Narcissism doesn’t really do justice to Donald Trump’s inflated opinion of himself.
Lauding his fans’ loyalty at a campaign event in Sioux Center, Iowa, on Saturday, Trump said he could kill people and still be popular.
“I have the most loyal people, did you ever see that? I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot people and I wouldn’t lose voters,” he said.
I’d love to have a list of all the people who said that Donald Trump would never be the nominee. I’d like to know how many of them still believe that.
Such a tough guy that he whined until approved for Secret Service protection.
And isn’t tough enough to let all his “loyal fans” exercise their 2nd Amendment “right” in his presence:
For all my disdain for Trump, a first rate carnival barker but otherwise third rate, his loyal fans repulse me more (and the excuse that all the other GOP candidates are worse further demonstrates they narrowness of their minds and lives).
NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, Jan. 9-13, 2016
Trump net favorability percentages:
African-Americans: -72%
Latinos: -47%
Women: -36%
Independents: -26%
Suburban voters: -24%
Cruz is also underwater with all of these groups, but by much lower percentages. The one I find most interesting is that Cruz is -22% with independents. That number is even more negative than his numbers with African-Americans and Latinos.
Trump, today:
A poor general election strategy.
Trump may be a narcissist, but that’s not really a useful way to understand what he’s doing. Anyone who has ever been a successful politician has an outsized ego.
Trump is pretty cleverly exploiting a moment in time by playing a role that can win the Republican nomination. Just like Ahnuld recognized an opening with the Gray Davis recall, Trump has correctly assessed from Palin’s success and OReilly/Limbaugh’s popularity that the Republican base wants a politically incorrect bully who says the things in public that their own peer groups (outside the party) won’t tolerate. And he’s pretty good at identifying marks.
He knows his audience and how to deliver what they want.
That he may be typecast is beside the point.
I think you’re right, but I think it’s just slightly different.
Trump is “playing a role,” to be sure, but I don’t think it’s some kind of con or fraud. He’s shifted his positions around a bit, but the basic concept — that a “smart” guy (who’s proven he’s “smart” by succeeding in business) genuinely knows the answers, because the world is full of obvious, common-sense “answers” that sophisticates and elites (unfairly elevated “losers”) are either concealing from view, strategically ignoring, or are too “stupid” to understand — is, I think, what he actually thinks.
The recent Vanity Fair piece backs this up. It’s not like with Rush Limbaugh (whom apparently one can meet in tony social contexts and have a totally different reaction to); Trump is genuinely like this. It’s not just the narcissism or the ego; it’s a genuine world view, and he shares it completely with his supporters; it’s what they’ve been longing to hear. The suspicion that sophisticated people don’t actually know any better is an extremely powerful sentiment to tap into.
I usually just throw the terms around, but today I’m offerin’ up links.
Trump is a social dominator. His followers are right-wing authoritarians.
http://members.shaw.ca/jeanaltemeyer/drbob/TheAuthoritarians.pdf
More like a social denominator. You know, like the bottom number of a fraction? Also known as a divisor. The one that breaks things up into discrete parts?
Words…they serve as prophets sometimes.
Don’t they.
AG
Profound.
You are channeling your inner Deepak Chopra.
Fuck Deepak Chopra!!! Just another mainstream, New Age hustler who doesn’t know shit. He’s even fooled himself.
Go away, DerFarm. You don’t know shit either, only you’re not making a fortune at it.
AG
Usually, you don’t mind when we all pick on you — it has no effect. I wonder why, in this single case, you took umbrage.
Because it pissed me off. I hate fakers.
AG
This is all very funny.
indeed, very funny, thanks all!!
Indeed.
Deepak Chopra is just shallowly packed Oprah in deep drag.
AG
ROTFL!
Clarification – with you.
Laughing at you, AG, not with you.
Getting your hate on over Deepak Chopra? Man, that’s a large and floating hate looking for targets.
Heepak Chopra?
He’s elevator music compared to the real thing.
Muzak as opposed to Mozart.
A “like” button as opposed to real love.
