I don’t have much good to say about the Washington Post, but I think they did something right for a change when they hired Robert Costa. He seems to have good sources on the right side of the aisle and a pretty good sense of the national political situation. Here’s what he and Philip Rucker are saying about the current mindset of the Republican establishment:
Though flummoxed by Trump’s staying power and aghast at the coarse tone he has brought to the race, party elites said they have no plan to take him down. Donors feel powerless. Republican officials have little leverage. Candidates are skittish. Super PAC operatives say attack ads against him could backfire. And everyone agrees that the Trump factor in this chaotic multi-candidate field is so unpredictable that any move carries dangerous risks.
This kind of stuff always amazes me. I mean, are we going to blame Donald Trump (and only Donald Trump) for the coarse tone of Republican political debate? Aren’t the risks to the party elite surrounding a Ted Cruz or Rand Paul or Ben Carson or Mike Huckabee nomination close to or equal to the risks of a Trump nomination?
I suppose that there are different types of things to worry about depending on what interests you are trying to protect, but I don’t see how Trump would do worse in a general election than Bobby Jindal or Rick Santorum. If you are first and foremost hoping to actually win the election, none of the candidates look very strong. The only ones that can probably be trusted not to completely ruin the Republican brand are Jeb, Kasich, Pataki, Gilmore,and Fiorina. I guess some might add Marco Rubio to that mix, but I think they’re not familiar enough with the skeletons that follow Rubio around like an invisible army of the undead.
As for Scott Walker, he strikes me as Fool’s Gold.
So, taking down Trump is only a small part of the problem. You need to take Trump down and at the same time prevent almost any of the other eleventy billion candidates from taking his place. And then you need to figure out how to make Jeb or Kasich more than sitting ducks.
Oh, I forgot to mention Chris Christie.
Imagine that.
Interesting that of the 5 you mentioned, two of them are nonentities to GOP voters (Pataki and Gilmore) and Fiorina, well not as rabid as most, has enough baggage to drag her down.
That leaves Jeb and Kasich. Kasich is doing a good job of eliminating himself (something the Dems should be grateful for)and Jeb, who was probably the best hope for the GOP in terms of not alienating 99% of the Latino vote, has ruined that with his “anchor baby” comments.
So it comes down to the crazies. Walker, who used to be on the otside of that group has jumped into it with both feet. It is interesting to see how he has totally blown his advantage in Iowa, and not just to Trump.
The whole process playing out is fascinating, in a terrifying sort of way.
Their best bet is to run the ghost of Ronald Reagan.
Who was that English King who said,”When I die, carry my bones before you into Scotland, so that i can lead you to one more victory?”.
“…the ghost of Ronald Reagan.”
Isn’t that what Trump is doing? All gussied up in 2015 reality show politics clothing, but still…that’s who he is referencing.
AG
The man says so himself, “And if I’m president, we’re going to have a great country. And then we will really have better than Reagan, better than anybody. We will make America great again. That’s what it’s all about.”
I’m not laughing; though I can’t look away either.
probably Edward III.
Thanks. I thought it was an Edward.
I continue to pull for Kasich to get stronger, and for jeb? to continue to slide in the polls. I’ve got K down as the last remaining non-crazy hope standing between jeb? and the nomination. And I do suspect the current doldrums for jeb? will not last, sadly.
Meanwhile the radical sharks like Walker have to hope the Donald peaks soon then begins to dip, then out of fear of losing, announces Perot-like that he is getting out of the race before the IA caucus is held.
It’s possible, and such a cowardly scenario is entirely foreseeable, as most narcissistic bully types (Lyndon also comes to mind) prefer not to have to actually engage in the fight if it means they might get hit and knocked down — except when they know the vote counting is rigged for them, which may not be in the cards for Donald.
One thing we’re going to learn at the end of all this is whether that 27% number is a ceiling, or a floor.
A floor.
With a trap door.
The only question that remains is…
Who’s gonna get hung?
The entire U.S.A.?
The 50+ year-old PermaGov fix and its two tired old promotions?
Is the big fix finally over?
Maybe.
Watch.
AG
P.S. The (top secret/redacted/not on anybody’s private email server) most recent (even the number and date are top secret, but on plentiful evidence it was passed somewhere in the late’50s/early ’60s) amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Bet on it.
Well, I think they are assuming that Jeb! is the nominee, and that he is salvageable for the general election, in part because they think he’s relatively non-toxic to Latinos and he hides his extremism under a bushel. They may be wrong on the first count and almost certainly on the second, but they think that Donald T. Rump is dirtying up the brand they are trying to market. That’s what I think they are thinking, anyway.
