Why does the US establishment reject Trump for president?

Donald Trump is a compulsive liar, a shill for big business, an enemy of trade unions, a conspiracist, a racist, a bigot, a sleaze, a sceptic of both reason and science, and a militarist of the highest order.

In many ways, then, he is perfectly fit to be commander-in-chief of the world’s largest and most aggressive imperial republic. Yet the majority of the US establishment judges him beyond the pale. There has been an unprecedented outpouring of derision for the man. That’s quite an achievement for a billionaire ruling class pin-up boy.

Most major newspaper editorials have endorsed his opponent, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. It’s not just liberal outlets such as the New York Times, which hasn’t supported a Republican candidate since Eisenhower in 1956. Even the conservative press has pilloried the New York tycoon. For example, the Cincinnati Enquirer, which by its own admission hasn’t backed a Democrat for president “for almost a century”; the Arizona Republic, which has endorsed only Republicans since its founding in 1890; the Dallas Morning News, which for the first time since 1964 is not backing a Republican nominee; and the San Diego Union-Tribune, which noted, “This paper has not endorsed a Democrat for president in its 148-year history. But we endorse Clinton”.

An August Wall Street Journal editorial suggested that if Trump couldn’t change, he should “turn the nomination over to Mike Pence”, his vice presidential running mate. WSJ board member Dorothy Rabinowitz in September came out for Clinton. So too did the Atlantic monthly editorial board, which in its 159-year history has offered only two previous presidential endorsements.

Along with the Fox News cable TV channel and far right websites such as Breitbart, Trump can boast only four or five supportive print editorials. They include a paper owned by his son-in-law and the National Enquirer, which claims to provide the “hottest celebrity gossip and entertainment news” (apt, I guess).

Scores of current and former Republican office holders have either refused to endorse or have withdrawn their support. The Republican National Committee and House speaker Paul Ryan are running dead, focusing on the so-called down ticket races for the election of senators and representatives.

There are plenty of reasons cited for all this. Trump is “a clear and present danger to our country” (Cincinnati Enquirer), “beneath our national dignity” (Arizona Republic), a potential “misogynist in chief … antithetical to American values” (open letter from retired military generals and flag officers) and “a unique threat to American democracy” (Washington Post).

Elite values

Yet, while establishment figures solemnly swear to their values, the less venerable mores of the political representatives of the US ruling class, Democrat and Republican alike, have been on display for decades. And it’s clear that they have a great deal in common with the Donald they now claim to reject.

Bare-faced lying and an ability to unleash barbarity with detached engagement are obvious qualities: imperialist wars fought under the banner of freedom and democracy, laying waste to millions of lives – wholesale slaughter, systematic torture, rape and pillage, installing and/or backing dictatorships, arms dealing with the most reactionary and retrograde of regimes.

Duplicity and cynicism are two more: election campaign after election campaign fought on cheap slogans of hope, dreams, family and a rising economic tide to lift all boats. Each time the full term result is in, more and more families are found drowning in debt and stagnant or falling wages, with entitlements cut for the poor.

Total lack of respect for individual privacy and liberty is another: mass surveillance of people around the world and especially of US citizens at home. Increased police and security agency powers to stop, detain and search without warrant or cause.

Commitment to racism or at least thoroughly racist institutions and their practices is important: the oppression of Blacks and, increasingly, Latinos under the “new Jim Crow”, involving systematic police violence and mass incarceration (detailed by Barry Sheppard on page 11). There’s also mass deportation of undocumented migrants – more than 2 million of them under the articulate, respectable liberal administration of Barack Obama, according to the State Department. Add to these the harassment of Muslims.

Lip service, but no more, to democracy is a touchstone of every candidate for high office: voter suppression is rife. The American Civil Liberties Union estimates that some 6 million people are disenfranchised due to felony convictions. Disproportionately these are African American, Latino and working class people. On top of these are 2 million removed from voter rolls in purges during the last five years. New state voting restrictions will disenfranchise even more. The National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials estimates that 875,000 Latino voters this year could be affected.

