President Donald Trump is often perceived as an ideological paradox — at once populist and plutocratic, pro-working-class and anti-labor, pro-growth and anti-trade, maverick conservative and Old Guard Republican. But for all of what looks like impulsive zig-zagging, there is a consistent throughline: He’s always focused on finding, spotlighting, and exacerbating the country’s most divisive cultural flashpoints.
So far, the strategy is working. Polls show Trump is historically unpopular, but still more popular than his Democratic opponents. Democrats have spent Trump’s first 100 days following the advice of the Clinton clan’s political strategist James Carville, who instructed them to “embark on the most daring political maneuver in the history of our party: roll over and play dead.”
