CNN decides to take a look at people who support The Donald and discovers that the people who support The Donald are pretty much exactly who you’d suspect of supporting aforementioned Donald.
They are showing up in droves to see Donald Trump: Men and women, overwhelmingly white, frustrated with the country’s first black president, fearful that they are being displaced by minorities and immigrants, and nostalgic for the way America used to be.
And Trump is thriving, tapping into the fears and anxieties that have erupted into the open in an extraordinary presidential campaign.
The voters pledging their allegiance to the Republican front-runner hail from all corners of the country. They work on farms, in nursing homes and run small businesses; they’ve voted for Mitt Romney and Barack Obama and participated in the tea party movement; they are high school students who will vote for the first time this November and retirees and veterans who came of age during World War II.
In Trump, these people see the next president of the United States.
His attitude, one voter said, is that he “seems to just not give a f—.” Trump’s nativist rhetoric and hardline immigration stance is a relief for those who see a segment of the population “getting away” with breaking the law. Post-San Bernardino, the candidate’s promise to “bomb the sh– out of ISIS” exudes an uncomplicated confidence rare in other politicians. His accomplishments in the business world offer reassurance that he’ll “put the economy back where it belongs.”
Perhaps most important is Trump’s imperviousness to the typical boundaries around race. He has made provocative remarks on the subject since the earliest days of his campaign — and his supporters are listening. They are rowdy, and at times, even violent. On more than one occasion, they’ve accosted protesters, lobbing racial slurs and physical abuse.
There is a significant bloc of voters who want payback, folks, for slights real or perceived over the last 8 years, folks who want to punish Obama supporters relentlessly and leave them crushed, broken, and forever powerless, never to dare challenge them.
They want someone to put them back on top to “make American great again.”
They’ve found their guy who they think will do it and to hell with everyone else. The mob is coming and they are pissed.
“I got mine, fuck the rest of you” as a worldview? Really is that simple.
And they’ll vote.
Baud
I guess we’ll find out next week whether they’ll vote. Trump’s original base was people who aren’t regular voters.
Bartholomew
You know what, I have figured out that Republicans are bad news. Folks can keep looking, and it is a sight, but it isn’t going to change … the question I’d like answered is how this nation fought the Axis Right in an existential World War, and yet we have a full rightwing agenda enacted on home soil right in full view of the commentariat and sundry observers. One for the ages I guess.
At this point one might wonder if it’s really valuable to feed all that hot stupid greedy mess with so much daily attention and fear and loathing and analysis and snark and on and on and on … especially when there are real things happening that actually might make a positive difference:
“For years, the major proponent against pharmaceutical price gouging has been U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, who in 2007 spoke on the senate floor about a bus trip he took with a group of women from Vermont to Canada to purchase affordable medicine for breast cancer.”
http://observer.com/2015/10/bernie-sanders-and-the-war-on-rising-prescription-drug-costs/
Hildebrand
I find it hard to believe that the short-attention-span-theatre crowd will be willing to navigate the Iowa caucus process, nor do I think that they will stand in long lines to vote. They may be angry, but anger doesn’t always translate into votes, especially in people that aren’t regular voters.
Another thought – Trump may win the nomination, but sustaining that level of fear and hate for another 11 months seems like a tall order, especially in a general election.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Yup, who can forget President Dean.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Well if there were enough Whites who want their country back to win then Romeny would be president. Even the GoP admits it’s impossible to get more of the white vote than Romeny did.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA: I know the media’s portrayal of the “Dean Scream” gets the blame for Dean’s fall, but I have to believe that something more was afoot. At some point, I might look into what actually happened.
OzarkHillbilly
Donald Trump meets Megyn Kelly for the first time.
Hildebrand
@Baud: People will likely argue that Obama brought in a lot of first time voters, as well. Of course, the difference was that Obama actually had a positive vision and a constructive plan to get stuff done. Inchoate screaming isn’t much a plan, and I don’t think it has a long shelf life.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Hildebrand: The Republican caucuses are not as complicated as the Democrats, they vote and that’s it. They don’t have a threshold and second choices like the Dems do. At least that what my understanding is.
FlipYrWhig
@Bartholomew:
Because they hate black people and Spanish speakers that much. End of story.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone :)
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: The reason that the “Dean Scream” happened was he lost Iowa.
BGinCHI
Which “economy,” exactly, is Trump supposed to be “putting back where it belongs”?
Throwing pennies to scrambling urchins?
BillinGlendaleCA
@Hildebrand: Hate is a motivating factor with the tRump crowd.
Hildebrand
@BillinGlendaleCA: Interesting, I had not known that. Hmm, Republicans making the voting easier – must be the only time in the history of the republic.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA: Was that afterward? It’s all a blur. So what happened in Iowa. Obviously, Obama’s supporters came out four years later.
amk
nice fear-mongering by teann.
FlipYrWhig
@Baud: The story from back then was that Dean’s ardent supporters from outside Iowa made themselves so annoying (ETA: while working in the state with their orange hats) that people who _had_ supported him swung to Kerry — who also had the street cred of having been a decorated veteran.
Betty Cracker
@Hildebrand: I agree about the challenge of sustaining a fever pitch of outrage UNLESS events intervene to provide new fodder. If Trump wins the nomination — or hell, any of the clowns on offer, and one of them obviously will — and the economy craters or there’s a Paris style terrorist attack in a US city, all bets are off. It’s scary to think our national hold on sanity is so tenuous, but it probably is.
The Red Pen
I’m curious as to who voted for Barack Obama and now supports Trump. My speculation is that these are people who want more radical change from Obama and now see Trump as the agent of that change. Why not Sanders? Because Trump is a bully. Some people who supported the changes Obama touted, but are critical of Obama believe that Obama was too naive and conciliatory. They believe that Obama failed to play hardball when he needed to. Perhaps these people believe that Trump will do that and Sanders won’t.
Marmot
Except they really don’t have theirs — or believe they don’t.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Hildebrand: I don’t think it’s easier to get in to vote, just the process is simpler.
Feudalism Now!
Ummm, just what is different between a Trump supporter and a Rubio/Jeb?/Sumo-dodger/MakesKaysick supporter? White, fearful and wanting to put any and all in their ‘place’ is the Republican base, no matter who wins the caucus.
Baud
@FlipYrWhig: Well, that’s something. I hope my passionate supporters remember the importance of civility.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@BillinGlendaleCA: He didn’t just lose Iowa, he came in third with 18% of the vote.
Dean was imploding in Iowa well before The Scream.
He came in second to Kerry in NH (38% to 26%) and was effectively done (since NH was effectively home turf for Dean).
Cheers,
Scott.