Yea, they think Jeb is salvageable. They seemed to have wanted to run Jeb like W ran for president in 1999. Jeb would roam the counrty and mumble stuff about Hillary and Bill, education, and some tough talk about ISIS/IRAQ/IRAN. Then The Donald came along. The Reagan GOP has no idea what to do. Note The Donald is so confident in his Iowa/New Hampshire positions he is going to Alabama. He is making a move to rally his base not send W to beg for money. Where is Jeb…somewhere trying to mumble what is an “anchor baby”.
Boo, I have a serious question for you. What will the GOP do if the Koch’s take their billion and the GOP mailing list and give it to The Donald?
They may still finagle a way to get Bush the nomination. That’s the plan.
Wouldn’t be surprised to see him (Trump) wave a Confederate flag.
And the Republicans still have the problem that Trump could mount a third-party campaign. (Though I wonder if in that case he could actually win a few states and deny anyone an Electoral College majority. Hello, House of Representatives!)
I am trying to think of a state he could win that would normally go to the Democratic candidate.Possibly Iowa, but that is the only one I can think of.
Any others would be normal GOP states.
So I don’t think it would prevent the Dems from reaching 270.
Sweet Jesus, that would be the end of the Republic.
Which, you know, might actually just be the end of the beginning as far as I can tell at this point.
“Republic?”
It’s over already.
Where you been?
AG
d.o.d. 11-22-63
Precisely.
AG
Spot on. This is not Perot, potentially taking votes from both pockets. This is Trump sucking the strength from the GOP by pocketing some slice of their storm troops. Just winning a percentage point or two could be devastating to a Jeb (or whomever) already trying to push a large stone up a very steep slope.
Or maybe they’re beginning to see that a Goldwater II in 2016 might not be such a bad thing for them in the long term. Particularly considering that none of their lesser lights this time around is ready for prime time. (Rubio is simply not going to transform into the young and dynamic candidate that propelled JFK, Clinton, and Obama to the WH.)
Trump is opening up some space for the party on several issues. And wouldn’t discount the potential resonance of birthright citizenship and H-1B visas beyond the GOP base.
If you’re talking about the eventual, inevitable political realignment where the Republican party becomes sane again, sure. But I see no signs the establishment has any interest in such a war (which will inevitably sink the party for a time). They’re still trying to funnel the crazy into the Bush machine, like they did with McCain and Romney. They’ve long been dancing on a very sharp sword so here’s hoping they finally slip and castrate themselves.
Not sane. They just have to reconfigure into a form of insanity that will sell to a wider audience.
The whole “family values” schtick has gotten stale b/c too many of those preaching that crap have been exposed by liars and hypocrites and too large a portion of the public has moved on. So far, the anti-birth control, anti-gay, and pro-more-war guys aren’t doing well in the polls. Trump offers them an easier scapegoat for their free floating anxiety and anger.
It’s a small subset of the overall population that feeds on rage but a large subset of the Republican base. That’s the core of their problem. Trump and his brand are of no interest to the vast majority of Americans. Let’s not lose sight of this.
Saw Scott Walker in New Hampshire – pretty good crowd. He seemed plausible enough. He tends to ramble a bit in response to questions, but in general he was fine. Veiled references to Trump, but no attack on him.
His focus was on the “establishment”. Talk of anger against it, etc. No mention of immigration. Almost all of the talk was on economics and his health care plan.
Like many NH events it was half populated by people from various groups (AARP eg). The number of actual NH voters could not have been more than 100.
He has won twice in Wisconsin, and honestly I could see why. But I am not sure he thinks things all the way through, and he might turn into a gaffe machine. He talked, for example, of blowing the Iran deal up on Day 1. This, is, of course, absurd since two of our stronger allies have signed the deal. He said something similar about ISIS a week ago. It’s not stuff that will cause him a problem now, but in the heat of a general election campaign it would be a major mistake.
If the economy weakens he could absolutely win.
I’m not sure why he isn’t doing better; seems like he is as economically conservative as one could hope for; and he beat a recall election after some draconian policies. If I were mostly concerned with conservative policy, Walker would be at the top of my list.
Is he god-besotted? I have a friend that says he is, but I ahven’t heard it.
I think he is still a top tier candidate. He was leading Iowa before Trump’s surge.
Between Walker, Carson, Huckabee and Cruz there is 42% of the vote in Iowa. In the past there has been a tendency in Iowa for a candidate of the right to consolidate a good deal of the hard core right wing vote late in the Caucus process. There is enough potential vote there to beat Trump even if he doesn’t collapse, and my guess he fades well before Caucus time.
The question is how far right Walker gets pulled to prevent Huckabee, Cruz and the other candidates on the right from emerging a la Santorum.
Walker?
Not doing better?
Ain’t about “policies,” Median. It’s about image.
He weak-looking.
Too often…on TV especially…he looks like an egg-sucking dog.