McDonald’s as opposed to Montmartre.
New Age bullshit as opposed to real spiritual effort.
Lady Gaga as opposed the Gandhi
But then…I guess some people like elevator music.
You?
AG
I could give a shit. Chopra doesn’t move me, at all. But to each their own.
It’s nice how you think you have the right to critique the path to spiritual peace for others. Certainly not surprising from you.
Your post infers that you have identified The One True Path- “the real thing”. You evangelize on other concepts; we’re thankful you avoid evangelizing on spirituality and religion here.
This is “spirituality” of a sort, centerfielddj. You haven’t noticed? And…there is no one true path. All real roads lead to…wherever. Hard to name the infinite. Kinda limiting, if you know what I mean. Or if you don’t, of course.
Some, however lead to nowhere.
Ads for dish soap.
Ads for whatever Oprah’s latest scam is.
Like dat.
Trudge on…
AG
Ewww
Exactly. He knows his audience and he knows exactly how to play them. It’s almost instinctual with the guy. It’s virtually his only talent, but it is a real talent.
When he gets to the general election (as I now expect him to do) he will change and appeal to that audience too. And the media will go right along with it and treat him as a reasonable candidate.
Never think this guy cannot win. I do not think he will win–there’s a long time to go and much can happen–but never think that it isn’t possible.
If somehow he crashes and burns before the nomination I will be ecstatic.
He definitely can win if he comes across as coarse but genuine and his opponent comes across as phony.
Trump a political God to himself and his easily persuaded followers or should I say worshipers. I predict that they all will become violent when in the general election Trump loses.
See my post of a few days ago – Greed Trumps All
Donald J. Trump will sweep the Republican nomination because he uses the Tea Party platform of an anti-establishment candidate. He is narcissistic and by definition unreliable, a bully (authoritarian) and a liar. A characteristis of his personality disorder is being a liar and getting away with it … it’s how he has learned to survive all of his life.
Trump will unite the happy 1% and the populace, the masses of the disinherited …
See also my breaking news diary – Michael Bloomberg Contemplates Independent Run for POTUS.
Well, Trump is a social dominator.
The followers are right-wing authoritarians.
There is a difference, and you can read about it right around page 160 or so.
http://members.shaw.ca/jeanaltemeyer/drbob/TheAuthoritarians.pdf
I didn’t and do not believe he will win the nomination.
Less confident now about that.
But still reasonably confident.
An aside – keep an eye on the Carson vote in IA – if fluctuates – IA polling is terrible – but if he takes 10% he may keep Cruz from winning.
“…and I wouldn’t lose voters,” he said.”
Umm, no votes have actually been cast yet. Let’s see if his loyal supporters become actual voters.
If he is the nominee…
Bet on itTM
WatchTM
Trump is a social dominator.
His loyal followers are right-wing authoritarians.
It’s all in this here book, which contains extremely important information regarding fascism, authoritarians, how it works, and how they think.
It’s also a pleasure to read, and relatively funny given the subject. I’m sure many of you have already read or skimmed or heard of it.
It’s free, and searchable (CTRL-F brings up a search box. Search the text, for, social dominator, for example).
http://members.shaw.ca/jeanaltemeyer/drbob/TheAuthoritarians.pdf
I ran across this several years ago, and it is a very informative reference for the whole authoritarian personality. I ended up buying the paperback after reading the pdf online.
Oddschecker puts trump at about even odds, Rubio at 2 to1 and Cruz at anywhere from 3:1 to 6:1.
Cruz or Trump we can deal with. One is hated by everyone, the other is a loon. I hope it is not Rubio, his callow youth bit will play a little too well against the aging dem candidates.
Sysprog:
(Too busy cooking up bacon with his assault weapon?)
Billmon:
Oscar Morales Vilas:
Copito:
This doesn’t seem a good strategy for the general election.
you are so on a roll this evening, centerfield
Oh, don’t rush things. March 1st will be the first GOP primary in the south. The rights new version of free speech will unleash much hate.
