Trumped

The first stages of the world’s longest presidential contest may have been dominated by a brash celebrity billionaire with an oversized persona both on Twitter and off it, but the results of the first American primary, the caucuses in the state of Iowa, tell us that Donald Trump was resoundingly trumped. Leading for months in the Republican primary, and topping the last Iowa survey conducted before the caucuses, Trump instead came in second to the senator from Texas, Ted Cruz. (And right behind Trump was the senator from Florida, Marco Rubio.)

Are there lessons to be learned from this surprise outcome, at least for Filipino politicians and voters? We can think of at least three.

In a tight race, the ground game can prove the difference. To use the metaphors that advertising agencies are fond of, Trump’s campaign was waged largely through an air war—that is, conducted through the airwaves, through television appearances and some advertising. While he could easily afford to purchase air time for political advertisements, he chose a nontraditional approach: free airtime.

For the most part, American media organizations were happy to play along. Each new outrage from the reality TV star, each scandalous remark, fed a news cycle where Trump appeared on TV or figured in cable television newscasts or rode the headlines. The many debates where he appeared benefited from his participation—at least in terms of ratings. On debate night after debate night, he was the most-searched candidate on Google. His rants on Twitter were not only amplified by other social media networks but also fed directly into the news cycle. In other words, Trump made strategic use of his popularity.

But he neglected the on-the-ground campaign in Iowa. A revealing New York Times article described his ground game as “amateurish and halting.” The story’s lead paragraph makes the reader wince.  “One volunteer leader enlisted by Donald J. Trump to turn out Iowa voters has yet to knock on a single door or to make a phone call. Another is a ‘9/11 truther’ with a website claiming that the Sept. 11 attacks were a government conspiracy. A third caucus precinct captain, who like the others attended a training session in West Des Moines last month, said the campaign’s goal of having them each enlist 25 supporters was unrealistic.”

The debates turned out to be crucial. The seemingly interminable series of debates, especially on the Republican side, with its two survey-determined tiers of candidates, were often reduced to snarky one-liners (here, Trump was in his element, capable of sidelining an establishment favorite like former Florida governor Jeb Bush with a quick comment about his “low energy”) or to preprogrammed responses and stump speeches (Rubio showed his newcomer’s colors with his often too-earnest recitations).

The Republican debates were exercises in negativity, with the candidates joining a race to describe the American national situation in the worst possible terms. By this measure, Trump was the most negative—issuing sweeping statements about Mexicans and what they allegedly brought across the border to the United States, or proposing a total ban on the entry of Muslims into the country because of the existential threat he said the United States faced.

But it was the one debate where he did not show up that may have cost him the decisive votes in Iowa. The day after his second-place finish, he acknowledged to reporters that skipping the last Republican debate may have been the determining factor in his loss. “That could’ve been with the debate,” he said. He had staged his own event, ostensibly to raise funds for US military veterans, but it was the way he rejected participation in the last debate—essentially, he balked at the composition of the panel of moderators—that may have hurt him.

Issues sell, but constituencies bring out the vote. Trump, despite his privileged start in life and his billions, seemed to tap into the anxiety of any number of Americans overwhelmed by the rapid pace of change. But his general message was—at least in Iowa—overshadowed by the constituency-based campaigning of Cruz, who appealed, for instance, to two blocs of Republican voters, two of the so-called Four Faces of the party: very conservative evangelicals and very conservative seculars. By reaching out to these highly motivated groups, Cruz was able to trump Donald Trump.