The highest virtue of the politician is one they leave unstated: slavish subservience to the corporate elite, the relatively small band of super wealthy who live off the labour of the majority. Those citizens who do exercise their vote get next to nothing from the process. Many people clearly understand this: fewer than 60 percent of eligible voters bother to turn out for presidential elections. Even fewer bother in mid-term congressional polls. As a 2014 paper by Martin Gilens, professor at Princeton University, and Benjamin Page, Gordon S. Fulcher professor at Northwestern University, concluded:

“In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule … When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organised interests, they generally lose … even when fairly large majorities of Americans favour policy change, they generally do not get it.”

In this election campaign, respect for women has also been thrust to the forefront. The description of Trump as a potential “misogynist in chief” is no doubt true. But Republicans are united in their will to see abortion rights further restricted or prohibited. Democrats time and again have sought “common ground” with conservative bigots and undermined a woman’s freedom to choose. And for all the talk, there is consensus that “respect” not be extended to working women struggling on the minimum wage, immigrant women facing deportation, women in war zones under assault from US bombs. The list of undeserving women is in practice very long.

Much the same but still too different

So the outpouring of establishment revulsion has little to do with disagreements over core moral principles. Trump is the epitome of ruling class values. After all, as he himself boasts, for years he “got along with everybody”, hanging out with the corporate and political elite at his hotels and golf courses, being a guest at their functions, dispensing advice, giving and receiving favours. The Clintons even attended one of his weddings. He continues, and will continue, to be invited to Catholic fundraising dinners and various charity functions for the ultra-connected. That’s why the charge that he is a “unique threat to American democracy” rings hollow.

Why then is he considered “unfit”?

Several things mark out Donald J. Trump. First is his willingness to make public these private common values. The rest of the establishment hide them in their mansions, gated communities and country clubs – they harbour the same elitist disdain, racism, bigotry and lack of respect that Trump wears as a badge of honour. They are simply more aware of the need for the ruling political order to maintain a semblance of legitimacy in the face of at least some of those it purports to represent.

Someone so reviled by the public – he is the most unpopular presidential candidate in US history – may be less likely to get things done than even the most feckless low energy frontperson for the ruling class precisely because he rubs so many people up the wrong way. By contrast, Clinton comes with a proven track record of screwing over US workers and oppressed groups while at least their official leaderships – the trade union leaders, the multi-ethnic NGOs, the Black middle classes and church leaders, the representatives of undocumented migrants – stay with her.

One indication that such cynicism lies behind the repudiation of Trump is that a clear majority of Republican disendorsements have come from those lawmakers running in districts that Obama won against Republican nominee Mitt Romney in 2012 – fairly transparent opportunism to save their own arses by holding on to “moderate” Republican and independent voters. Around 85 percent of Republicans in safe seats have not felt the burden of “conscience” that weighs so heavily on their colleagues.

Another political fault, in the eyes of the ruling class, is that Trump, despite being a notable establishment insider, is perhaps right when he says that he won’t be totally controlled by vested interests. His bluster about ripping up trade deals is probably just that. And he has walked back on some of his most extreme proposals, such as banning Muslims from entering the US and deporting all 11 million undocumented migrants, who, despite being political footballs, are vital to the profits of a large section of US capitalism. His current love affair with Putin too would surely sour if he were elected.

But here is a man who is just slightly too erratic. It’s not that he lies (Clinton is a first rate liar); it’s that he’s a bad liar. It’s not that he changes his position (Clinton is as shifty as they get); it’s that he does so too recklessly. Here is a man who has proven himself too ill disciplined to build a broad coalition against the second most unpopular presidential candidate in history – the surest sign that he may well be an utter fool.

Above all, the ruling class seeks stable administrations. As New York magazine put it, Trump threatens “the stability of American government”. With him comes ill considered unpredictability. That’s the ultimate stain on his character.

Wall Street’s embrace of Clinton is not due to her words about women’s rights contrasting so greatly with Trump’s put-downs. And corporate USA is not in the slightest scared by her talk of making the big end of town pay higher taxes. The establishment backs her because it knows she is effortlessly and calculatingly pliable and because they believe she will be the more effective political leader of US capitalism, allowing the relentless, rapacious trammelling of the working class to continue with greater predictability and less civil strife than under a Trump administration.