Oh, this crazed stuff is a pretty good strategy for the surly GOP primary voter. It’s not so good for the November electorate
T-Rump is a Narcissistic Psychopath
Look at Trump’s Twitter feed. It’s a nonstop sneering insult machine these days:
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump
Amazing. He has become very difficult to parody. He will have many more months as a candidate for President of the United States to say and write even more offensive things. I bet his male fans would stick with him if he propositioned their wives on stage. They seem the sort of people who would have cuckold fetishes.
Shit, even Paddy Chayevsky couldn’t imagine something quite this outrageous.
Maybe we shouldn’t call him a Fascist but he sure looks and talks like a Nazi.
Initially I wondered how could anybody treat Trump seriously as a candidate for anything. Then I conceded there might be 30% of the GOP membership who might vote for him. Now I think he will probably win theGOP nomination. Many on the left seem to think he will go on to win the Presidency. Every time I reconsider my position my opinion of the USA goes down. At least Germany in the 1930’s had some excuse for electing Hitler (with 33% of the vote) because their economy and country were in ruins. What’s the USA’s excuse?
For blue collar America the economy and country are in ruins.
Or, they believe it is, at least.
Yes. That’s the important point. What they believe will determine how they vote, not objective reality. That’s true for everyone. We think we have minds like computers, but in fact we are just bald apes with a hypertrophied cerebrum and a taste for meat. We think we are rational, but millions of years of evolution color our every action.
Palin endorsing Trump is like cancer endorsing cigarettes.
Not mine, but just about right.
only watched the clips posted on the intertubes, but Trump’s growing look of dismay as the speech rambles on and on is priceless, as they say.
I am very surprised that no one has pointed out two unsettling things about this article in The Hill.
Ok, what he said was reprehensible as usual but how (why) did The Hill get them wrong? Is Ben Kamisar just lazy? This bothers me because it was so easy to check. What else has the media missed?
Why not call Trump a Fascist?
He’s our Mouselini. We’re going through WW II all over again this cycle. Trump vs Sanders is Fascism vs Socialism again and with Bloomberg likely to enter the race if things get as predictably destructive as he suspects, here comes American Capitalism to the rescue of the burning husks of the establishment.
Bloomberg would peel away Democratic voters looking for their own version of a strong man. That was definitely the way he got elected mayor of NYC three times. He has considered a presidential run before… makes me very uneasy .
Bloomberg is hated by the national GOP outside of the New York sphere. He’s been very big on gun control so for the GOP he’s as much of a boogieman as George Soros. They use his name in advertisements all the time in the rest of the country. As in: “Vote against Democrat Joe Bloggs for Mayor of Armpit, Kansas. He’s supported by MICHAEL BLOOMBERG!”
If he did run he’d get Dem votes only, no GOP (outside of a few states in the northeast that are solidly blue).
And thus be a stalking horse for Trump? Intentionally or not. Yes, it does seem to me that Bloomberg is reprising Nader 2000.
Wrong historical reference. If your argument is that Bloomberg hurts Clinton then 1980 would be more correct, but I think that’s wrong. 1992 looks like the better reference point.
Given a choice between Bush-Perot-Clinton in 1992 the fundies stuck with Bush and the “moderate” conservatives in both parties went with Perot. In 1996, those DEM leaning conservatives shifted to Clinton because by then it was clear that Clinton was no liberal; the remainder stuck with Perot.
Partisanship is more rigid today than in 1992; so, Bloomberg could peel off those Republicans/IND conservatives that declined to vote for a McCain/Palin ticket, approximately 3-5%. Emotionally driven “moderate” DEMs/INDs, another 3-5%, would consider Bloomberg. Lefties that can’t bring themselves to vote for Clinton more likely to stay home or vote Green than vote for Bloomberg, but doubt the presence of Bloomberg alters their behavior or the general election outcome for that matter.
I meant to say that independents who can’t stomach either major candidate might vote for Bloomberg rather than take the “lesser evil” of Clinton. Your analogies are better. I was thinking that Nader would hardly want Bush to win, but just wanted to embarrass Gore. But, of course, I don’t really know what he was thinking, if indeed, he knew what he was thinking.