FlipYrWhig
@BGinCHI: I think it’s supposed to be that Trump the great dealmaker and alpha dog intimidates China or something. If you asked a Trump supporter what he would DO to improve the economy, I have no idea what he would say. Put people to work for the government? Can’t be that, because that’s socialism. Probably “He’s a billionaire, he’d figure something out.” I’m frustrated with the deep idiocy of our modern idiots.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: It was the night of the caucus, after the votes came in; it was supposed to be his victory party.
Patricia Kayden
And don’t forget that as Little Green Footballs has pointed out several times, Trump has no problem retweeting White Supremacists, including a tweet which claimed Blacks were responsible for 70% of White murders.
Trump is a straight up racist and so are his supporters. It’s not like he’s dog whistling anymore.
Looking forward to the beatdown that Secretary Clinton is going to put on him in November.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA:
I just looked it up. That’s some fall.
BillinGlendaleCA
@FlipYrWhig: Idiots are idiots.
SFAW
@Hildebrand:
That’s only the actual mechanics of voting. Being allowed to vote, i.e., being selected to caucus, is another matter. After all, they need to prevent the “caucus fraud” which would be perpetrated by those people..
BillinGlendaleCA
@Patricia Kayden: I don’t think tRump ever learned how to whistle.
FlipYrWhig
@The Red Pen:
My speculation is that they don’t really know what they want except better… things… and like the idea of giving the American machine (which seems to be on the fritz) a sharp whack by putting Someone Different in charge. Like maybe a cool black guy, or, if that doesn’t work, a really rich guy. And if that doesn’t work, maybe a guy in a wheelchair or something.
GregB
Trump will put blue collar America to work applying gilding on the gates of wealthy communities throughout the nation.
FlipYrWhig
@Baud: Oh, also, part of the story that gets told is that Dean and Gephardt nuked each other with negative ads, so the two candidates who stayed above the fray hoovered up the votes they left behind.
FlipYrWhig
@GregB: Kind of like Cash for Caulkers! Gelt for Gilders?
Alesis
I know Coates ruffled a lot of feathers dinging Clinton and Sanders on their shaky commitment to racial justice/honesty but the broader point that the man is making is inarguable.
In US politics white supremacy is not a marginal force. It is, by and large, the mainstream. There are substantial differences in degree but the sheer power of race to shape American social life is astounding when viewed at arms length.
Marmot
Heck, I believe that! Doesn’t make me a Trump supporter. Honestly, I think any former Obama supporter who now supports Trump is just a bandwagon jumper who’s mostly chasing the excitement in promises of big changes.
MattF
And now,… the Republican Establishment is starting to see the ‘positive’ side of Trumpism.
Baud
@MattF: They were always going to fall in line behind whoever the nominee was. Even if it’s Cruz.
BillinGlendaleCA
@FlipYrWhig:
Oh Gawd, not Gov. Abbott.
Germy
@MattF:
“Acceptance” … the final phase.
artem1s
Is the Trump campaign doing voter registration? Following it up with a ground game that sees to it that those new voters go to the poll? If not, he doesn’t have a chance. I haven’t heard anything that indicates he has that level of detail in his ground game. Some of his precinct people in Iowa are downright looney. The guy throws a good pep rally but that doesn’t mean anything when it comes to winning the game.
Germy
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Professor Charles Francis Xavier?
Germy
@artem1s: If they’re patient enough to stand on line for hours to get into his rallies, they’re patient enough to vote. And I doubt the predominately white neighborhoods they live in experience long lines at the voting booths.
GregB
@BillinGlendaleCA:
America’s Stavros Blofeld.
CNN just referred to Trump’s refusal to debate as a “Bold slap-down”.
OzarkHillbilly
@BillinGlendaleCA: Correction: Hate is THE motivating factor with the tRump crowd.
Betty Cracker
@The Red Pen: One of my uncles (retired union dude) voted for Obama in 2008, voted for some libertarian knob in 2012 and is Trump-curious now. I’m trying to swing him to Bernie (I’m personally still on the fence between Sanders and Clinton, learning slightly toward Clinton because I think she’s more electable, but Clinton is an absolute non-starter for uncle).
He’s not a stupid guy or a racist, but he thinks all politicians are corrupt and that they’ve sold the country out to billionaires and corporations. Trump appeals to him for two reasons: 1) he thinks Trump can’t be bought, and 2) Trump isn’t a politician.
It’s all about “sending a message.” I’ve asked him about Trump’s horribly racist rantings about Mexicans (uncle is married to a Latina), and he thinks it’s all bullshit rhetoric as an opening gambit for negotiations. He believes Trump is taking a hard-line position now and will reach a reasonable compromise later because he (Trump) is a “master negotiator.”
My uncle will definitely vote. If HRC is the Democratic nominee and Trump is the GOP candidate, I’m sure he’ll vote for Trump. If someone like Cruz or Rubio gets the nod, he’ll probably vote for the libertarian knob again. I’m working on him, but it’s frustrating. There’s just no way in hell he’ll vote for Hillary Clinton.
TL;DR: What Flip Said
FlipYrWhig
@Betty Cracker: Ask him what Trump masterly negotiated. Or why having a billionaire as president _avoids_ the billionaire influence problem. Or just hit him with a pipe on election day.
Zandar
@Hildebrand:
They’ve been doing it for at least seven years now and by reasonable accounts 240 plus years. Another 11 months is not really an issue.
Hildebrand
@Betty Cracker: I keep thinking about Trump’s comment this weekend about shooting his supporters and still not losing their votes – is he just pulling everyone’s chain? Is the longest con in presidential politics? Does he go home at night and have to figure out how to work up the rubes? Not a conspiracy, just screwing with the people to see how far they will really go.
Trump has always struck me as a bullshitter and a petty, egotistical blowhard, not a truly hateful person. The spat with Megyn Kelly seems perfectly in line with his persona. The hatred of the ‘other’? I don’t know. Where is the point where he recoils from his own supporters?
MomSense
This is also a perfect description of the “Reagan Revolution”.
FlipYrWhig
@Hildebrand: Trump loves to be loved. Cruz is the one with total contempt for his supporters.
rikyrah
Why Aren’t Republican Leaders Rallying Behind Marco Rubio?
He might be too conservative.
By HARRY ENTEN
Why hasn’t Marco Rubio, widely described as the electable conservative, caught on? It’s difficult to say, and there’s still plenty of time — before and after Iowa — for a Rubio surge. Nonetheless, Rubio’s clearest problem is that he hasn’t won over the establishment: He could be the best of both worlds, an establishment-friendly nominee with tea party bona fides, but right now neither camp is rallying behind him with any conviction.
