Trump’s Andy Kaufman Show

The notion that the rise of Donald Trump is a sign that the Republican Party is done for has been discussed here. But Josh Marshall takes it a step further. It could be that Trump’s crazy antics are the last act of Post World War II politics in general, and the first act of whatever is next.

This whole drama is becoming a real measure, almost a litmus test for buy-in to the normative political culture, the architecture of our current electoral system. Because what is most striking to me about this game is that there’s really not even the pretense that there is any real dispute about debate rules or bias or fairness or anything like that at the core of this. There’s not even any there there in Trump’s supposed ‘feud’ with Megyn Kelly. It has all the emotive credibility of a professional wrestling rivalry. It really is more or less openly just him saying I’m going to jack you guys up for the fun of it and make a spectacle of this.

Just to make trouble.

Because I can.

For a lot of regular people – or let’s say people who have some buy in to the normative political process – this would be the point where people would say, “Okay, you’re just too far outside the lines. This is BS. I love how he’s kicking ass but this guy does not have the temperament to be president.” And frankly I’m not sure that won’t happen. But it does not seem to be happening yet, even though this is punching through the margins even Trump’s been operating within for the last six months.

We’ve heard lots of talk about an ‘anti-establishment’ mood in the country or this being an anti-establishment election cycle. And at many levels it unquestionably is. But these kinds of antics, really unprecedented in their nature, are less an attack on the ‘establishment’ than a deeper structure of the political system itself. And that bears paying close attention to.