This Simpsons Clip Illustrates Why Donald Trump Could Win

Trump has so many weaknesses as a politician that he has become immune to all of them.


In this classic episode of The Simpsons, local villain Montgomery Burns goes to the doctor and receives what should be devastating news. “You are the sickest man in the United States,” his doctor informs him. “You have everything,” including pneumonia, juvenile diabetes, and a little bit of hysterical pregnancy, as well as “several diseases that have just been discovered in you.” Mr. Burns replies that “this sounds like bad news.” But it turns out that while any one of his ailments could be fatal on its own, having them all at once is life-saving; there are so many diseases trying to take over Burns’ body that none of them can get through. Burns leaves the doctor’s office gloating that he is “indestructible.”

Medically speaking, this diagnosis doesn’t make much sense. But when it comes to the 2016 election, there’s some truth to it.

In this analogy, Donald Trump is, of course, Mr. Burns. Trump has said and done innumerable things that, individually, would normally derail a presidential candidate. But the sheer volume of Trump’s problematic positions, actions, and statements actually works to inoculate him from all of them.

In a campaign, each side tries to construct a coherent narrative about the other that will resonate with voters. In 2008, Barack Obama convinced voters that John McCain represented a third term of the unpopular President George W. Bush. In 2012, Obama won by successfully painting Mitt Romney as a millionaire who didn’t care about ordinary Americans.

This year, Trump has a simple narrative about Hillary Clinton: She is a crooked establishment politician. Her email scandal and the foreign ties of the Clinton Foundation play into this narrative. So does her extensive experience in government—something she tries to portray as her greatest strength, but that Trump has managed to use against her.

Meanwhile, Clinton has had so much ammunition to lob at Trump that she has ended up firing all over the place. There are just too many Trumps she has tried to take aim at. There’s the man who she claims is temperamentally unfit and unprepared to be president—who mocks the disabled and threatens to beat up protesters. There’s the candidate who espouses racially charged anti-immigrant policies and winks at his white nationalist fans. There’s the Trump who refuses to release his tax returns or divulge his foreign business connections—raising serious questions about whether he would put his business interests ahead of US foreign policy priorities and whether he is beholden to the foreign entities to whom he owes money. There’s the Trump whose response to terrorism would be an unconstitutional police state in the US, the use of torture for terrorist suspects, and even the targeted killing of the families of terrorists abroad. Finally, there is Trump the con artist, who uses his charitable foundation as a personal slush fund and whose business record includes stiffing small businesses he contracted with and tricking struggling Americans into paying for Trump University.

It’s been hard for the Clinton campaign to resist any of the above narratives. The result is that they all get muddied, and no one charge can seem to stick. Instead, Trump has evaded an overriding association with any of these stereotypes, and he’s pulling close in the polls. Like Mr. Burns’ diseases, all of Trump’s objectionable actions have effectively freed him from the consequences of any one of them. Maybe there’s something to the doctor’s theory after all.

WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate