Much has been said and written about the Donald Trump phenomenon, and much more is still to come in the next five months leading up the United States elections in November.
Many felt quite smug, me included, when he first launched his campaign to be the Republican presidential candidate. Can’t last, flash in the pan, give him six months and he’ll disappear, was the common wisdom. Well, here he is, having built a winning campaign on a combination of anti-politician sentiment, anti-establishment sentiment, fear, hatred, and untold dollars worth of free publicity on news networks.
His millions of largely blue collar supporters, feeling left out of the American dream, are having a good laugh at the establishment that rules the political parties and the country. And they may yet have the last laugh.
None of it makes sense, of course. Michael Vlock, a Connecticut investor who has donated some $5 million to Republican candidates since 2014, considers Trump dangerous. “He’s an ignorant, amoral, dishonest and manipulative, misogynistic, philandering, hyper-litigious, isolationist, protectionist blowhard,” he said.
Wow, with friends like that…
But baffling as we may find Donald Trump, we don’t have to look far to see how so-called “outsiders” can succeed in elections. We only have to look as far as Yorkton city hall, where back in the 1980s a young advertising salesman for a local newspaper, with no council experience and on a dare, ran against John Wytrykush, the incumbent mayor who was a member of a well-known Yorkton family and a businessman on Third Ave.
And won.
I remember when Brian Fromm announced he was running. No way, flash in the pan, who does he think he is, was the common wisdom. Until the day after the election. Brian went on to do a good job as mayor, and following that stint won a seat as a councilor and continued to contribute until his untimely death at a too-young age.
To some degree, Chris Wyatt was also an outsider when he ran for mayor — too young, too inexperienced, no business background. He won and went on to do himself — and the city — proud. (An interesting aside: Chris was John Wytrykush’s nephew.)
Don’t get me wrong. I am in no way comparing those former mayors to Trump. There is no other Donald Trump, and that’s a good thing. But we should not downplay his prospects in the upcoming US election. As we have seen here, the electorate does have a mind of its own.
While many may think Trump does not have a snowball’s chance in hell in the presidential election this fall, history has shown that a snowball often becomes an avalanche that is hard to stop. Only time will tell, and I’m not making any bets one way or the other. But I do fear for our southern neighbours, and by extension for us and the world, if the avalanche happens.
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