Sorry, but there it is.
This is a reality show, not a series of issue-oriented debates. Been that way at least since the JFK/Nixon thing, where Nixon lost because he looked…shady…and JFK looked like a movie hero.
AG
Sometimes you can judge a book by its cover. In that sense, television provided a valuable public service back in 1960, for anyone paying attention (i.e, apart from the 500 or so listening on radio). Hell, even his own VP pick, Cabot Lodge, thought the shifty-eyed crook came off as a shifty-eyed crook.
As for the other crook, that photo is anomalously flattering, masking the usual dead-eyed shark look. If you want an amoral or immoral shark who’ll viciously attack anything in his path, Bruce Walker’s your guy.
Like dat.
AG
Trump may be a threat because he is uncontrollable.
How many of the candidates up there have begged, bowed, and scraped before corporate masters and wealthy power brokers? How many have hired Washington insiders to run their campaign? The other candidates are traditional candidates. The elite know they can be controlled.
Trump is coming from a different perspective: reality TV. He doesn’t need intermediaries to give him money so he can buy air time for commercials: he makes airtime exactly by saying what ‘everyone’ is thinking and screw the elite.
What’s more: his coarseness in the face of a culture that is afraid to say the word “blowjob” while it pursues a decades-long presidential investigation is a big part of his appeal. Anyone who attacks him for being rude or coarse comes off as a pansy and part of the ineffectual effete elite.
I’m sort of excited, sort of terrified, a bit fascinated by Trump’s popularity. It reminds me a little bit of what Berlosconi was able to do in Italy — parlay wealth and media ownership into a multi-term rule and tag-teaming underage prostitutes with Mohammar Qadaffi. It’s scary because he’s empowering such an ugly part of the American psyche, and that after decades of waiting for a populist hero to rescue us, it is that sociopathic clown that is riding the white horse.
The GOP Establishment has been a little slow to react to Trump, probably assuming (as I once did) he was just another summer fling whose 15 minutes atop the polls would soon expire. But we’ll see more attempts from them to put him in his place for, as you rightly note, he’s dangerously not controllable.
As for Berlusconi – Trump, interesting comparison. Silvio though had a much shorter, easier election cycle to deal with and he controlled the MSM over there. Trump clearly doesn’t control GOP-TV Fox, and has to keep his iron hot for a lot longer, which is why I suspect he won’t ultimately be the nominee for the GOP. Maybe for the Trump Independent Party however.
Could be that he’s peaked, and peaked too soon. We’ll see …
Those opinions from the Republican establishment sound a bit like “don’t throw me into that brier patch, Br’er Fox”. They like the message that turns out the base. They like the fact that the passionate base could deliver electoral votes. Would be nice to know who these GOP folks are that are so worried about Trump (I mean besides Poppy, Barb, and W).
They created the information drug; they didn’t stop politicians from getting high on their own supply. I think those are crocodile tears for the few old-style Republicans left. All Trump did was weaponize Goehmert and Bachmann and sell it like a pro.
It’s enough to send David Brooks into permanent retirement as a moral philosopher.
Always a silver lining somewhere!!!
AG
Trump isn’t going away unless he chooses to. He is what the Joe the Plumber types in this country adore: outspoken, outrageous, unafraid, and tough. They like a guy who hasn’t been in politics, who has made millions for himself (never mind the bankruptcies) and who will say whatever he thinks at any given moment.
The people who love Trump are the ones who hate government. They want no taxes, no regulations, no health care and no immigration. They want a bully like Trump to say all the racist things they’re thinking and they believe that if he’s elected, he’ll represent them.
But he can’t. The stuff he wants to do is impossible. No giant wall, no across-the-board deportations, no widescale attack on ISIS. He’s a blowhard and a bigot, but he’s not going to be President.
Reagan was a blowhard and a bigot, too…plus he was pretty much pre-dementia when he won his 2nd term. Trump is a stronger candidate than was Reagan. Ever. All of these “He’s not going to be president” prognostications are simply wishful thinking. He’s already made both frontrunners…Bush III and HRC…look like leftovers from another era. Who do you think is going to stop him, Grandpa Bernie? I think not. This is reality TV that we are dealing with here…nothing more and nothing less… and in reality TV, image is everything. Trump understands this on a seemingly cellular level. He is a real threat to go all the way.
If he goes to Alabama tonight and meets expectations of filling a football stadium with well-wishers (TRUMP TO HOLD RALLY IN JEFF SESSIONS HOMETOWN AT FOOTBALL STADIUM, 30K TO 40K `EXPECTED’)…even if it only appears to be tens of thousands (The magic of reality TV can make an island inhabited by hundreds of upper middle class TV workers appear “wild,” you know.) i think he will rocket to the top of all polls and become an almost unstoppable force.