Just look at the endorsements. For several weeks in late 2015, it looked like elected Republicans were inching toward Rubio. But that has largely stopped; Rubio received 10 endorsements from governors and members of Congress in November and seven in December. He has just two so far this month (Ted Cruz has received five), and Jeb Bush still remains the marginal leader in our endorsement tracker. Why aren’t members of Congress coming to save Rubio? Part of the answer may simply be that Rubio is too conservative and too anti-establishment.
Rubio’s ideology tends to get lost next to that of Cruz, but he is one of the most conservative members of Congress. We can see this using DW-Nominate, an algorithm that rates members of Congress on a liberal-conservative scale based on their voting record. Rubio is more conservative than 77 percent of Republicans serving in Congress this term.
rikyrah
Ain’t this a muthaphucka.
……………….
Michigan’s Snyder to ask feds to cover Flint kids’ health
Rachel Maddow reports breaking news that Michigan Governor Rick Snyder will be asking the federal government to provide long term health coverage for the children of Flint exposed to lead-tainted water. Flint Mayor Karen Weaver joins on the phone to explain the details of the needs of Flint’s kids.
Punchy
This shit slays me. I’m guessing your uncle wouldnt seek out his financial advisor for a root canal. No experience, no clue how to do it. I’m sure he’s not seeking out his doctor on advice on how to pour concrete and install plumbing and wires to his new patio. No experience, never done it.
Yet these clowns want a man with no experience, no clue what they’re doing, and a horrific temper, to have nuclear launch codes and control of the world’s biggest military. Unreal, the disconnect.
OzarkHillbilly
@rikyrah: But where does he lie on the Asshole Index?
MattF
@rikyrah: Another problem with Rubio is simply that he looks worse the longer you look at him. Of course, that’s turned out to be true for all the R candidates.
ETA: Upon further consideration, deleted ‘almost’ from ‘almost all the R candidates’.
FlipYrWhig
@rikyrah: Hey, Gov. Snyder, maybe there should be a wide-ranging federal program that looked after the citizenry’s health and well-being.
Denali
@Ozark Hillbilly
Why is Donald Trump afraid of Megyn Kelly?
rikyrah
UH HUH
UH HUH
EPA cracks whip on Michigan, Snyder cagey on aid money for Flint
Bryn Mickle, editor of The Flint Journal, talks with Rachel Maddow about Michigan Governor Rick Snyder picking a fight with the EPA over their jurisdiction in the Flint water crisis and his caginess on past e-mails and the apportionment of millions of federal dollars in aid for Flint.
OzarkHillbilly
@Denali: She was mean to him. Oh, and she had blood coming out of her whatever.
eric
The reason people will vote for Trump is that he is the alpha male of alpha males telling them that the real reason they are not yoogely successful like him is because of the Other. That is the GOP message and no one tells more clearly than Trump. Don’t blame yourself or your parents for not taking your education more seriously. Don’t blame world markets and the law of supply and demand for your station. Look at the Other siphoning off your opportunity. Trump says it and says it with what sounds like conviction. He is the optimal carnival barker for the GOP message.
SFAW
@MattF:
“Almost”?
OzarkHillbilly
@Denali: For more, read this:
Megyn Kelly: the journalist who dinged Trump’s ego – and got under his skin
MattF
@SFAW: I changed that.
FlipYrWhig
@eric: Is anyone clear on what exactly he’ll do about it? It seems to just be “I’m Trump, I’m awesome, I’m the master deal-maker, I’ve got this, good things on the way, watch and see.”
SFAW
@FlipYrWhig:
Fixed, because that motherfucker deserves even worse, but I don’t think there’s a law allowing capital punishment for what he did.
SFAW
@MattF:
Glad to see it. (There was no ETA yet when I started typing, of course)
SFAW
@FlipYrWhig:
Well, he’s more than a Donnie One-Note: he’s also big on “Everyone else is STOOPID, or ugly, or a LOOSAH, or not as awesome, or female, or not an American, or STOOOOPID!”
Botsplainer
Watching Cruz’ wife defend his personable, thoughtful nature.
Oh, my sides!
It took Trump to do it.
FlipYrWhig
@SFAW: Touche. But I do hope that the Flint water crisis sets in motion a whole bunch of conversations about environmental justice and the politics of health and healthcare, caring for the least among us, and so forth. If Bernie wants to use it as a way to talk up single-payer, fine. We don’t get that many compelling real world examples of public policy in a state of failure or a chance to kick around possible solutions for the present moment and beyond.
ruemara
You need to step up to your Trump voting friends and relatives and just plainly say Trump is a bigot, a racist, a dumbass who when broke several times running a casino and not going to change a damned thing except by making things worse in this country.
There’s too much at stake to not speak plainly and bluntly. When there’s room to keep conning themselves, the stupid will do that instead of wising up.
eric
@FlipYrWhig: no. but he is clear on one thing: It is not YOUR fault. That is what they hear. THEY are not responsible fro slavery or Jim Crow; THEY are not responsible for the fall of our urban centers; they are not responsible for jobs going overseas; they are not responsible for making less money than they wanted. Many of the things are not their fault, but he wraps it all up into a blame the Other bow that they are sure he will deal with Other appropriately, i.e., with the anger and derision that “those people” deserve. They are giant walking ids and he is the biggest id there is.
Patricia Kayden
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Exactly and Trump has done a great job mobilizing the minority vote against the GOP.
Gin & Tonic
@FlipYrWhig: He has no actual policies on anything. And if you take the time to actually listen to his speech patterns, it’s all space-filler. He’s the high school kid who has to stand in front of the class and give a 5-minute presentation when he has less than one minute of material.
danielx
@Bartholomew:
I gotta tell you, to have arrived at this conclusion in this year of our lord 2016 does not exactly constitute a sharp insight.
@Hildebrand:
Are you speaking of Trump, or of his hard core supporters? The talk radio listeners and Fox News watchers have maintained a bile lever that would kill ordinary human beings for years, decades in some case – they need fear and rage on a physiological level, like a junkie needs to fix (several times a day). Trump’s own personality/worldview, which contains a great deal of contempt for everyone who isn’t Donald Trump yet a need for adulation to rival that of any diva, doesn’t require any heavy lifting to maintain a sustained level of “fuck you” to anyone who doesn’t share his views. His major issue at this point is that he can’t unsay what he has said about various ethnic groups, women, hell, just about everybody who isn’t rich and white. His supporters won’t let him follow Nixon’s rule abouting runing as far to the right as possible during the primaries, then run just as hard back to the center in the general election. The votes of pissed off white people aren’t enough to get him to 270 electoral votes, barring a level of voter suppression unseen since the days of Jim Crow.
