Disruptor

Trump’s primary qualities as an electoral disruptor are very personal to him. They permit him to form two unlikely coalitions, one for and one against.

On the FOR side, alongside the GOP faithful, people adhere to him who would not usually be receptive to the Republican idiom, in fact they might not typically engage at all with mainstream political discourse or even turn up to vote.

On the AGAINST side a range of more or less progressive positions seemingly come together, Left Socialist, Left Elite, the Woke elements to both and much of the Centre too. They are unified by their conviction that Trump is unfit to govern, and probably also one of the worst kind of human beings out there, and the strength of this conviction disguises its true weakness as a form of electoral outreach:  a lack of substance, sometimes ad hominem in the purest form.

When this coalition fails in its opposition to the other, it comes apart very quickly and a lot of finger-pointing ensues.

Brits had seen a less steroid-pumped version of this with Brexit, both during the Referendum and the rise of Boris, but love for Europe was never as intense and unifying as loathing for the Donald.

Indeed elements of the Left Socialist (and somewhat antisemitic) component were always lukewarm about the EU, globalists and cosmopolitans in general, and there may be an element of that too in Trump’s ability to siphon away support from the Democratic Party.

(And in the US of course, there is a more or less explicit underlay of religious dingbattery.)