I began a reply to centerfielddj…a generalized pain in my ass most times on this site, but I continue to try to answer him because his kneejerk leftiness is a useful tool…on Booman’s recent post Trump and the NFL.
Centerfielddj wrote:
…you remain unwilling to grapple with what a Trump general election campaign would do for general election turnout from non-whites. Since you, me, and multimillions of other white Americans would turn out to vote against Trump, the certainty that Trump would motivate non-whites to also turn out to vote against him and for the Democratic candidate is a rather big obstacle for your prediction here.
White supremacists are openly campaigning for Trump, and Trump has no problem with that. You think that wouldn’t be a problem for his general election prospects. I think you’re dead wrong.
Here is my response.
I actually hope that you are right. But I don’t think so. Here’s why:
Read on.
Here’s why:
Number one: “White supremacists” campaigned for Bush II as well, and he won. He needed a little vote fraud to seal the deal, but both Gore and Kerry cooperated. “For the good of the country,” right? Bullshit. For the good of the PermaGov.
Number two: The eventual Dem candidate is going to have one hell of a time convincing minority voters that he or she will be able to do any better than did Obama as far as racial strife and inequality is concerned, and on the evidence of what we see in places like Chicago (Obama’s fucking power base, run by his right-hand Haldeman.), Philadelphia, Oakland, Baltimore and St. Louis, he has failed miserably in terms of promoting peace among the races.
I have written about the following idea here many times, and I am going to do so again.
This election will hinge on roughly 26% of the electorate. Why? How? Because the dedicated, habitual Republican and Democratic voters are going to turn out and vote Republican and Democratic. Duh. Just as it’s always been.
Who are these voters? They are the roughly 30% of the public that sticks by people like Bush II and Obama in the approval ratings even when it has become abundantly clear that they have fucked up royally. That’s 60% of the historical electorate…the “likely voters” of whom the pollsters are so enamored. If non-likely voters turn up in greater numbers than usual this November, those 30% loyalist numbers will diminish somewhat because they will comprise a smaller percentage of the people who vote. How much will that percentage diminish? No one knows. Let us say they end up comprising somewhere between 20% and 25% each of the voters. I’ll be generous and say 25% each. That leaves roughly 50% of the voters in the classic “undecided” category…a bald-faced lie in most cases because almost everyone leans in one direction or the other. What the DemRats and RatPubs have to do is rerach a little over 1/2 of those voters to get a majority. That’s about 26% of the voting public.
Of the candidates for president in both parties so far, which one is reaching new voters most handily? In my opinion it is Trump by a landslide. Bernie is second, the way Cruz is second in the RatPub polls…second by half. Bernie is reaching about 1/2 the number of new or undecided voters as is Trump. HRC? Fuggedaboudit. She’s falling by the minute. She’s almost the DemRat “Jeb!” Old news repackaged one more time once. Only the truly faithful Dems are paying her any mind, and in my opinion she lacks the rhetorical talent to do any better. No charisma, too much baggage. “She’s old!!!” baggage. “Bill!!!” baggage. “Benghazi!!!” and “Emails!!!” baggage. One more piece of baggage falls off her truck and the jig is up. Could it be “Huma!!!”??? We shall see.
Meanwhile, Trump has played the media so well with his politics of outrage and image that even when they have gotten marching orders from their controllers to stop him at all costs they fall flat on their face. The first debate set the tone. It was perfectly obvious that the Fox people were determined to cut the legs out from underneath Trump. How did that turn out? He took them to Trump school. He insulted the shit out of them and then dared them to match his level of outrage. They couldn’t. That was the end of campaign as far as I am concerned. As soon as Megyn Kelly had to go on extended vacation it was a done deal right there. The rest has just been a formality. No one has put anything of any real weight on him. No sex scandals, no dirty dealings with the mob, no nuthin‘!!! “He’s not nice!!!” just isn’t going to cut it. If John Gotti was the Teflon Don then…so far…Trump is the Teflon Donald.
Watch.
AG
Sump’n new and bad on The Teflon Donald?
I hope.
Let us pray.
Or be preyed upon.
AG
Your remark reminds me of the classic film, “The Magnificent Seven”, specifically the scene where Eli Wallach playing the Mexican bandit chief tells Yul Brynner, “It may even be sacrilege! Consider this: If God did not want them shorn, why did he make them sheep?”
That film was based on Kurosawa’s “Seven Samurai,” one of my favorite films of all time. It is a quintessentially Japanese thought, although both films argue against it.
AG
Yes, I knew it’s origin but it is a Western fable also. I always tell new immigrants that they much watch two films to understand America. “The Magnificent Seven” to understand the myth of America and “West Side Story” to understand the reality of America, specifically race and class in America. I also know it’s a “reimagining” of “Romeo and Juliet”. Shakespeare is timeless. He had his hand on the pulse of humanity.