“Man is not a rational animal. Man is a rationalizing animal”. I won’t cite the source because you wouldn’t like it. Nevertheless, I think there is a lot of truth to it. All the studies cited by Barry Ritholz on stock market behavior and ordinary marketing behavior suggest that free market economics based on the rational consumer are based on a false premise.
So far, Bloomberg is only threatening to run. Looking at the GOP leader board, he may see an opportunity for himself. OTOH, there’s not much daylight between him and Clinton. He’d only be a default candidate for “moderates” that can’t stand Trump or one of the other whack jobs and the sexist DEM leaning “moderates.” And perhaps the smattering of those that are offended by the country’s lapse into a dynastic Presidency.
My guess is that Bloomberg’s ploy is to frighten Sander’s supporters into being “sensible” and vote for Clinton in the primaries because in a general election she could beat any of the whack jobs. But if Sanders is the nominee, Bloomberg will take advantage of the split in the DEM party by entering the race as the substitute for Clinton. As the “god, gays, guns” faction is a solid 38% and Bloomberg wouldn’t get any of that, his ceiling is 20%. The 3 million that opted out between 2008 and 2012 would opt in for Sanders and as the young leftish demo has been growing that would negate DEM/PUMA shifts to Bloomberg.
Maybe, I still think he would ensure a Trump victory no matter who is the Dem.
Yeah, 1980 is a better analogy, except I don’t know if Anderson actually made a difference in any state like Nader did in Oregon.
I still think he would ensure a Trump victory no matter who is the Dem.
Your rationale?
Looking at the final results of an election that includes a modestly strong third party candidate doesn’t capture the real time narrative. A few questions that must be posed are:
’68 – Wallace hurt Nixon in the deep south but helped him among the racist “worker” class that more traditionally split in favor of DEMs. Without him the electoral vote would have been closer and could have gone the other way.
’80 – “it’s not fair” Anderson was a GOP scam – presented as a “moderate” GOP alternative to Reagan, but GOP voters were united behind the RR/Bush ticket. The real dissension that year existed in the DEM party as Carter was a conservative DEM. Carter actually got it right that Anderson was in the race to bleed off liberal votes from him, but in refusing to engage in a three-person debate, he made himself look “entitled” and fearful. Not such a difficult task because there wasn’t much difference between the two. IOW, Anderson softened up Carter among the DEM base. He became a vessel for liberal protest against Carter (Eugene McCarthy endorsed him) and the whole “I have to get X% to get federal campaign funding” and it’s not fair if I don’t.” (“Fairness” or the perception of it does move some amount of the public and voters.) Recall this was only the third election in which federal funding played a role and we weren’t all that aware of how it worked.
Finally, the election was called for Reagan hours before the polls closed on the west coast. That most likely depressed the DEM/Carter vote and added to Anderson’s vote. Did it change the outcome? Don’t know. It was the first presidential election when almost all the 76 million Boomers were eligible to vote and there wasn’t much of anything on offer for that generation.
’92 most definitely changed the dynamics. GHWB was always a lackluster lightweight (by luck succeeded far beyond his level of incompetence), but winning a couple of wars (even if they were turkey shoots) always helps an incumbent. He hit both of them where they were weak — economy and jobs, specifically offshoring US industrial jobs on which Bush and Clinton agreed. It softened Bush up more because his economic orientation was better known and there was a recession. Before then, Clinton had been attempting to knit together a coalition of minorities, women, and social liberals with health care which wasn’t more was a term in search of a policy. Bush obsessed over his right flank (fundies and racists) and lost the worker flank that RR had built. Of course the recession may have lost Bush the election anyway, but without Perot it would have been close and the advantage always goes to the incumbent.
So, how would Bloomberg fit into a three-way race?
