http://www.wsj.com/articles/high-trump-anxiety-1465339652High Trump Anxiety
Republicans are worried about more than his comments on a judge.June 7, 2016 6:47 p.m. ET
Donald Trump throttled back his racial attacks on a federal judge on Tuesday, and presumably he’ll now follow his normal M.O. of displacing one self-created controversy by creating another. But the episode has renewed Republican doubts about his candidacy, and the presumptive presidential nominee is in more political peril than he thinks.
Mr. Trump said in statement that it is “unfortunate” that his claims about Judge Gonzalo Curiel—an American, Indiana-born—have been “misconstrued as a categorical attack against people of Mexican heritage.” He said he merely meant that he wasn’t getting a fair trial in the civil-fraud case over Trump University, and his statement included a lengthy defense of the now-defunct real-estate seminars.
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Before this welcome turnabout, Mr. Trump tripled down on his comments, suggesting that maybe Muslim and female judges would be prejudiced against him too. As recently as Monday afternoon, Bloomberg reported, Mr. Trump told his cast of cable-TV surrogates to assail Judge Curiel’s integrity as well. He repudiated a campaign memo, which he learned about on the call, telling supporters to downplay Trump U.
“Take that order and throw it the hell out,” Mr. Trump said. “Are there any other stupid letters that were sent to you folks? That’s one of the reasons I want to have this call, because you guys are getting sometimes stupid information from people that aren’t so smart.”
Mr. Trump’s campaign was always going to be a daily adventure, but this particular detour reflects poorly on his political and strategic judgment—deplorable as his comments were on the merits. He provoked the irruption with a diatribe against Judge Curiel during an ad-libbed rally in San Diego. Since Mr. Trump brought it up, the press served a round of stories about life on Trump campus, such as the “playbooks” that told sales personnel to encourage students to max out credit cards to pay the fees.
The polls show the economy is Mr. Trump’s chief advantage over Hillary Clinton, but he was too busy claiming Hispanics can’t be fair judges to showcase Friday’s dispiriting jobs report. He also allowed the State Department investigation of Mrs. Clinton’s private email practices to tumble down the memory hole, and he made little effort to counterpunch her speech on his temperament and foreign policy—aside from tweets about her appearance. Unanswered attacks usually succeed.
Mr. Trump has been the presumptive GOP nominee for five weeks, and he made progress in two or perhaps three of them. His Capitol Hill get-to-know-you tour started to form relationships with elected GOP officials, and he secured endorsements like House Speaker Paul Ryan’s. His energy speech was substantive, and his list of potential Supreme Court nominees showed someone had consulted with the legal right’s smarter thinkers. Mr. Trump gained on Mrs. Clinton in the national polls.
No one ever expected Mr. Trump to change his personality—but they did figure he would adopt the methods necessary to win a modern election. Instead, Mr. Trump continues to deride fundraising, polling, data analytics, voter targeting and staffers like field organizers. He has built no communications team as far as we can tell beyond press secretary Hope Hicks and campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.
Mrs. Clinton has 21 press aides including a communications director, a lead press secretary, a day-to-day spokesman, a travelling press secretary, a rapid-response director, a rapid-response spokesperson and a variety of handlers dedicated to regional and specialized outlets. This is what it takes to drive a coherent national message.
Mr. Trump may believe a similar apparatus is a waste of money, and that he can run his campaign out of his hip pocket like the Trump Organization: shoestring, centralized and ad hoc, with nearly every decision made at the top. He may think, too, that the political professionals are dummies and he’ll keep winning like he did in the primaries.
But the pros know that competing in a general election, and appealing to a voting-age population of some 240 million, is different than winning 40% of the Republican primary vote. It also doesn’t inspire confidence that Mr. Trump’s political and business operations are so fungible: Many Republicans will conclude that he chose the self-interest of his personal brand in a petty Trump U lawsuit over increasing his odds of winning the White House.
Mr. Trump said in his statement that he does “not intend to comment on this matter any further,” and maybe someone staged an intervention, or he finally came to appreciate the panic he is generating among Republicans.
If Mr. Trump doesn’t start to act like a political leader, and his poll numbers collapse between now and the July convention, he may start to hear rumblings that delegates are looking for someone else to nominate. As traumatic as that would be, the Republican desire to avoid a landslide defeat that costs the House and Senate might be stronger.