Watch.
I’m gonna.
(Know thine enemy.)
AG
Well, “even the formerly liberal” Msnbc is saying Donald got 42,000 RSVPs for a stadium holding 43,000. If true, then his advance team won’t have much work to do covering up with black tarp the thousand or so seats unfilled.
And will there be a Team Trump marching band on the field? We are talking football country down there. Perhaps a large group of Trump Troops to march in formation, maybe a candlelight procession. Large “TRUMP” banners hanging from the top of the stadium. Official Trump camera people everywhere to capture the moment for later assembly and release in the theaters as a documentary.
Seventy-six trombones?
2016, more’n likely.
Or at least he’ll claim that number.
AG
Le Triomphe de Trompe
Sadly Trump may be more genius cinematographer away from that grand parade: led by an Honor Guard of Oathkeepers, followed by 2016 Trombones and then a Drill team called the 76er’s of ’76, seventy-six seniors on red-white-n-blue Rascals performing precision maneuvers. Throw in the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders and you’ll have a show. In fact The Show. With Branding.
But you have to admit it will be Classy. And Yuuuge.
I don’t believe anyone on the Right will take Trump down. They’re afraid of him. I suspect he’ll get to a certain level and say or do something that will either blow him out of the race or drive him to a third party run.
He can bully the Republican competition because they’re appealing to the same side. His antics and beliefs won’t fly with Democrats or minorities or women. If he manages to get to the finals, the Democrats will eat him up in debates. His bluster won’t carry him far once he’s on his own.
What Democrats?
I got news fer ya, donnah. I think HRC is as good as through. One or two tepid primary showings and she’s outta here. Watch. She may even be taking a dive. I don’t think she has the stomach for this fight. She didn’t really have it last time, and she is much more tired now. Also…that email thing is not going away .Watch. If she does make it through to the election, Trump would eat her up in terms of debate reactions. She’d be left with some portion of the female vote, the long-term, long-suffering DemRat reliables, and (increasingly less) minority voters. Working and many middle class whites? A tidal wave towards the Donald. Watch.
Unca Bernie? Please. Trump would chop him up like kindling. It’s an attitude thing. When Bernie folded to the @blacklivesmatter folks…and he did fold, he folded and ran…it showed his real attitude towards confrontation. Outrage followed by a hasty retreat. “He can run but he can’t hide” said Joe Louis about one of his tomato-can opponents. Bernie onstage w/Trump? Knockout.
Joe Biden? He’d make some good points and he’s funny, but he’d be carrying the full weight of the last 8 years of failure. He’s probably the best bet for the Dems against Trump right now, though. At least he’d get in there and rumble.
McWhatisname? O’Malley? He’s a media cipher to most Americans. Bet on it. Too late to build a brand now.
Anybody else?
No.
So it goes.
The RatPub controllers realize this, apparently. “Win at any cost” is their motto. They’ll try to negotiate w/Trump, but he’s a tough cookie at the negotiating table. That’s how he makes his living and that is how he’s built his fortune. They’ll fold, because if they don’t they’ll lose and there is a lot of legal graft at stake. Billions. Maybe trillions. Bet on that as well.
Sorry…but there it is so far.
Does he get tripped up?
Pictures of him in bed with a sheep might do it, but other than that? Hell, he’s already confessed publicly that he buys politicians. How much lower can he go? He’s still peaking in the polls, so I guess the whole legal graft thing doesn’t bother many people enough to dent his numbers. What else could happen? He could threaten the guys with guns badly enough that they stage some kind of fake “scandal”…emails proving he’s working for the Chinese or Russians, something like that. Or…awwww…YOU know what they can do if truly provoked.
Watch.
AG
If he manages to get to the finals, the Democrats will eat him up in debates.
I wish that were true. But what evidence is there of that?
Too often debates end up being about memorable one liners. Trump says those in every conversation without even trying. Facts are whatever the press decides afterwards to emphasize, as Gore and Kerry found out to their dismay.
The very few people who are actually swayed by the debates like strong, forceful leaders who say popular things and give the impressing they’ll “get things done”. As Vonnegut would have said, they basically are sitting ducks for the Psychopathic Personalities ™ that dominate politics. It doesn’t matter if the person is later proven wrong about everything he said, he’s still a REAL LEADER ™ – think Donald Rumsfeld.
If Trump wins the nomination the only thing that might keep him from winning the general is demographics. But hundreds of thousands of HIspanic males voted against their interests – twice – for Arnold Gropenegger because he was so appealing as a tough guy.
Some of you old timers will remember that Ronald Reagan was the butt of jokes for over a decade as a presidential candidate, even after he was Governor. Quite literally. Both Laugh-In and Tom Lehrer.