FlipYrWhig
@SFAW: This is going to be an impolitic thing to say, but Trump’s mannerisms to me are extremely feminine. The lip thing, the head bobbing, the hand gestures. The whole act reminds me of Joan Rivers.
Yutsano
@FlipYrWhig:
No more governors from Texas please and thank you!
Bobby Thomson
@Hildebrand: Republicans have done a bang up job stoking that hate for 7 years. His people will turn out.
Bex
@Germy: Apples and oranges. They don’t get the same emotional payoff in the voting booth as they do at a rally. Voting isn’t free entertainment. No matter where they live they still have to be registered to vote. They not only have to mark a ballot somehow, but they also have to fill out a form and return it. My bet is that the vast majority of them are “too busy” to do that.
SFAW
@FlipYrWhig:
In a rational country, Flint would be a great — albeit unfortunate — way of getting those conversations started. But until the Rethugs return to some semblance of rationality, I would say the chances of that conversation happening are right up there with the Jets winning the Super Bowl L (or, for the wingnuts, “XXXXX.”)
And I ain’t holding my breath for “rational Republican” to stop being an oxymoron. Emphasis on the “moron.”
FlipYrWhig
@eric: That’s a good way to whip up a crowd but in general people ultimately want to hear what politicians will do and how. Case in point, the very talky and detail-rich Bill Clinton SOTUs that the pundits always hated but the polling always showed viewers liking. This has to end up hurting Trump eventually (at the margins at least — Republicans are going to vote for the Republican no matter how ridiculous he sounds).
eric
@Bobby Thomson: The issue is where his people are. If they are all in Texas and Kansas, bring it. The issue is whether his people are voters beyond the Romney voters in the swing states. I dont know.
FlipYrWhig
@SFAW: I’m not expecting Republican politicians to do anything useful, pretty much ever, but hopefully Democrats will talk about it for the next several months as a case study for their approaches to contemporary health care policy and/or racial and social determinants of health.
Bobby Thomson
@The Red Pen: that’s an empty set.
eric
@FlipYrWhig: (I say this most respectfully because I enjoy your commentary) I think you miss what people liked about Bill. I dont think it was the policies, per se, but that certain liked him for him despite all his faults. The GOP has only talked tax cuts and dergulation for years (with some puritan social policy) so i dont think his people are hungry for specifics. If they are “tax cuts and deregulation” and gut obamacare.
Poopyman
@Botsplainer: Even MacBeth had a wife….
FlipYrWhig
@eric: The pundits’ theory is Trump will be stronger in working-class white enclaves like Chris Matthews’s cherished Philadelphia suburbs. I think that’s basically “Reagan Democrats” all over again and that those people are already Republicans, not swing voters, negating the effect. But I’m not a demographer.
C.V. Danes
So basically the days the Trump supporters miss are the days when they could say nigger with impunity. When they say Trump is impervious to race, this is what they mean.
OzarkHillbilly
@Bobby Thomson: Just like they did in 2012? And my point is not that you are wrong, because you aren’t. My point is that he doesn’t have enough people to elect him. I still have doubts he can be nominated.
SFAW
@FlipYrWhig:
Interesting you should pick Joan Rivers. You do know that Rivers was actually a guy in drag, right? Sort of like Eddie Izzard or Barry Humphries.
No, I’m kidding. But I’d need to watch Trump a little more to see what you’re talking about. It might be a Noo Yawk thing, specific to people in a particular age grouping. And these days, I don’t drink enough to get up the nerve to watch that asshole for more than a few seconds.
Tim C.
@Bobby Thomson: I would say it’s been like this since about 1994, they couldn’t be as racist against Clinton, but the intensity and lunacy was pretty similar.
FlipYrWhig
@eric: OK (and thanks), but I’ve heard and read for a long time that Bill Clinton, explainer in chief, defied expectations to the point where his prosaic lists and technical details would test well with focus groups, who didn’t miss the soaring rhetoric and lyricism that the media was always faulting him for lacking.
SFAW
@C.V. Danes:
Partly true – but only because there are a bunch of other racist epithets they also wish they could say with impunity.
Manyakitty
@Hildebrand: It seems to me that sustaining the fear and hate is the easy part. Putting it back in the bag is what’s hard.
Iowa Old Lady
@SFAW: Any registered D or R is allowed to caucus, and any time I’ve gone, there’s a table at the door where you can change your party affiliation. Granted, I’ve only been to the D caucus, so I’m only assuming the Rs do that too.
However, getting out to caucus is a commitment that I suspect a lot of people won’t make. I usually go and even I am thinking it will be dark, it’s in a new location this year (and I know where it is, which I had to look up), it will take my whole evening, any D we nominate will be fine with me, etc.
ruemara
Dammit I’m in moderation.
Patricia Kayden
@FlipYrWhig: Has Trump been forced to actually promulgate any policies on what he is going to do for Americans and in regard to international hotspots like Syria? Or is he just going around blowing steam out of his mouth in a loud and boisterous manner?
What a joke if he is the Republican candidate.
satby
@SFAW: And the rabid wingers are now claiming that the previous Democratic governor, Granholm, somehow “knew all about Flint’s water problems before she left office”. The implication being that the lead issue started in her administration (not true). She left office in 2011, they switched sources in 2014.
What kind of soulless fuck would try to make a “both sides” argument about the lead poisoning (and cover-up) of children?
Botsplainer
@Poopyman:
When your wife has to give an interview saying that you’re really a decent guy and pleasant to be around in order to dispel multiple statements to the contrary, you’re losing.
And what does it say about our “elite media”, that Cruz had been tromping around, crushing policy proposals even against the wishes of his own party without much reporting on how despised he is; that it took Trump attacking him from the right to neuter his bullshit?
FlipYrWhig
@Patricia Kayden: Is “I’m tough and don’t take any shit and everyone will know better than to mess with me” a policy? If not, then no.
SFAW
@Iowa Old Lady:
Oh, fine, hit me with facts and reality. Want me to get you some heavy boots so you can kick me while I’m down?
But thanks for setting me straight.
Matt McIrvin
@Hildebrand:
It doesn’t have to be sustained–all it takes is a great big crisis late in the year that completely discredits the Democrats. Or a series of crises.
I think we’re overdue for the next big economic crash, and all the stuff happening overseas could be the trigger. People are already not feeling good about the economy despite the top-line numbers. We’re probably headed for a wave of domestic terrorism too.
SFAW
@satby:
It’s the flip side of the meme that the 2008 Meltdown was Obama’s fault
The Governor of Michigan?
