The shock poll from the Des Moines Register that dropped like a bomb Saturday evening showing Trump trailing Ted Cruz by ten points in Iowa jolted a race that seemed frozen more or less since the summer. It also opened fascinating new prospects ahead.
For the first time since he entered the race early last summer, Trump has been seen to be losing in something, a possibility he seems to have never imagined, and for which he has never prepared. Predictably, his response was to call the poll bogus, though lucid observers call it the gold standard, and he has boasted of polls that are much less reliable.
But what if more polls show him slipping, and if he goes on to lose Iowa? He’ll have lost the first test of his actual power, which will fly in the face of all his assertions. What will he say at his first concession address, which is bound to come sometime? That the vote was a fraud? That the voters are stupid? That he too is human? That his superman pitch was a lie?
Bear in mind that this “strength” that Trump boasts of so far has rested on no more than polling, and on what has come out of his mouth. He says that he’s tough, and people believe him, largely because he insults other people and says that he’ll do things — like shutting down the Islamic State — there is no proof at all he can do.
His claims to strength are his words and his numbers, which give an impression of alpha male dominance. But under pressure his response to adversity has been much less than manly thus far. When given bad news (like the polling from Iowa) his instinct is to try to discredit the messenger. While spewing invective in every direction, he cries like a girl at an aspersion (from Fox News, for instance), and demands a retraction to help dry his tears.
Between the bruiser who never takes back what he says and the sissy who cries when brushed with a feather is a crack in the image which future events may make wider. He alternates between unleashing foul-mouthed rants against other people and sounding like a snowflake-like student reporting a microaggression.
A touchy and ultra-thin-skinned strongman and winner is a contradiction in nature, which even his backers may realize some day. “I’m going to win,” he told “Fox News Sunday,” “My whole life has been about winning. … I don’t go down. I go up.” But he is going down, and may go down further, which is the whole problem: By presenting himself as the ultimate winner, he created a frame in which a loss was a sin that could never be pardoned, and for which no excuse could be made.
He has proven immune to attacks waged by others, and assaults from outside have just made him stronger, but he has opened the door to the one possible exit by which his supporters could leave on their own. Among candidates, Trump is unique in that his appeal ignores and transcends ideology, transcends (or ignores) platforms and policy, transcends and ignores all ideas. His supporters, polls show, are drawn by his “attitude,” by which they mean bluster. His party affiliation is “Strong Man” and “Winner.” But if the strong man and winner becomes a loser and whiner, then where do his followers go? They didn’t sign on to be linked to a loser. They might not defect, and they might not denounce him. But they might begin drifting away.
Noemie Emery, a Washington Examiner columnist, is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and author of “Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families.”