I see Bloomberg siphoning off independents repulsed by Trump but also leery of Clinton. Otherwise the moderate flank of Republicans has to leap all the way to arch-demon Hillary. Would they be more likely to vote for a Socialist? No, I don’t think so, but they might be inclined to not vote. I don’t see any stay at homes in a Trump/Hillary two way match, except for me,of course. Maybe I think that way because I would vote for Bloomberg in that scenario. However, I see Bloomberg as more palatable than Hillary to social moderate otherwise conservative independents. Remember, we see Hillary as Right Wing, but they see Hillary as Left Wing.
A case certainly can be made for Bloomberg drawing votes away from Trump for social liberal Republicans., who hate Hillary more than Mao Tse-Tung, but absent Bloomberg, I feel they would be more inclined to stay home or as we advised to “hold your nose and vote for Trump”. Republicans are much more united than Democrats on economic issues. They are much more divided than Democrats on social issues. So the Partys are not just mirror images.
But INDs aren’t some homogeneous group. If forced to choose either D or R, absent any other information and no other options allowed, the national split may be 50/50. Regionally or within states, the splits would likely differ. But it’s a fallacy to view INDs as inhabiting a space in between D and R. Some people identify as INDs because they think they makes them look cool, but those that religiously and exclusively vote for one party aren’t INDs. They’re just embarrassed Ds or Rs. My guess, and it’s only a guess, is that there are fewer conservatives that self identify as INDs because the GOP is too liberal then there are liberal self-identified INDs that reject the DEMs as too conservative. My second guess is that of the larger remainder, politics for them is like some sort of cafeteria buffet and they get hopelessly muddled as to which issues and positions would satisfy them most and at the end of the day, go with whatever they did last time. A small portion will be influenced by current and/or personal issues of significance.
What’s interesting is that if general social and economic conditions are sort of kind of okay, they aren’t motivated to vote. Satisfiers are quickly taken for granted and don’t require personal action to hold onto them. It’s true in HR research and explains why younger people have been complacent about birth control for the past forty years and the recent attacks on Planned Parenthood probably only opened a few eyes. (Don’t know that I’ll ever forgive Richards, etal for jumping into the DEM primary when on this issue, Clinton is no better and possibly a bit worse.)
Other than sexism, not seeing anything else that would make Bloomberg a viable alternative for DEMs and left-leaning moderate INDs, and much that makes him worse than Clinton. How many more of those that lean right and couldn’t stomach Palin would prefer Bloomberg to Trump?
he won’t cut into Bernie’s support, though. just have to mention how his billions tripled while he was mayor.
Mussolini
Italian spelling is difficult.
Disney version?
Interesting that Bloomberg talks about messing up the “Trumpeter’s” plans.
Maybe the Koch’s can run too?
This just gets more bizarre by the day…
I hope I am not the only person to note the irony of David Brooks and the National Review begging and pleading with the GOP “donor base”, as they call it, to stage some sort of putsch that would deny Trump the nomination. Stop the neo-fascist by carrying out their own hostile takeover….
I’d love to have a list of all the people who said that Donald Trump would never be the nominee. I’d like to know how many of them still believe that.
I was curious what Booman’s own predictions were so searched back through front-page stories that talked about Trump. In general you deserve a credit for being ahead of the game, but I’d forgotten some of the interesting details of the early days of Trump 2016, and overall the review underscores just how little clue anyone would have about how things transpired.
The June 17 post is illustrative. You said “I have no idea what impact he will have,” which was probably true for all of us. But consider this paragraph:
I don’t think that Donald Trump will be good for the Republicans, but it’s true that he should make the rest of them look sane, tolerant, and polite by comparison. I have to agree that he will satisfy an itch a certain percentage of voters have to just enjoy an unapologetic nihilistic laugh at the whole process. And, yes, there’s a sense in which The Donald is really just a physical manifestation of the modern conservative id.
Well he didn’t make the rest look better by comparison, they adopted his attack style. But the rest is exactly right. But then there is this comment:
At the same time, Trump isn’t really a Republican or a conservative in any concrete way. His opinions are all over the map.
