Can Trump give disaffected Americans more than anger and fear?
Photos: Who will speak at the Republican National Convention?
Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin
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Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson
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Florida Gov. Rick Scott
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Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions
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Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst
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Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani
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Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton
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John Tiegen, left, and Mark Geist, survivors of the Benghazi attack
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The Rev. Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty University
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Ultimate Fighting Championship President Dana White
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Professional golfer Natalie Gulbis
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Actor Antonio Sabato Jr.
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Actor Scott Baio.
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Actress Kimberlin Brown, who starred in "The Young and the Restless" and "The Bold and the Beautiful"
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Venture capitalist and hedge fund manager Peter Thiel
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Real-estate developer and businessman Phil Ruffin
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Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka
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Trump's wife, Melania
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Trump's sons Donald Jr., left, and Eric
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Trump's daughter Tiffany
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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell
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Speaker of the House Paul Ryan
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House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy
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Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus
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Former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich
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Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn
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New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who ran against Trump in the primary
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Ben Carson, who ran against Trump in the primary
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Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who ran against Trump in the primary
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Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who ran against Trump in the primary
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Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who ran against Trump in the primary
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Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin
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Photos: Who will speak at the Republican National Convention?
Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson
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Photos: Who will speak at the Republican National Convention?
Florida Gov. Rick Scott
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Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions
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Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst
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Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani
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Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton
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Photos: Who will speak at the Republican National Convention?
John Tiegen, left, and Mark Geist, survivors of the Benghazi attack
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Photos: Who will speak at the Republican National Convention?
The Rev. Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty University
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Ultimate Fighting Championship President Dana White
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Photos: Who will speak at the Republican National Convention?
Professional golfer Natalie Gulbis
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Actor Antonio Sabato Jr.
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Actor Scott Baio.
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Photos: Who will speak at the Republican National Convention?
Actress Kimberlin Brown, who starred in "The Young and the Restless" and "The Bold and the Beautiful"
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Photos: Who will speak at the Republican National Convention?
Venture capitalist and hedge fund manager Peter Thiel
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Real-estate developer and businessman Phil Ruffin
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Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka
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Trump's wife, Melania
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Trump's sons Donald Jr., left, and Eric
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Trump's daughter Tiffany
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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell
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Speaker of the House Paul Ryan
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House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy
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Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus
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Former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich
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Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn
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New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who ran against Trump in the primary
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Ben Carson, who ran against Trump in the primary
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Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who ran against Trump in the primary
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Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who ran against Trump in the primary
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Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who ran against Trump in the primary
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Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin
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Story highlights
- Julian Zelizer: Donald Trump at GOP convention can show what he has to offer to struggling Americans
- The key to his campaign has been appealing to voters frustrated with both parties, he says
Julian Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University and a New America fellow. He is the author of "Jimmy Carter" and "The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society." The opinions expressed in this commentary are his.
(CNN)The
Republican National Convention in Cleveland will be the moment that the
nation will learn whether Donald Trump has anything to promise the
millions of disaffected voters he has appealed to, other than anger and
fear.
The key to Trump's
insurgent campaign against a massive field of Republicans was to appeal
to voters who have become frustrated with both parties. He has blasted
Republicans for entering into unnecessary wars and pursuing free trade
programs that leave millions of Americans without economic security. He
has attacked Democrats as a party that fundamentally does not care about
the economic well-being of white working and middle class voters who
struggle to get by while their party caters to left-wing activists
focused on being "politically correct" rather than economically secure.
Winning
over these votes will be absolutely essential to a general election
victory. Given that the Electoral College favors Democrats, Trump needs
to win more swing states than does Clinton. At the heart of his game
plan is to win states such Pennsylvania and Ohio with the conservative
populism that has defined him.
Trump
has harkened back to the famous acceptance speech delivered by Richard
Nixon at his party convention in 1968. Nixon appealed to the "forgotten
Americans" who were not part of the protests and the turmoil.
