When Will We Stop Listening to Trump?

It’s getting close to twenty years since the use of the internet dramatically changed the career situation of an elected official. I’m referring to George Allen’s unfortunate (for him) insult of a Muslim volunteer for his Senate re-election opponent who Allen called a ‘macaca’ and the slur was caught on tape.

This was in 2006, and two years later, Obama’s Presidential campaign almost went down the drain when he was caught on tape talking about all those hillbillies in the back woods clinging to their religion and their guns.

Four years later, Mitt Romney’s campaign against Obama probably did go down the drain when he was taped at a Florida fundraiser complaining about all those ‘takers’ in America who were too lazy to be ‘givers’ which is what the country needed in 2012.

What impressed me in a rather bizarre way about Donald Trump when he began his first political campaign was that he not only eschewed any concerns about committing offensive verbal behavior over the internet, but seemed to relish the opportunities to promote ideas and verbal pronouncements that would piss people off.

Not only did Trump upend what had become ‘accepted’ digital behavior (i.e., being as polite and non-combative as possible) but he created a new political brand — MAGA — which was defined by the degree to which everyone was…