Well, interesting how Trump has morphed to take on conservative opinions and de-emphasize or outright deny the others.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2015/6/17/12317/0888
A couple weeks later, on June 29, the story was that NBC had cut ties to Trump (for The Apprentice) due to his excessive racism. In fact, in June there were a lot of stories of corporations cutting ties with Trump. In retrospect, I agreed with most people that this meant a short campaign for him. I was wrong. The comment I’ll cite from this article is:
Trump will lose, but not because the media treat him as a pariah or because he’s too racist.
Credit Boo for seeing that all those rejections of Trump by the establishment wouldn’t slow his momentum – but even with that insight he thought Trump wouldn’t win.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2015/6/29/201259/188
On July 9th Boo wrote a long post about a long article Dana Milbank wrote about Trump – interesting because Milbank spent a lot of time with Trump 15-16 years ago and was contrasting his stances then and now. It’s definitely worth a read now – both for the insights offered and to see how things have subsequently developed. Again, give Boo credit for seeing Trump as the logical outcome of the modern GOP: “I’ve spent 10 years trying to convince you that this is exactly what the Republican Party has become. But I couldn’t get people to shun the GOP the way they are suddenly shunning Donald Trump and the Confederate Flag.”
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2015/7/9/2045/94687
On July 17th Boo responded to the Huffington Post deciding to move Trump from their Political to their Entertainment sections. Doesn’t that seem so cute and quaint now? Again, Boo got it right regarding how serious the Trump threat was:
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2015/7/17/192916/929
On July 20th Boo was one of the few to see that the McCain comments wouldn’t hurt Trump.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2015/7/20/105614/597
Finally, on July 31st Boo had a post entitled “Of course, Trump Will Never Win”. But the title was sarcastic, same as the title “It Can’t Happen Here”. Near the end of the post Boo asks if he thinks Trump will be the nominee and answers himself: “No, not really. But I don’t preface everything I have to say about him with some assurance that it will never happen. The GOP is truly, finally, totally fucked up. And it’s the biggest national disaster I’ve ever witnessed. The only thing I’m confident about is that this will not end well.” Once again, Boo was ahead of the pack on this one.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2015/7/31/13310/7041
More from the Trump campaign:
http://gawker.com/donald-trump-spokesperson-decried-lack-of-pure-breeds-1754754451
http://gawker.com/unmuzzled-trump-spokesperson-just-cant-stop-calling-peo-1754824435
Not a winning general election strategy. Fun for the Stormfronters who appear to be taking over the GOP POTUS primary process, though.
Don’t Call Him a Fascist?
OK.
New term.
Frascist.
Closer to he truth of the matter, I think.
AG
Pronounced :
AG
Heh the only thing Donald Trump did was drop the Frank Luntz approved dogwhistles and the politeness. He’s tapped into the long held resentment that White folks have had that the coloreds aren’t being put in their place and their wish things would go back the “good old days”. Bernie Sanders is doing a version of this as well. White folks Progressives and Conservatives just want their country back.
This is…unfortunately…a very good take on the situation.
So it goes.
Thanks…
AG
To the extent that Trump’s statement is true about his media power, it says something about US politics at the moment and the ultimate end of marketing politics. You can’t much more empty, sizzly a political position than that statement. One wonders what would happen if Trump actually acted it out a la Stalin’s purge. I don’t think our politics have gotten that out of whack, but the pussyfooting around with the Bundys is troubling. What would the federal governement or local government do if Trump did act out. I guess it is fortunate that the public is just being trolled. And the folks are loving watching the trolling.
To the extent that it’s accepted as normal political speech, it gets to what is supposed to turn the rest of Americans off about “New York values” and why Vigurie and his pals are using that phrase to attack Trump.
These so-called New York values were called San Francisco values when the wingnuts were raising money from the rubes by fulminating about gays.
Haven’t heard a peep from Booman all day. Hope he’s OK. Philadelphia got hit pretty hard from what I saw on the news. Likewise TarheelDem, but I expected the South to be out of commission. Arthur Gilroy is here, but New Yorkers are survivors. Just living in New York is a survival exercise.