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If people want to understand the source of Donald Trump's troubles, the best place to start is G. William Domhoff's "Who Rules America" that Domhoff himself describes in the following terms:
--"The rich" coalesce into a social upper class that has developed institutions by which the children of its members are socialized into an upper-class worldview, and newly wealthy people are assimilated.
--Members of this upper class control corporations, which have been the primary mechanisms for generating and holding wealth in the United States for upwards of 150 years now.
--There exists a network of nonprofit organizations through which members of the upper class and hired corporate leaders not yet in the upper class shape policy debates in the United States.
--Members of the upper class, with the help of their high-level employees in profit and nonprofit institutions, are able to dominate the federal government in Washington.
Domhoff does not mention this but election campaigns are a balancing act. The TV commercials, the rallies, etc. target the working class voters (I use this term in the broader Marxist sense of those who sell their labor power) but the candidates at the same time are selling their wares to the big bourgeoisie. That is the significance of Hillary Clinton's speeches, especially to Goldman-Sachs who really rules America in the Domhoff sense.
Trump never bothered to do this. Instead he flailed away at the sort of institutions that "dominate the federal government" and antagonized people who run the CIA, the FBI, the State Department et al. Now if he had shown an ability once in office to carry out their policy preferences, there would be no problem. But unlike Clinton or Bush or anybody else that has ever been President, Trump thinks he is running his business. Not only is this an illusion, he *is* running it like his businesses--namely very poorly.
Will they find a way to get rid of him? It is too soon to say. But I can tell you this. They intend to keep him on a tight leash for the foreseeable future.
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