that followed the earlier release of the videotape that showed him making lewd remarks about women 11 years ago.

But the response by the media and politicians to the comments in which Mr Trump seemed to be bragging about sexually assaulting women (which he dismissed as "locker-room talk") coupled with new allegations that he had groped and kissed multiple women only made things worse for the embattled Republican presidential nominee.

Abandoned by leading Republican politicians such as Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan, who had previously endorsed him, and denounced in an emotional address by First Lady Michelle Obama ("None of us deserves this kind of abuse"), as both the Mainstream Media (MSM) and the social media continue to cover the sex tape (what comedians have been referring to as Pussygate), Mr Trump has been experiencing a slow and painful death.

Or to put it all in simple election-campaign terms: In order for Mr Trump to achieve what was considered by many to be a Mission Impossible, and win the race to the White House, the Republican candidate would have to win all the states that Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee, had carried that year, and add three more states to the Republican column, accumulating the 270 Electoral College votes required for a victory.

The Trump campaign grand strategy went something like this: Their candidate's nationalist and populist message and his bellicose personality have won the hearts and minds of the large electoral group of white blue-collar workers who are angry at the elites in Washington and on Wall Street. These voters - who include many alienated Democrats and Independents concentrated in the Rust Belt states - would help deliver to Mr Trump Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, as well as Florida and Nevada, and perhaps even the biggest electoral prize of all, Pennsylvania - states that Mr Romney didn't win in 2012. Voila! Republican victory in 2016!

Forget African-American and Latino voters, argued Mr Trump's strategists. If we can get a clear majority of whites to go out to vote for him, including those white blue-collar workers that Mr Romney had lost, we are going to win. It's simple math, stupid!

But there is one problem with this strategy: In order for it to happen, Mr Trump would also have to win most of the other voters who had supported Mr Romney in 2012. Those included, for example, a majority of white educated and suburban women as well as the majority of white professional men with college education.

That all made sense at some level, especially since opinion polls suggested that the Republican nominee was running against a very unpopular Democratic candidate. Yes. It's true that the Donald occasionally employed vulgar language when talking about women, but then earlier polls in the campaign indicated that that would not prevent Republican women from casting their ballots for him. Hostility towards Mrs Clinton seemed to overcome concerns about the Donald's personal conduct and temperament. And, indeed, while Mr Trump has never gained a big lead over his Democratic opponent during any stage of the campaign, some polls suggested that he was closing the electoral gap with her, and had a good chance of carrying some of those Rust Belt states.

But now that he is losing the support of suburban women voters and educated professional men, who aren't willing to vote for a man who talks about women the way Mr Trump did, he may find it close to impossible to win the critical battleground states with only his white blue-collar supporters. It's the math, stupid!

In a way, all the strategising about Mr Trump didn't take into consideration what in retrospect seems obvious: He was first and foremost a creation of the media. He never ran for any public office and, if anything, was a registered Democrat for many years. He had never delivered major addresses on public policy issues or discussed them in his writing. In fact, he was all over the place when it came to debates over domestic and foreign policy issues, ranging from abortion to the Iraq war.

Mr Trump was famous because he was, well, famous. A celebrity whom almost everyone recognised, a reality television show host, an entertainer and marketing specialist, whose main talent was in branding himself and his products (A Billionaire, and a Very Successful, like YUGE, Businessman) and in getting the attention of the media. That explains to a large extent why Mr Trump did so well during the Republican primaries and earlier in the general election. If you are a star, the media treat you as one.

They love your "shtick" (the term entertainers use to describe a comedy routine or a style of entertainment), follow you to every event and highlight your hilarious lines ("Low Energy Jeb"; "Lying Ted") as television viewers laugh out loud. Trump sells. Like how many television viewers would want to watch Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz debating energy policy? Duh.

I lived and worked in New York City for a few years, and recall the Donald with a certain nostalgia. New Yorkers, Republicans and Democrats, rich and poor, adored the guy and his shtick: A fun-loving libertine playboy, surrounded by famous stars and beautiful women, and who was also building a lot of tall buildings in Manhattan. Hey, what was not to like. It's not like he was running for president or something. Right?

Reading the New York tabloids, watching television and listening to talk radio, I also recall the Donald as someone with a big and vulgar mouth. For example, when he joined his pal, the radio show host Howard Stern, to discuss his latest sexual conquest and the size of some woman's breasts. Anyone would have listened to the two conversing or read the latest about Mr Trump's sex life in The New York Post and elsewhere.

During the GOP primaries, when Mr Trump was competing against 16 other candidates, much of the media was covering 24/7 the Donald Story the way he was orchestrating it, as the super-wealthy businessman and political outsider fighting the Republican Establishment and the crooked Washington elites. Yes. We knew that he was an Alpha Male, and a charming ladies' man. But who really cared when he was pledging to Make America Great Again!

But if you are a politician the media helped to create, don't be surprised if the same media eventually end up destroying you. Indeed, now that Mr Trump was facing only one Democratic presidential contender, as opposed to 16 Republicans, the media could use its resources to deconstruct the shtick, which was already getting boring anyway, to create their own Trump Story. Why isn't he releasing his tax returns? Perhaps Mr Trump isn't such a YUGE corporate figure. Is he really the billionaire he claims to be?

Mr Trump may have a point when he raises doubts about the women who are accusing him of sexually abusing them or charges that the MSM may be after him. But then that is the same MSM that not so long ago was promoting him and his message, not to mention that they also didn't hesitate to provide non-stop coverage of Democratic president Bill Clinton's sexual misconduct. Ironically, one of the reasons that the women's accusations against Mr Trump resonate is that there was a time when he went out of his way to brand himself as a naughty playboy. It's difficult to imagine the media playing up similar accusations against, say, the Republican vice-presidential candidate Mike Pence.

The bottom line is that when Mr Trump is losing his ability to construct his media image and control his own brand, what emerges is the same guy that New Yorkers once adored - but not one who is ready for presidential prime time.