OzarkHillbilly
@satby: A political fuck.
Eric U.
@Hildebrand: no, Republicans make voting easier for their voters all the time. We have a voting precinct in town that takes a couple of hours to vote. Then if you go out of town, there are many more precincts per person. I’m sure there is some logic to it, but the precinct I watched one election had very few democratic voters (~10) and only a few dozen republican voters. Same staffing from the county as the overloaded precinct in town.
Iowa Old Lady
@SFAW: There are so few times I know what I’m talking about that I have to take advantage.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Of course they are. Forty years, they were promised that abortion would end, the schools would be resegregated, the blacks would be put in their place (servant’s quarters or graves), the Mexicans would all be thrown out of the country, school prayer would be restored, Miranda overturned, welfare ended and their taxes dropped to zero.
They were literally promised every single one of these things and even when they had House, Senate and Presidency, they were given…nothing.
Of course they’re angry. They were lied to for forty years straight and have finally figured that out. They still haven’t figured out that they’re never going to get anything on their wishlist. THAT is when shit is going to get ugly in this country.
I’ll say this for Dems, we never have any compunctions about disappointing our supporters. Turns out that’s actually responsible politics.
danielx
@Botsplainer:
All too true, sort of like when the president (any president) feels it necessary to publicly say that he (or she) has complete confidence in a subordinate – the unspoken message is “you’re embarrassing me, time to update your resume”…
henqiguai
@Hildebrand (#15):
Local, and historical, aberration only. Surely it’s since been addressed.
Kerry Reid
In other words — they are exactly Bernie Sanders’ kind of people! http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/12/27/bernie-sanders-wants-trump-voters/
OzarkHillbilly
@Botsplainer: Not sure about anybody else but I’ve been reading “Cruz is an asshole.” since about 2 months after he got elected.
MattF
@SFAW: The point I was thinking of originally is that some of the R candidates looked awful right from the start, while others had awfulness that sort of creeped up on you as they expressed themselves in their campaigns. It’s the useful thing about a campaign– I wouldn’t have had a clear idea of how awful Cruz really was until he had campaigned for a while.
danielx
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
You left out the part about having complete freedom to beat up the dirty fucking hippies.
Hillary Rettig
Trump is exhibit A for why churches should lose their tax exemption. A huge number of his supporters are evangelicals. The ones quoted in this piece are despicable as they support the racist while casting aspersions (in their minds; “Muslim” isn’t an aspersion in mine) on Obama.
Carson, who does a ton of campaigning at churches, is Exhibit B.
Take away the tax deduction and so many of society’s problems would ease up.
g
His attitude, one voter said, is that he “seems to just not give a f—.”
Well, that’s true. He doesn’t give a fuck. About you, Trump supporter.
Sherparick
One should remember that we are all human, and as humans we all are potential monsters given the right circumstances. I am luckier then these people and I know a lot of them. The economic dislocations of the last 45 years, particularly the last 16, have created and fermented the resentments of the white working class as it has fallen relative to other American minority groups and the white upper class and upper middle class. Profoundly alienated, Trumpism also gives them community that they have not had in a long time. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/01/white-working-class-poverty/424341/
By the way, there is a reason that plutocrats are developing an appreciation of Trump. His divide and conquer strategy may be the way they can get back into power and repeal 150 years of laws and progressive legislation to establish a Gilded Age with Ante-bellum (pre-Civil War South) characteristics, a country combining the worst of John Calhoun, Billy Sunday, and Ayn Rand.
Hildebrand
@Bobby Thomson: The Republicans who have voted in during Obama’s presidency have had a very focused hatred – Obama was the personification for all of their fears and hatreds. Of course, the fact that Obama won twice ratcheted up the fear and hatred – and sharpened it that much more.
Trump is ginning up fear and hatred for the nameless and faceless hordes, and I wonder if that fear is as deep and committed. Sure you can keep it going for a while, but I wonder if it doesn’t work better if you have a very particular focus for the fear and hatred. Republicans have always been able to point to Obama, but Trump is simply waving his hands at the ‘other’.
I certainly do get that Fox and the Republicans have been stoking fear and hatred for the last seven years, and that it has benefited the Republicans in the off year elections, but Trump’s fear-mongering doesn’t seem to be the same kind. Likely this is just wishful thinking on my part – I want Trump and his knavish followers to lose badly, and then realize that they never had a chance because the country is already far and away different from the nostalgic dreams of the 1950s; and so I try to tell myself that Trump’s campaign will fall apart all on its own, due to its grotesque nature, because the country cannot be that far gone to the forces of hatred.
WereBear
I said it from the beginning: Trump will go all the way to the general. And lose. At least, I hope I’m right.
See, Trump fans aren’t bothered by the fact he doesn’t have any of those pointy-headed intellekshul plans like wussy liberals. They don’t understand how anything works! They don’t have to!
And in their view, neither does Trump.
rk
@Betty Cracker:
I don’t understand the thinking of people like your uncle. I’ve heard similar ie. Trump is saying what he’s saying because he needs the primary votes and he’ll change after he’s the nominee. Doesn’t that make Trump just like any other politician? And they’re voting for Trump because they hate lying corrupt politicians? I guess a lying corrupt businessman turned politician is the guy who’ll save us all.
Bobby Thomson
@OzarkHillbilly: the nomination is in the bag. Kristol said he won’t get it.
I was responding to a comment that his supporters were imaginary and wouldn’t vote. That’s clearly wrong.
Matt McIrvin
@Hillary Rettig: I doubt removing the tax exemption for churches would actually accomplish much except bring in a little revenue, kill a lot of financially marginal churches (which are more likely to be good guys) and make anti-religious activists feel better. The rich evangelical megachurches can afford to pay taxes; they’re not going to shut down.
Remember, the whole debate over Sunday early voting has to do with “Souls to the Polls” efforts in African-American churches, a big part of the Democratic vote especially in the South.
Anya
@The Red Pen: I think it’s just people who claim they voted for Obama to distance themselves from Trump’s racist message. What radical change is Trump offering? He’s the anti-Obama.
Matt McIrvin
@WereBear:
At this point, that looks like the most likely scenario to me. But “Trump goes all the way to the general, and wins because of some unpredictable crisis event that upends the whole game” is way too probable to make me feel at all sanguine.
Hillary Rettig
@g: amazes me how his followers don’t realize that, outside the election, he wouldn’t even take the time to spit on them if they were on fire.
but the goopers have always been like that – voting for privileged boy/men (and some women) who talk a good populist line (or not even that good a line) despite all evidence to the contrary.
