It has been a year since Donald Trump announced for the presidency. In that year he has gone from being laughed at for thinking he could actually win to being at least the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party. Amazing.
How did he do it? Certainly not in a conventional way. In fact, he broke many of the "rules" for running for office.
My first experience in politics was in 1958, when a student in college. Since then I have been engaged in politics, though I am retired now. As a candidate in eight elections and an active participant in many other campaigns, there were certain rules that one learned the follow.
The first was "money is the mother's milk of politics." In other words, money, and raising a lot of it, is usually the key to winning. Advertising is costly, and has grown even more so as the years go by. As the population has risen, advertising has become more and more the only way to reach most voters. This is why our elected officials spend so much time fund raising. Money provides them the power.
Though not completely, Trump has ignored this rule for the most part. Self funding, with some money volunteered, has financed his campaign to date. He has done very little advertising, and none in the major media. Instead, he worked the media, freely giving interviews to all comers. He has held rallies, but no ad buys.
Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, has raised nearly $200 million, and has already reserved large ad buys for the general election.
The second rule that one learns early on in politics is "you don't pick a fight with someone that buys ink by the barrel and paper by the ton." Of course, that refers back to an earlier time before the electronic media became so dominant, but the point remains the same. Don't fight the media. They can kill you if they want.
Trump, of course, has ignored that rule as well. Every speech I have heard, he has taken on the media, even though they gave him all of the free publicity. Now that he is the presumptive nominee of the GOP, most of the media has now turned on him, and will demonize him as best they can. I suspect it will make what they did to Sarah Palin look mild in comparison.
Another rule in politics is that "you have to go along to get along." That essentially means that you don't fight the party establishment or its powerful members if you want to be successful.
Trump, of course, has done the opposite. He has turned the party establishment on their collective ears. He has apparently won the nomination having done that.
That has embittered most of them, and they continue to oppose him. That means that although he beat them in the primaries, they can still deny him the election. We will just have to wait and see.
In any event, I believe this at least marks the beginning of the end of the Republican Party as it has been. It can either morph into a broader based party with considerably less influence by its old establishment, or go the way of the Whigs.
What Trump has done is hit a real nerve with a large segment of the population. Bernie Sanders has hit much the same nerve, with just a different constituency. Americans have grown tired of the "business as usual" in Washington.
It remains to be seen if enough of them vote to change it.