OH yes!!!
Right on the money.
Thank you!!!
AG
But it is not like Laugh-In OR Tom Lehrer were huge among the middle age white electorate.
The Silent Majority of White Christian Males and their Subservient Wives was never QUITE the reality that Nixon and Reagan made it out to be. But it was an awful more real in the 70s than it is today and not everyone was laughing at those jokes.
I thought they were funny and as a young just post Summer of Love teen maybe thought there was something to this notion that we were entering the Age of Aquarius and that we weren’t turning back. But the 38 years since 1976 proved to me that the whole notion of ‘Progress’ is close to fallacious and certainly not self-motivating. Nothing was going to happen without constant effort and frankly my half-generation of Trailing Boomers dropped the ball.
The half generation from 1960-1974 produced almost unimaginable tragedy and triumph for progressives. Then I graduated from H.S. and most everything went to shit.
(But we did give you Disco and Platform Shoes and Glam so we got THAT going for us.)
Thanks Bruce!
Arthur, this is where you let your cynicism get the better of you. Trump may trump the Republican field but Hillary will destroy him. The polling makes clear he’s got no shot at winning the election.
“The polls?”
Many of “the polls” fairly recently said that Romney was going to win. Right up until he lost.
Polls?
All of “the polls” still say Trump is still headed up, up and away. No one is saying that he’s losing ground. No one.
AG
P.S. “Cynicism?”
Because I no longer believe in the American
Fix? Errr, ahhh…I mean the American Dream?Look around.
And stop dreaming.
Sounds to me like you are in #3 territory. So are all the other leftiness knee-jerkers who think that Trump is going away soon and HRC will prevail.
Dream on.
Dream on and you “will succumb in every battle.”
Bet on it.
Clearly, we’re not going to convince each other. So let’s mark this as a check point and examine the data going forward. If Trump gets the nomination (which is still probably a long shot but let’s assume it happens), we can compare notes on how well he holds up in the general. If it turns out I’m right and he collapses, Goldwater style, I’ll remind you of this conversation. Not to be right about it but to help you see the inaccuracy of your assumptions. If he blows Hilary out of the water, I will admit that you were more prescient and grounded than I.
He’s not Goldwater. More like RFK in terms of communicating w/his constituency. It’s a different constituency, but the same passion appears to apply.
We shall see.
Won’t we.
Later…
AG
P.S. I think that Hillary is already “blown out of the water.” It wasn’t Trump that did it, it was her own Clintonesque/entitlement hubris combined with advancing age.
That’s what I am seeing, anyway.
This is where I think she really wants to be.
And who can blame her?
Not me.
Not by a long shot.
Trump as RFK? You certainly have a unique view of things, Arthur. I like having you around, man. It’s good to have folks who think outside the box. Keeps the rest of us from getting too sure of ourselves.
Not “as” RFK, exactly. Just connecting with a certain large group of people in an entirely emotional manner. You might say that RFK connected with the dispossessed and those who were impatient with the way things were going at the time. Well…rightly or wrongly, Trump’s constituency also feels “dispossessed.” Dispossessed of their American dream, of their white entitlement. They are madder than hell about it and Trump is voicing that anger with every word.
It all depends on how you define “America” and “great.”
Doesn’t it.
Later…
AG
Not exactly RFK indeed. He attracted poor whites, it’s true, but with an entirely, far more positive appeal, and of course a far more broad-based appeal crossing color lines.
Trump speaks to his almost exclusively white audience in terms of their primal fears, often of non-white and foreigners. In that sense, Donald is far closer to another candidate that year, one George Corley Wallace.
The candidate, who isn’t currently, who fits the RFK role much better is Eliz Warren. Many in the party wanted her to run, but she declined, as RFK did for months. Then the campaign got underway and McCarthy (Bernie Sanders) did surprisingly well in NH. Then RFK got in.
Not entirely out of the question that Warren could make a late entry, if Hillary (a hybrid Johnson-Humphrey establishment figure) falters in the next 6 mos over the ridiculous emails controversy and enough Dems by then get nervous about her chances as well as those of the perceived unelectable Sanders. Also in this possible but unlikely scenario, Biden (a clear HHH type) would likely toss his hat in the ring.
Yes to all, Brodie. Right on point..
Warren/Trump!!!
I would pay to see that. She’d get the intelligent vote, most of the youth vote, lots and lots of women, lots and lots of minorities, all but the most hidebound, centrist Dems, and middle class/working class people who resonated with her principled stand against Wall Street and the whole legal graft thing in general. He’d get…he’d get what he’s getting now, the frightened middle and lower-middle class/working class white vote and the kneejerk Republicans. (If that’s not saying the same thing twice.)
She’d win if the PermaGov didn’t step in somehow. Rigged votes or worse.