Sherparick
@satby: Because that is what Conservative hacks do. Because they want to confuse and misdirect the anger and remain unaccountable for the human tragedies that their policies create. In sense, these people are zombies, in that they have no soul or compassion for those outside their family and elite circles (an even then there is a coldness). Look at families like Trump, Menard, etc.
Gin & Tonic
@rk: Simple. Betty’s uncle is a moron.
The Lodger
@BillinGlendaleCA: Guy Caballero?
Sherparick
@Sherparick: I found this excerpt from the Atlantic article particularly interesting.
“….In Stayin’ Alive, his powerful history of the “last days” of the working class, the historian Jefferson Cowie describes how the proud blue-collar identity of previous generations disintegrated during the ’70s. “Liberty has largely been reduced to an ideology that promises economic and cultural refuge from the long arm of the state,” he writes, “while seemingly lost to history is the logic that culminated under the New Deal: that genuine freedom could only happen within a context of economic security.” As working-class solidarity receded, an identity built on racial tribalism often swept in…. “http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/01/white-working-class-poverty/424341/
different-church-lady
“You know… morons.”
OzarkHillbilly
@Bobby Thomson:
Heh.
OK. They are real enough. I just don’t see how their existence can ever add up to a Trump Presidency. It did not add up to a Romney Presidency and he was fairly *acceptable* to a much larger percentage of the voters.
* where acceptable means “he will not destroy the fabric of society.” Even most Dems did not think of Romney as Satan incarnate. With Cruz most of us do, and Trump we aren’t real sure of.
Bobby Thomson
@Hildebrand: Trump didn’t start the fire or even stoke it that much at the margins. He’s an opportunist taking advantage of a receptive market. The only difference between him and the others is manners – and raw aggression. He’s not an outsider candidate. He’s a “mine’s bigger” candidate. And he’s not saying anything that Reoublicans haven’t already been dog whistling for decades.
Hillary Rettig
@Matt McIrvin: < The rich evangelical megachurches can afford to pay taxes; they’re not going to shut down.
I beg to differ. They are business ventures (and in many cases scams) pure and simple; if they become taxed (and their donations non-deductable) they become way less profitable. And don't forget – the churches don't just get a break from paying; they don't have to itemize their deductions the way other nonprofits do.
http://bigthink.com/21st-century-spirituality/how-to-make-71-billion-a-year-tax-the-churches
If the churches were taxed then those with an honest mission might persist.
Don't forget tho – this isn't my opinion. It's the law of the land that churches should not do politics, but they do. (Admittedly many on the Dem side, too.) It should all go away.
different-church-lady
@The Red Pen:
People with utterly incoherent politics. (See comment at 131)
different-church-lady
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
But it was also home turf for Kerry. Perhaps more so, since the population of New Hampshire is weighted towards the Mass. border.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@Betty Cracker:
If you don’t like billionaires buying your politicians, eliminate the middle-men politicians and elect the billionaires – brilliant! And people wonder why our country is so fucked up.
Amir Khalid
@danielx:
This is known in the world of pro club football as “getting the dreaded vote of confidence”. It is given by the club chairman/owner aftera run of bad league results, and is usually the prelude to sacking the first team manager.
geg6
@Hildebrand:
His vendetta against the Central Park Five showed who he was long before all of this. He’s a racist pig and always has been. A cowardly, racist, misogynist pig.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@different-church-lady: I knew someone would notice that after I hit “Post Comment”… :-)
But I think the point stands. If Dean couldn’t win in NH, where was he going to win that mattered in time? California was too late to matter – and Kerry crushed Edwards there.
Anyway, it’s all water under the bridge. But counterfactuals are always fun. ;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Hildebrand
@Bobby Thomson: Yep, I don’t disagree with you. That said, the Republicans have been successful with that fear and rage really only at the state and local level – they use a very particular bogey man to get people’s knickers twisted, but they use that to win parochial elections. Fear and hatred don’t win national elections, even with a specific bogey man to focus all your fears on (Obama won comfortably both times – so that didn’t work at all for them).
How can you use Trump’s fear of everything/anything/otherness to do any better at the national level? It could only work if you so ratcheted up the fear as to make it suffocating – and that still would only work for so long. Most people have forgotten Paris, and San Bernardino, or at least forgotten enough that it no longer shapes their thinking. The Fox Crowd will always fear and hate – but in order to win the general, Trump would have to create a climate of fear that even the Republicans have never managed, and that seems to take something else categorically different from what we have seen thus far.
different-church-lady
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Dean’s aura had to do with the novelty of the “netroots” and progressive blogs. A whole lot of the energy went into heat instead of light.
I suspect we’re seeing something similar today. The people who aren’t going to vote for Trump also aren’t making a lot of noise about it.
Hildebrand
@geg6: This is what ignorance gets me – I guess I simply haven’t had the gumption to dig into Trump’s knavery, and so have some pretty significant gaps in my understanding.
geg6
@Hildebrand:
Here you go:
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@different-church-lady: Agreed.
Unfortunately, the momentum in these races can change quickly. If Cruz wins Iowa and is close in NH, then he’s got a shot (due to the usual bump from people wanting to back a “winner”). If Trump wins both places, and SC where he should have a big advantage, then stopping him will be difficult even if kinda-sorta sensible people find him repulsive.
Cheers,
Scott.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Hillary Rettig: Hell, he’d call them yooooge loooozers and laugh at them if he saw them on fire.
geg6
@Hildebrand:
Because this stupid website won’t let me post a link, I can’t link to it, but go read Amy Davidson’s article about this from the June 23, 2015 New Yorker.
Brachiator
This suggests something more complicated than an angry mob of bigots.
I wonder what Sanders’ supporters look like.
Now, I have noted before, as have many others, that the GOP incited fear and rage and bigotry, but there is also a separate and independent frustration that has been sparked which they cannot control and which looks to Trump for help. There is a similarly deep frustration (though not conjoined with bigotry) among many non-conservatives. This is making for a suitably unpredictable election season.
Betty Cracker
@Gin & Tonic: About politics, yes. But he’s not generally a moron — quite the opposite.
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: Republicans aren’t the only group that is fond of simple answers to complex questions.
different-church-lady
@Brachiator: Both Sanders and Trump are playing the politics of resentment. But they’re playing it like The Force: Trump is Vader, playing the dark side, while Sanders thinks he’s playing the light side. That’s where the incoherent “crossover” appeal lies. If you look at their politics, it would seem impossible that someone would be on the fence between the two because their lots are miles apart. But if you look at the emotional appeal — answering the need to blame “someone else” for frustrations — they’re flip sides of the same coin.
The problem is there isn’t any light side to resentment.
WereBear
@Matt McIrvin: You speak as though there are Republican nominees who are preferable to Trump.
