But let me dissent a little from this apprehension, and offer somewhat more optimistic take. First, I’m not sure it’s true that Trump’s campaign is substance free: Detail free, maybe, but he’s clearly associated himself with a kind of nationalistic politics that bears some resemblance to the Perot phenomenon, and some resemblance to European right-populism. Trumpism as we know it basically combines broad appeals to American greatness and broad critiques of the political elite with immigration restrictionism, a critique of free trade deals, and a defense of entitlement programs. That’s a combination of ideas that conspicuously lacks support within the nation’s elite … but it’s one that has a fair amount of popular and bipartisan appeal.

It’s also a combination of ideas that appeals to precisely the socioeconomic anxieties that a lot of reform-minded conservatives think the Republican Party needs to do more to address. I’ve written before about the idea that what the G.O.P. and the country need is a kind of “anti-Bloombergism” — a centrist or center-right politics that reflects the concerns of middle American voters rather than a centrism or center-left politics focused on the favored causes of the Acela Corridor’s wealthiest machers. Well, in Trumpism you have the makings of a very literal anti-Bloombergism: A billionaire-led worldview that takes the exact opposite position from the Davos/Aspen crowd on everything from immigration to trade to climate change to entitlement reform.