I will disagree about one thing. Biden is certainly a card-carrying centrist Dem, but he is not a Humphrey “type.” Humphrey was a soulless, weak little man w/no apparent sense of humor or willingness to mix it up at all. Biden’s a fighter. By nature.
Later…
AG
Well, EW hasn’t yet issued the Sherman-like refusal to run, sort of keeping it at a firm “I am not running.” Bobby-like, iow. And she still hasn’t made an endorsement. Do I understand correctly that she has until sometime in October to make an announcement, given filing deadlines?
Agree on use of “type”. Let’s call Biden a Humphrey “figure” in the above 1968 comparison. Sitting VP more representative of the current incumbent than the others, longtime pol, prone to talkativeness and gaffes. But less of a doctrinaire liberal than the Hube.
Also agree on fighting spirit, although Hubert showed some spirit in the 1960 primaries against JFK, whereas bully macho man Lyndon refused to enter until convention time. If I only had the choice of Biden or Hubert to represent me in the ring literally in a fight, Irish Joe would easily be my pick. I think Lyndon took some of Hubert’s manhood early on in 1964-5 and he was never quite his own man thereafter.
Your use of the word “constituency” points to the key problem with your analysis: You’re overestimating the size of Trump’s constituency, and you’re overlooking the larger constituency that will be motivated to vote against Trump if he’s the Republican nominee.
The favorability ratings are one good indication. You can find one recent poll here, and I believe most others will have similar results. He may be doing great in the Republican primary, but generally his net favorability rating is -23, which is abysmal.
It’s true that Hillary Clinton isn’t terribly popular either, at around -8. (She isn’t in this poll, but that’s a rough average of what I’ve seen.) But I strongly suspect that Trump’s unpopularity also reflects the broad unpopularity of his views and attitudes, in a way that does not apply to Clinton.
In other words, there just aren’t enough bigots anymore. If you look at how his numbers break down in the CNN poll, it’s not at all surprising to see that he’s most popular among older white men, and everyone else can’t stand him. And even to say that is kind of a slander on older white men, because plenty of them have no tolerance for bigotry either.
If you want to worry about the Trump phenomenon, you’re on solid ground, but it’s best to worry about the right thing: Not that he’s going to win the election, but that things are going to get ugly.
Maybe a little less true today.
Or maybe not.
We shall see. Won’t we.
AG
I repeat:
His constituency is indeed “constructed around personality, not substance.”
The kneejerk progressives do not want to admit that personality trumps (sorry, I couldn’t resist) issues in national politics, but they do. JFK, Clinton I, Reagan, Obama…all were more or less personality-driven victories, and that was before the further downgrading of the mass American psyche by so-called “reality” shows that are about as real as the chemically-laden snack chips and drugs that sponsor them. And when it’s been two personalities that are both either tepid or unlikeable…say Bush II and either of the tankers who ended up running against him or Nixon vs. Humpty-Hump Humphrey…the one that is less unlikeable and/or stronger wins. Every damned time.
Trump is…charming…in a crude kind of way, much as some WWE villains are “charming,” and he is definitely strong.
Right now, he’s the frontrunner for 2016.
You don’t like it?
Me neither.
Deal wid it.
Once again, from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War.
The lame laughing faces at MSNBC have so far not even begun to know their enemy. The MSM…witness this featured piece in the NY Times…are beginning to get the drift of what’s up.
And here you are, saying things like:
Nice.
Wallow on.
Or…WTFU.
That’s not coffee you’re smelling, it’s the Trump stump speech’s blood, sweat and tears. And it’s a popular scent.
Bet on it.
AG
It’s impressive how you can type so many words without actually saying anything. Well, if you ever come up with a substantive response to my argument I’ll be happy to hear it.
It is equally impressive that you can read so many words…if indeed you do…without understanding much of what they are saying.
My point was…and this holds for the “undecideds” as well as many heretofore DemRat voters, not just “Republicans…that the article clearly states:
I have often written here about the real target of a national election. Given that dedicated Dems and dedicated Rats each tend to comprise about 30% of the electorate…the “28% approval rating” below which no preznit no matter how lame has fallen since I began paying attention to such things during Clinton’s smoking blue dress problems…with a little jiggering due to the truly asinine Electoral College structuring of the vote, the real target is the 40% that’s left. Getting more than half of that 40% means winning the popular vote, so the whole campaign is really about getting 21% of the electorate to vote for your candidate while not alienating many of the 30% that you can count on.
i repeat:
That’s the point, S.S. If he holds on to the RatPub faithful and gets more than 50% of the non-DemRat faithful, why…again, given the vagaries of the Electoral College plus the distinct possibility of vote tampering or worse if he sufficiently pisses off the PermaGov…it’s “Preznit Trump!!! Howdy do!!!” in 2016.
