Outbidding Oneself? Trump Competes with Himself?

 The entire idea of ethnic outbidding is that one is pushed by competition to ever more extreme promises.  In 2016, Trump was pushed by Cruz and others to ban Muslims, for instance, to prove that he was a better defender of white "Christians" and all that.  Ethnic outbidding is a well understood dynamic built from studying cases where multiple contenders for an homogeneous party each make extreme claims.

But, Steve, Trump doesn't face any competition from his own party.  That's right, his last significant opponent dropped out, and Nikki never really tried to outflank Trump to his right anyway.  Yet now Trump is promising bloodshed if he loses and has gone from calling all Mexicans rapists in 2016 to saying that refugees aren't human: "“They’re not people, in my opinion.” He later referred to them as “animals.”"  

I have to admit that the conventional poli sci tools can't account for this.  While Gary J (who was at UCSD during my time there) long ago argued that politicians are always running scared, always acting as if there is competition even when they have a safe seat, I think something a bit less rational is going on here. 

Here I go from amateur scholar of American politics to amateur psychologist.  Trump is an insecure narcissist who is always seeking louder and louder applause.  Notice that his most threatening rhetoric comes at his rallies.  Does he need these rallies?  No, as a pseudo-incumbent with followers threatening opponents with violence, Trump could run for Presidency without every leaving the golf course.  Sure, the rallies may be useful for some grifting, but he kept on doing his rallies mid-pandemic and again more rallies sans competition because he gets high off of the adulation.  He could just play his old hits--build a wall, ban Muslims, etc, but he wants the crowds (the mobs) to be loud and enthusiastic, so he finds new applause lines and pushes them when they get the desired reaction.

This is, of course, a guess, but I think a sound one.  The alternative is that he thinks that threatening yet ever more violence and ever more dehumanizing racist rhetoric will either cause more people to vote for him or deter folks from voting for Biden.  As someone who has mostly relied on rational choice assumptions, I simply don't think they work here.  There is a risk of outflanking oneself as greater extremism may turn out the extremists but turn off those who are not so extreme but dislike Biden or want more power for the GOP or want yet another supreme court seat.

There may be some crafty strategist manipulating Trump, but the way his claims tend to escalate when speaking off the cuff suggests otherwise.  It suggests a search for lines that will hit, causing the crowd to react, which then gives Trump the fix he needs.  It is not just all adderall. 

To be fair, he is right about one thing--there will be more violence.  Trump incites violence, so this is both a cause and a prediction.  The blood is and will be on his hands, on Fox's, and on the GOP's.