"As
we look at America," Nixon said, "we see cities enveloped in smoke and
flame. We hear sirens in the night. We see Americans dying on distant
battlefields abroad. We see Americans hating each other; fighting each
other; killing each other at home. And as we see and hear these things,
millions of Americans cry out in anguish. Did we come all the way for
this?"
Nixon
urged his supporters to listen to "another voice. It is the quiet voice
in the tumult and the shouting. It is the voice of the great majority
of Americans, the forgotten Americans -- the non-shouters, the
non-demonstrators ... they give steel to the backbone of America."
Like
Nixon in 1968, Trump has not offered much in terms of what he will
actually do to help the forgotten American. He has offered some vague
promises about being tougher in dealing with trade, though economists,
including those who understand the problems with the free trade
agreements, concur that most of his threats against countries such as
China would probably only make the situation even more dire for working
Americans.
Many of the specifics
have pivoted away from economic policy and turned instead to the
politics of fear, another Nixonian move. Trump's campaign started with
the promise to erect a massive wall on the Mexican border that would
theoretically prevent any more immigrants from entering into the
country. This, he says, will save jobs and keep the streets safe. He has
called for a ban on Muslims from entering the country (later narrowing
down which Muslims he was speaking of). This, he says, will bring back
the kind of security that would allow the nation to function effectively
once again.
And
in the wake of the killing of five officers in Dallas, Trump has
brought back with a vengeance Nixon's "law and order" promises. While
Democrats and many fellow Republicans are concerned about criminal
justice reform, his tone, calling himself the "law and order candidate,"
suggests he would expand and strengthen the existing system rather than
making any reforms.
The problem
with all of this is that it would do nothing to alleviate the economic
challenges that middle class Americans have faced. American workers
confront some pretty basic issues: Many secure, well-paying jobs have
gone overseas; education and job training have become more expensive and
out of reach for many families; the social safety net that prevented
the worst-case scenario from happening is no longer as robust; the
nation's infrastructure is in need of repair; social mobility is increasingly out of reach.
The
reason that Trump has succeeded against the GOP establishment is that
when Nixon invited disaffected Democrats into his party, the Republicans
didn't actually solve this basic dilemma either. Over the coming
decades Republicans pursued regressive economic policies that often hit
working Americans the hardest. The GOP kept those voters in their
coalition, as commentators have shown, by talking about cultural and
racial issues that papered over the fundamental tension in their
coalition. As the conservatives Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam noted,
"the Republican Party increasingly depended on mostly white
working-class support, even as its policy agenda was increasingly
unresponsive to working-class voters' problems and concerns."
In a recent piece,
two New York Times reporters spent some time at a bar in Wilkes-Barre,
Pennsylvania, Dukey's, to understand better the basis of Trump's
support. They found workers who were frustrated and anxious about the
economic future of their families. Trump's rhetoric resonated with them,
as he seemed to be the only candidate listening to their frustration.
But the reporters also discovered that immigration and trade actually
had nothing to do with the vanishing jobs that were the source of their
concern.
Trump's personal history
likewise raises many questions about what he would do once in power.
Reporters have uncovered a long trail of unhappy workers -- plumbers,
bartenders, waiters, real estate brokers -- and small business owners
who reported that Trump hadn't paid them. He has been involved in many lawsuits from people who claim
he has stiffed them. (Trump told USA Today that his organization would
not pay in full in cases where workers or companies "do a job that's not
good, or a job that they didn't finish, or a job that was way late.")
His selection of Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, a practitioner of trickle-down economics and acolyte of the Koch Brothers, should not give American workers much
more hope that help is on the way. Pence signed legislation repealing a
law that established a prevailing wage for the state's construction
projects while defending his predecessor's success at making Indiana a
right-to-work state. Pence, who has not been a friend of unions,
supported the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Now
that Trump has grabbed hold of the GOP, the nation will tune in to see
what he has to say about what he will do for them. Voters should listen
carefully. Above all else, Trump is a salesman, and his record shows
that many of the goods he has peddled have not turned out to be so
satisfactory for his customers.
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