You want that?
I don’t.
Take him seriously.
Short of a massive scandal or worse, he ain’t going away. He is going to have to be beaten.
Bet on it.
By Hillary?
It doesn’t look that way. Not to me it doesn’t.
By whom, then?
Tell me.
I’m all ears.
AG
Sorry, not until you address my main point. You haven’t even acknowledged it, let alone responded.
Until you address my main point, I have no mare to say to you.
As usual.
AG
Oh, by the way, you overlooked a key phrase in your snippet:
These results do not translate to the larger public.
Donald Trump is like an episode of Black Mirror, sprung to life.
Bernie Sanders’s first event in Greenville SC drew 3000 (according to local media). Topics reported to be economic inequality and institutional racism.
Now he’s on to Columbia SC for tonight.
Not a bad showing at an easily configurable convention hall. And not bad at all compared to the population of Seattle or Portland.
good to hear
Yes. I would say greater. To prove this, try an experiment: imagine that you’re an anti-latino racist xenophile, but on every other domestic, foreign policy or social issue you have the same views that you do now. Adopting this mindset, listen to Trump, Cruz, Paul, Carson, Huckabee, Rubio, et al, and ask yourself which one is the least crazy. For me, if you ignore the racism, the birtherism and the egotism (the latter being a plus for GOP voters), Trump sounds more sane than the others. Huckabee, Carson and Cruz are seriously wacked out.
You’ve totally missed the point, Booman. The Republican establishment has been riding a tiger. That’s a dangerous game and they know it, but they’ve long assumed they could manage the risks. Their plan isn’t for any of those doufuses to win the nomination; it’s supposed to be Jeb. (No, not Jeb; Jeb!)
Guys like Cruz and Huck aren’t an issue because they’re not gonna win. None of them are supposed to stand a chance; least of all Donald. But Trump is leading the pack. This was not supposed to happen. Heck, that’s like getting thrown from your tiger and being at actual risk of being eaten alive. It makes no sense! This was not supposed to happen. Surely if Jeb offers him something like a cushy ambassadorship, he should be a good fellow and slink off quietly. Right?
The real problem is they want and need to replace 25 million of their party’s most fanatic voters with a different 25 million people who do not exist.
The establishment better get a lid on Trump, and fast. Non-Hispanic whites are barely 61% of the population right now. 2030, it’ll be 55%.
This would be bad enough, but that 62+% white vote that Romney and the rest of the GOP hung its hat on last election? Yeah, that’s being driven exclusively by the South, which was around 75% the 2012 election. Outside the South the white vote of the GOP tops out at around 58%. And even that number is being driven by the Rockies. In the Northeast, Midwest, and West Coast the GOP’s share of the white vote ranges from 48%-52%. Obama in particular did spectacularly poorly with whites in Appalachia, well below that of Democrats historically. If the Democratic Party keeps running a Clinton (for the identity politics) or a Sanders (for the populist economics) then the GOP’s hold on that region will continue to slip.
And in the Rockies it’s being driven by Utah, Arid-zona, Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming – all as reliably red as the south. Colorado and New Mexico are more like the northeast in that regard.
Montana is not reliably red;
Msnbc reporting Trump crowd in Mobile only half-filled the 40,000+ seat stadium.
Blunder by his events staff. Optics would have been far better to turn away a few people and fill an arena of 10-15k rather than half-fill a football stadium.
Donald, someone needs to get fired for this.
What would a showman do if tickets were going at less than half the expected rate?
Go ahead and claim they’re almost running out to spur those on the fence to try to get one of the few remaining seats. Then when only 15,000 (they’re claiming 30,000), presumably live, bodies show up, claim the ticket ordering system was punked or screwed up or something, something.
Assuming everyone that wanted to attend got a ticket, this could be the first sign of Trump peak.
This has the looks of a last-minute, not well thought out scheduling event. In politics, if you’re going to go big, you need to know you can do it and know how to do it, not just hope to do it.
Notify local media well ahead of time of upcoming major event. Ads in local papers and online days ahead. Notices of free tickets to see The Next President of the United States right here in our home town at local high schools and colleges. Build up the excitement. Twenty ticket holders to be chosen to meet and have pictures taken with the Donald.
Round up best local/regional celebrity or musical artist to introduce him. Country artist probably or local who made it in Hollywood. People might not come out in the summer to hear a pol, but might be persuaded to come if it includes some celebrity action or music.
Part of what makes it look impressive is that it was “last minute” and he still drew a large number of attendees. Sort of a “take that Jeb(?), Walker, etc; let’s see you match that.”
