Trump Marches On

Another Tuesday is upon us, although no one has dared call it super.

In the annals of the March and march of Donald Trump — toward, most likely, coming to the Republican National Convention with at least a majority of the votes cast, if not the 1,237 required to get the nomination, this Tuesday seems to be almost a respite, a breathing spell, relatively speaking. In the world of Trumpland, all things are relative, all statements are absolute.

As we write this, there are unquestionably numerous plots, counterplots, strategies and stratagems being devised to halt the onslaught of Trump nation and the march of the angry white voter. The so-called Republican establishment (hard to say what that means — Romney and who else?) is still mightily displeased about what’s happened, but as yet have not doubted their ability to predict imagined outcomes, in spite of the crash landings of Jeb and Marco.

The wise men in the Senate still shiver at the thought of Ted Cruz, but don’t seem to care too much for John Kasich as an alternative choice, even though he’s jumping up and down, yelling: “Look at me, I’m the only sane (and nice) guy left!” You can’t find any member of that establishment who’s said: “Hey guys, let’s take a look at Johnny, he’s not so bad.”

After the last fat Tuesday, or Super Tuesday, a great settling seems to have happened, as both Trump, and now his most likely opponent Hillary Clinton, won big. Perhaps more important, their major challengers did not.

In the end, with the exception of Kasich winning his home state of Ohio, Trump trumped everywhere: Missouri, Illinois, North Carolina and, most significantly, Florida, where a mauling of Senator Marco Rubio took place. By then, he had become the person that Trump had called Little Marco — diminished and manhandled in his own state. Then, for a second time, after defeat became self-evident, a major and sometime favorite of the GOP establishment dropped out and closed his campaign in the middle of the voting.

Rubio — who admitted he had made a mistake in trying to out-vulgar, out-fight, out-bottom and out-Trump Trump — rose to some semblance of his old self in acknowledging defeat, so that, in the end, nothing in the campaign became Rubio more than the leaving of it.

On the Democratic side, too, expectations had been dashed for Bernie Sanders, whose win the week before in Michigan had been deemed miraculous by the media, which found the win a threat to Clinton and mused about the possibility of more wins, hinting at victories in Illinois and even Ohio. But the Bern was felt nowhere; he lost all five contests. The media agreed: Bernie was all but finished (which may mean some Sanders victories are ahead).

Tuesday, the campaign moves out west, with Utah holding caucuses for both parties and primaries in Arizona. There will be an Idaho Democratic caucus as well.

In the meantime, the rallies held by Trump for his supporters continue and the recent violence is still in evidence. In Chicago, Trump cancelled a rally after Sanders supporters and Trump supporters battled more or less en masse. A demonstrator (Trump calls them disrupters when not calling them thugs and terrorists) was sucker-punched at a North Carolina rally and a demonstrator wrapped in a flag and trailed by another wearing what appeared to be Klan clothing was punched and kicked in Tucson.

At all of these rallies, we get a belligerent (throw ‘em out, I’d like to punch that guy and so on) Trump, defiant, egging on his supporters. In all of those incidents — including a tense attempt by anti-Trump demonstrators to halt traffic to a Trump rally in Phoenix — Trump says he’s opposed to violence, but always blames the other side and makes no attempt to either curb his supporters or himself.

There is a certain weariness that has trailed the campaign of late and the daily news from Trump World lately, as if people were becoming like the characters in the Fios commercials, the settlers. Mostly, there’s a kind of fatigue, coupled with dread, juiced up by violence around the edges. Trump has, if not directly threatened, at least warned that there will be riots if he heads into the Cleveland convention with a big lead, but is denied the nomination.

There is a lot of soul-searching going on out in the campaign world, a lot of analytical stories and features about how we got to this point, comparisons to Hitler’s time, or the failure to address the needs of working-class white people. Blame is being dished out everywhere, as if we were all in a soup line where they were ladling out a thin gruel of guilt: The Republicans created Trump, Obama created Trump, Trump speaks the language of the working class.

Trump speaks in tongues, which translate into short phrases, which become Twitter and Instagram feeds, like wine and fish and loaves of bread for the multitudes.

In the meantime, President Obama is in Cuba and the Republicans remain obdurate about even talking to his nominee to the Supreme Court. Why, they insist to the bitter end, they will not even entertain an email about it.

Some air is coming out of the process, though. Even Bill Maher, the most vulgar talker on television, seems tired of the relentless vulgarization of the political process, reduced to a bit satirizing the “most interesting man in the world.”

Trump, meanwhile, was in Washington — giving a tour of his hotel, attending some sort of hush-hush meeting with unidentified establishment types, attending a AIPAC gathering.

Here’s a question.

What happens if Trump stops being Trump? What if, with his nomination now a visible possibility, he tones down his rhetoric and tells his supporters to stop hitting and kicking people on pain of expulsion. We’ve already seen the nice Trump at one of the last debates, which was, truth be told, boring, and not the kind of thing that the media would cover.

What if the presidential campaign stopped looking like a reality show with the Duck Dynasty as policy advisers?

What if?

Postscript, March 23: *Trump won big in Arizona, Cruz won in Utah and Bernie picked up two in spite of losing to Hillary in Arizona*.