To me, they would ALL be disasters.
Central Planning
@Hillary Rettig:
I would like to see churches NOT be polling places. I have to vote at a Presbyterian church. I have a gut feeling that some people are reminded about Jesus when they place their vote and that typically would not be for a Democrat. But I have no data to prove that.
WereBear
@different-church-lady: Except… the greedy money people are the reason for so much suffering. Targeting them is not out of line.
HRA
Lost among all of this discussion is the fact of people voting according to their experiences. They do not believe wholeheartedly of one candidate solving their problem(s) They believe of the possibility of it occurring more with one than the other.
Up above was stated those people want 1950 all over again. While at the same time are some of you not wanting the 1990s again?
I, too, have a close relative who as a R voted twice for President Obama. He never watched Fox and the other R slanted TV stations until last year. He is not a racist, an idiot, etc. He became an R when Bill Clinton ran for his 1st term. He considers Trump to be amusing except for some of his hateful remarks and does not believe he would vote for him. He won’t ever vote for Hilary.
Matt McIrvin
@WereBear: I think they’d all be disasters but Trump is the one most likely to cause an actual millions-dead, death camps, autogenocide scenario.
Pogonip
@Baud: Fuck civility.
Baud/Jane 2016: Because It’s A Jungle Out There, And Because Only They Can Stop Trump.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
Yep. But as much as I despise Trump, and detest the GOP for contributing to the fear and loathing of the past few years, I think that many Trump supporters are not just an angry mob, or even looking for simple answers to complex questions. And this applies to Sanders supporters as well.
They think that they are challenging an Establishment dedicated to protecting the elites at the expense of everyone else.
I will be curious to see what happens, and whether anything changes, as people actually vote. Right now, Trump only has potential support.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Central Planning: I vote at a temple, as those are the houses of worship in my neighborhood.
FlipYrWhig
@Brachiator:
I don’t think it’s “elites,” though, for Trump. Or if it is at all, it’s only as a component. They think the “establishment” ALSO protects black people, brown people, public employees, and lazy hippies: that’s what “political correctness” as they use it means. They’re at least as pissed off about that as “elites.” I mean, Donald Trump is a celebrity billionaire who’s in love with himself and calls everyone else losers and haters. He’s “elite.”
WereBear
That’s an excellent point. The issue is who is really responsible, and I think the Republicans have to lie about that… it’s THEM.
catclub
@Hildebrand:
Unfortunately, this reminds me of the saying that the market can remain crazy longer than you can remain solvent betting against that craziness.
Brachiator
@different-church-lady:
I am not sure that Sanders is playing the politics of resentment, but you make a very interesting point, and an angle I had not quite considered before.
But I agree about the similarity of the emotional appeal of the two candidates.
@HRA
A very good summary of the type of voter who is simply dissatisfied with what the Establishment has served up so far, and is not just wallowing in xenophobic anger. Thanks for this.
catclub
@Germy:
I bet the number of people who go to rallies is much smaller than the number of people who vote. Even people who intensely favor their candidate get only one vote.
Betty Cracker
@different-church-lady: One side is at least mostly mad at the right people. It is outrageous that billionaires can purchase legislators in handy family-size packs to pass laws favorable to themselves. I’d also argue there’s an upside to resentment of this state of affairs — the possibility that it will change via politics instead of bloodshed.
C.V. Danes
@SFAW: Indeed, indeed. The only people I’ve ever met who truly miss the 50s are white because the 50s were just so white.
evodevo
” they’ve voted for Mitt Romney and Barack Obama and participated in the tea party movement ”
Somehow I doubt any of them “voted for Obama” … I know NONE of the tRump supporters around here in Ky would be counted among them LOL….racist to the core.
Bobby Thomson
@Hildebrand: that’s just demographics and the elsctoral college. It has nothing to do with the difficulty of ramping up the hate. Republicans have that covered. And it will really help them in congressional elections.
Dollared
@Brachiator: This. Followers of Ted Cruz truly are evil people. Many followers of Trump are racists. But many of Trump’s followers are dead right that our society and government are screwing the middle and working classes. We should be trying to figure out how to find and convert these people to a new version of the New Deal, rather than mocking all of them.
cckids
@ruemara:
So true. To the people who always say “Trump can’t be bought”, I respond that his WHOLE CAREER is based on selling his name/himself. Of course he can be bought – either with enough money or with adulation, real or faked.
Also, not only did he go bankrupt those four times, the bankruptcy trustees made it a condition each time, that though the businesses could continue to bear Trump’s name, that the Donald have NO part in running them from that time on. So, his business acumen really isn’t all that, except for the above-referenced selling himself. He can’t even get a cas1no license here in NV.
henqiguai
@Dollared (#170):
Racists, misogynists, and various flavors of Birchers. And the New Deal gave everything to Those People! there is no ‘convert’. And finding them is easy – turn over a rock or simply announce, out loud, that some benefit is being enjoyed by anyone not white and evangelical xtian.
Dollared
@henqiguai: You are the bigot here. And you are missing the opportunity to have a percentage of Trumpsters vote on your side.
Yes, there are many racists in that crowd, and many misogynists. But they would be less so if you acknowledged their economic distress, and worked to provide them an alternate explanation that didn’t blame “those people.” And some of them are far less racist and misogynistic than you think. They are just angry at the economic distress they see, and want SOMEONE to do something about it.
But hey, lump them all into one group and hate them if you prefer……..that’s a great strategy…or is it just about feeling superior, or angry yourself?
FlipYrWhig
@Dollared:
No, they’re not. They’re angry that the blacks and browns are getting a free ride and that they have to press one for English and that store signs say “Happy Holidays.”
chopper
@FlipYrWhig:
this is why the economy is such a wild card this year. if we start going into recession this year (made much worse than it would otherwise due to bad policies), trump gets a big boost among voters when he starts bragging i’m rich, i know all about the economy, under president trump recessions will never happen again and growth will be really, really big.
meanwhile, ‘obama’s economy’ gets hung around clinton’s neck. sanders certainly has an easier time getting the nomination. depends on the timing as well.
Chris
@FlipYrWhig:
This.
They’re correctly diagnosing that “their” elites among the party elites and lobbyists and financiers don’t give a shit about them and are happy to sell them out, but because they think only in tribal terms, they think these means that these elites are part of the Other Side – the socialists and Muslims and union thugs and black radicals and Mexican illegal immigrants. The fact that their elites are, in fact, screwing all of these people over as well doesn’t compute in their heads.