Billmon made a good point that the GOP establishment guy usually does well in the deep south primaries. 2012 was an exception with Santorum winning most of them after Newt dropped out, but that was an anti-Mitt vote and not a pro-Ricky vote. The early primaries in the south is also what ended any hopes of those that had challenged either of the Bushes. Trump has just gotten ahead of Jeb(?) in a Bush family stomping ground.
I understand the upside facts, but the downside that took away some of the impact was his campaign telling the media that they’d gotten 40,000 some responses for tickets, then the visuals of a half-empty stadium.
Or maybe “last minute” is the Donald approach to always avoid losing, because planning ahead means you’re putting more of yourself on the line. With “last minute,” there’s a built-in excuse if things fall short of expectations.
Trump does not speak in dogwhistles. They need a candidate to speak in dogwhistles, so that the MSM can pretend that the GOP does not represent what it represents.
YES!!!
Precisely.
But they can’t shut him up because if they do he’ll tank their run at the presidency…and possibly eventually tank the whole two-party fix system…with a third party campaign.
Talk about “negotiations!!!” He’s get ’em caught between a rock and a hard place before they even sit down at the negotiating table.
He’s nobody’s dummy, that’s for sure.
AG
New Reuters Poll:WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republican Donald Trump is pulling away from the pack in the race for the party’s U.S. presidential nomination, widening his lead over his closest rivals in the past week, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed on Friday.
*
Nearly 32 percent of Republicans surveyed online said they backed Trump, up from 24 percent a week earlier.
Trump 32
¡Jeb! 16
Carson 8
Trump’s people only half-filled a stadium. this is true. But, he got 20k people in Alabama to come see him. …that actually is the story.
20k
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/donald-trump-just-stopped-being-funny-20150821
uh huh
uh huh
Trump’s audacious Southern spectacle is part of his strategy
By Robert Costa and David Weigel August 22 at 12:03 AM
MOBILE, Ala. — It was the most audacious Donald Trump spectacle yet in a summer full of them, as the Republican presidential front-runner, in his Boeing 757, thundered over a football stadium here Friday night and gave a raucous speech to one of the largest crowds of the 2016 campaign.
But Trump’s flashy performance was about more than showmanship. His visit to Alabama was coolly strategic, touching down in the heart of red America and an increasingly important early battleground in the Republican nominating contest.
The Manhattan developer, who strode onstage to “Sweet Home Alabama,” is trying to show that his candidacy has broad and lasting appeal across every region of the country — especially here in the South, where Alabama and seven other states are holding a clustered voting blitz March 1.
The scene Friday night put an exclamation point on an extraordinary run in which the flamboyant mogul has thoroughly disrupted the presidential campaign and kindled a national discussion about not just politics but American culture itself.
“We have politicians that don’t have a clue,” said Trump, wearing a red hat on which was printed “Make America Great Again,” his slogan. “They’re all talk, no action. What’s happening to this country is disgraceful.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-audacious-southern-spectacle-is-part-of-his-strategy/2
015/08/21/31da2a88-4812-11e5-846d-02792f854297_story.html?tid=pm_politics_pop_b
for those of who concerned about Trump and what he’s unleashing:
and when I say this is who the GOP is… I mean it.
Ronald Reagan, born and raised in the Midwest. Was Governor of California.
So, why the phuck did he announce his candidacy in PHILADELPHIA, MISSISSIPPI?
See – dogwhistle.
Black folks knew what was up with him from that one action.
But, the MSM continues to try and cover about why he did that.
Because, of the dogwhistle, they can pretend.
Trump doesn’t talk in dogwhistles.
So, those mealy mouthed muthaphuckas who try and hide behind reasons why they’d vote GOP, are just gonna have to embrace the hate fully, and show who they are. Folks might embrace the hate fully, but isn’t it better to know – no hold barred- who your enemy is and what they represent – than to allow them to pretend that they are something other than they are not?
Plus, the non-pretending is good for our side too….just tell folks LOOK AT THEM. ..and tell me why you don’t have time to vote. Dogwhistles let the lazy on our side off too. How many times do folks post here that they know someone who just doesn’t believe that the GOP believes this, because ‘ that’s crazy’.
Donald Trump eliminates that excuse from our side. And, the rest of the pack, in order to try and keep up with them, can’t do so in Frank Luntz-approved dogwhistles.
way back when announcing the Rose Bowl parade [’66 must be] he refused to announce the float from Watts so someone else had to announce it. kind of like his approach to the AIDS crisis later on – refuse to acknowledge but maintained his hearty jovial manner.
“The float from Watts”??? Like, hey let’s remember and celebrate those lovely riots from just a few months ago?
Interesting recollection. The Raven part rings true.
well, I heard it from a reliable source, let me put it that way; if there’s historic video footage what you’d see is the Watts float onscreen and too long a silence [for broadcasting world]