It is quite a while since anyone said no to Donald Trump. Indeed, it is apparent that he is not coping well with the novel experience dished out this week in Iowa, where three quarters of those voters taking part said no thanks to the golf-obsessed, ego-maniac, trainee politician.
Most of us get said no to quite regularly, at work and in life. I want another new suit, and while I wouldn’t want to suggest for a second that I have to ask my wife’s permission to visit the tailor, there would certainly be what hippies termed “negative vibes” at home if I was caught bringing a new suit into the Martin household this soon after Christmas and with a summer holiday to save for. Most of us live with the expectation that what we want – several new suits, a 1958 Fender Telecaster, several cases of first growth claret and a house in France, for example – will not come our way just because we want it.
That on the whole isn’t Donald Trump’s experience of life, ever since he inherited from his father and became at a young age a mini-mogul, and then a mega-mogul, apparently.
Now he is tasting defeat he finds he doesn’t like it very much at all. He has called for a re-run in Iowa and accused Ted Cruz of beating him unfairly. Of course it is possible, likely even, that Trump is doing this to whip up yet more media attention and keep voters in New Hampshire and beyond interested in his deeply unappealing and struggling campaign. But even so, it’s great to watch. Big bad Donald, with his stupid hair, and dreadful TV shows, and chilling rhetoric about Muslims, lost and he can’t take it. Good.