After all, if you’re not with them, you’re against them.
catclub
@FlipYrWhig: Interesting report on just the topic of ‘angry’
The anger is not actually appearing in polls. No real change from recent past. GOP respondents MUCH angrier than Democratic respondents. But even the GOP anger is not terribly high.
Mike in NC
Bullshit
Applejinx
@WereBear: I was just going to say. These elites wear the face of Martin Shkreli. The people who buy up politicians to rig the system to become hundreds, thousands, ten thousand times wealthier than everybody else are REAL.
Look at the Kochs. Mad because they can’t literally get everything they want, and them and their ilk have got so much during my lifetime.
Anger is not just when your job goes overseas to somewhere they can have a child slave do it for 0.02$ an hour. Anger is when your bridges close, your roads deteriorate, everything you buy is garbage that breaks because you can’t get capitalization to make anything unprofitably well anymore, your food becomes brightly packaged corn syrup and salt scientifically calculated to bloat you like a lab rat because you can’t do anything else and compete in the marketplace, your water pipes get fed corrosive water they won’t use to manufacture cars and poison you with lead…
That’s anger. And it’s hard to make good decisions when you’re starving, desperate, can’t get to work even if you could get work, and poisoned with lead.
But the fact is, someone presided over that system that deteriorated so badly for you. They did it because the system deteriorated FOR YOU, not for them. They did very well. You can look at them and see which ones did well, because they’re regularly praised for it and you’re supposed to go along with it.
I’m pretty sure a lot of Trump supporters would like him less if they thought he was an insider, part of that system. I think they just want to see him break shit, and breaking heads is a bonus for them.
The only upside I could even see of a Trump presidency is a complete panicked collapse of capitalism as everybody finally goes, ‘okay, joke’s over, now I want to be the first to the exits’. And it’d be a pretty bitter upside because a lot of us would probably die, but as I’m seeing it from my bitter viewpoint we’re gonna die anyway, perhaps very soon, as the system needs to start devouring us FAST and tracelessly in order to keep up the front for those who still believe there’s a system here worth ‘adjusting’.
I’m looking at some of the Clintonistas there, so sharp of tooth, so doggedly certain that we mustn’t rock the boat and that everything will be fine if we only double down on loyalty to ‘Democrats’ and don’t change too much.
Yeah, nope. As I see it the only real big win scenario is an idealistic wave election that can force through aggressive socialist redistribution a la ‘New Deal’ FDR stuff. Pretty much anything that will circulate money into the economy again, and I don’t care how the bankers howl. I think the way they’ve locked up capital is a logjam that blocks ANYTHING else useful happening until that’s addressed, and both us and the EU are in deep shit so long as we try to keep finance whole.
It’s not whole, it’s leveraged twenty, thirty, fifty times the value of everything on the fucking planet, and it’s that we’re meant to prop up by protecting ‘investor confidence’ at any cost.
I don’t know if anybody can actually address this situation. I know one Democrat whom I don’t think would even try, for all the other decent things she MIGHT (repeat, MIGHT! How do you even know?) do. And I’m pretty sure if Trump won, the consensus among even moderately sane people would be ‘get in the bunkers, because the whole thing is coming down NOW’.
If you’re absolutely certain that the American system is collapsing, and I am as certain of that as I’m certain that the Soviet system did collapse and the Berlin wall fell, then you don’t view it as Trump’s fault. He is in no position to stop this collapse.
It’s a building that’s built higher and higher, with more weight on the upper stories that keep extending even as the base deteriorates. It inevitably falls down, because gravity. You can’t. do. that.
Some of us get a lot of flak when we get really mad at people who say the building is fine and we gotta keep going, play it safe and not rock the boat even though the trend is beyond obvious. THAT is why anybody would contemplate a Trump vote. It’s like, you’re only making it worse for yourselves by refusing to see this is falling over! The specific things you’re handwaving away are the problems with the building, and it doesn’t MATTER what color you paint it!
anyway.
Capri
IMHO, the people who are scratching their heads wondering how Trump got on top seriously underestimate how terrible the current GOP is, including all the other candidates. He’s got too many faults to mention (he want’s to make America great again- back to the time when being “mobbed up” really meant something), but at least he doesn’t appear to be living in some upside world fantasy land.
The GOP orthodoxy – trickle down economics, cut taxes for rich people, get rid of the Department of Education and the EPA, etc etc etc is the anchor that is sinking every other GOP candidate. Look at what happened when Jeb? reflexively defended his brother’s decisions. Trump has called some of that stuff nonsense, and the rank and file love him for that.
chopper
people like trump “because he goes to 11”.
different-church-lady
@Betty Cracker: There’s a difference between resentment and indignation. The latter has a sense of fairness driving it. The former is “us-against-them”.
Sanders, is, in fact, angry at the right people. But the “us-against-them” thing will bite him in the ass, either before or after the general.
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx:
How many people who want “aggressive socialist redistribution” have you ever met in your life? You think there’s a way for them to be a majority of the voting public? And that they will then “force through” things? How? What makes this happen? What could possibly accomplish this? We are much closer to the “big lose” scenario where roving bands of armed assholes just start terrorizing the populace ISIS-style than to “aggressive socialist redistribution.” Good God.
Mnemosyne
I know Trump is sucking up all of the MSM attention and the various shots of his crowds are scary, but honestly? He doesn’t have the zeitgeist. The popular culture tide is against him right now. He’s doing great inside the tiny Republican bubble, but he’s going to deflate once he tries to exit that, and he’s going to have to exit it in order to run in the general election.
If you want to talk about silent majorities, there’s a huge silent majority out there that is the Obama coalition of non-white voters and white Democrats. I honestly think that, with just a little GOTV effort, we’ve got this.
leeleeFL
@Patricia Kayden: may the FSM answer that prayer from your lips. I would love for tRump to be smited by his Noodley Appendage.
Betty Cracker
@Central Planning: Huh, interesting. My polling place is also a church. The only time I ever go to a church is to vote.
Matt McIrvin
@Mnemosyne: Who DOES have the zeitgeist? Surely Hillary Clinton doesn’t. I don’t think anybody currently running for President does.
Applejinx
@FlipYrWhig: Guess again. The populace ain’t got money. Only laws protect the huge masses of money out there, from taxation. As Mark Blyth hypothetically asked: how many divisions does the Cayman Islands have?
We’re maintaining a fiction that is convenient for the incredibly rich. It’s a carefully constructed fiction.
Death Panel Truck
@Bex:
The average Trump supporter not registered to vote probably thinks, “He’s gonna win this thing anyhow, so he won’t need my vote.”
Dollared
@FlipYrWhig: Trouble reading? Yes, that is the explanation they’ve been given? Got an alternate one? Get to work and stop demonizing people who are in real pain.