DUH!!!
The PermaGov is so nonplussed by the outsiders’ move…Trump’s and Bernie’s both…to the forefront that they don’t know what to do.
Confront them and you lose.
Ignore them and you lose worse.
What to do, what to do!!!
Their JEB!/HRC dream ticket is almost out the window now.
UH oh!!!
Time for another created “Emergency!!!”
Watch.
AG
Interesting post. But there’s no evidence to suggest that fully 50% of the electorate is “swing voters” (and/or “occasional” voters in presidential elections).
Your theory may still be right, but more at the margins: say, 10-20% of total voters…at most.
Whatever the numbers, it is without a doubt the “undecided” middle that swings elections…disregarding the fine points of hustling the Electoral College concept and good ol’ American vote fraud, of course. And…my argument holds up no matter what the numbers may be. Trump is getting heretofore apathetic and/or terminally disgusted voters out of the house and into his rallies. Once they are in there, he plays them like a fiddle. Then the videos of that (white, working class/middle class) orchestra are disseminated by the helpless media. The PermaGov media complex does not want to help Trump…in fact it is plainly apparent that it is under orders from its controllers to try to take him down…but even more important to the media than not helping him is getting ratings and thus attracting sponsors, their only profit providers. If they do not cover him some other media outlet will, and there goes the profit. No profit, no network, magazine or newspaper. Witness the ongoing ideological collapse of MSNBC on a broader level for evidence of what I am saying. No consumers, no profit. Were there a real competitor on the left to Trump…and I mean a real one in a media sense, someone who could match his sensationalism…the whole story would be playing out differently. But there is not.
So here we are, on the cusp of a rightward swing that is going to make the Reagan years look moderate.
Why?
Because the media system that was designed to promote a certain kind of two-party centrism by non-personing iikely challengers to that centrism (from Perot right on through Dean and the Pauls, for instance) has been trumped by Trump’s take-no-prisoners approach.
I have been saying here and on other so-called progressive sites for going on 15 years that the first candidate with the courage and ability to stand up and talk plainly about what is going on here…no diplomacy, no pussy-footing, just plain talk like you might hear in a bar or other meeting place of average Americans…would win no matter what his policies might be.
So far Trump is that politician, God help us all.
Watch.
AG
Or as a famous Republican once said, “You can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”
True dat. But you can fool just enough of them to get elected, as we know too well here in The United States of Omertica.
AG
Some of the people all of the time. All of the people some of the time.
Didn’t work for Howard Dean. OTOH, It didn’t work for John the Baptist either. As I recall, he spoke plain truth to authority and lost his head.
Dean wasn’t profane enough.
Shocking enough.
Hostile enough.
Too nice.
Trump doesn’t talk “plain truth” anyway. Not about most issues. He just talks emotional plain truth. The truth about how a great number of people are feeling. That’s all that it is really necessary to do in order to capture some serious amount of supporters in almost any culture.
Enough to win?
Maybe.
Hitler did.
AG
So the United States is drawn into a parallel with the Weimar Republic here. Can’t say I find that cultural and political analysis very accurate.
Stay tuned.
AG
I rather subscribe to Booman’s ideas that there are base elections and there are independent voter elections. With this refinement: The candidates determine which type it will be. When there are Tweedledee/Tweedledum candidates, the indies don’t care and either don’t bother voting or break roughly 50-50, so that base turnout decides the election. But when there is a choice not an echo (yes, that was deliberate), the indies come out full force and decide the election. In 1932, the indies gave the landslide to FDR. In 1964, they gave it to LBJ. IMHO, the real difference in those elections was the average voter’s economic health. In 1964, the economy was steaming ahead, the War was far away, minor, and fought by regulars. The indies did not want to rock the boat. Also there was widespread fear of Nuclear Holocaust and the perception that Goldwater would increase it. Hence the bitter joke of late 1965, “They told me if I voted for Goldwater there would be a war. I voted for Goldwater and sure enough, there was a war!”
By Fall I don’t think the economy will look like 1932, but it might look like late 1929 or 1930. However, I think we will only have the choice of Herbert Hoover and G. W. Bush in a pantsuit. Maybe we should ALL set fire to our communities ala 1968. [That was a serious question not a racial dig]
But what if Tweedledee and Tweedledum are Sanders and Trump? What happens then?
Do the regulars sit it out and the outliers vote?
Or…a third party arises? One that’s centrist? Like this from CNN? (The Centrist News Network)
Wouldn’t that be special!!!???
Yup.
I can see it now.
President Bloomberg.
Making the world safe for civilization the same way he made NYC safe.
Mass gentrification.
AG
Bloomberg, Trump, and Sanders would be a re-play of California 1934. And yes, for that reason it’s very possible. But I’m sure the Clinton’s will find a way to smear Bernie. That’s their ecological niche.