The Democratic party is simply not ready to confront the Donald. Not even remotely. Two things that should scare the bejeezus out of you. First, these obviously educated but very stupid people:
Sands, who teaches English to refugees and described herself as a big supporter of refugee resettlement, said that even though Trump is a “big jerk, brash, over the top and egomaniacal,” he was also a “big-mouth pragmatist who can get things done.” She also said that he was a moderate who “doesn’t go around hating people” and called him a “brilliant communicator.”
“He tends to be flamboyant and, like New Yorkers, talks in hyperbole,” Sands said. “He exaggerated it to get attention, because a moderate cannot run in the Republican Party.” Sands believes that the media has “distorted” Trump’s statements and are making him out to be someone they want him to be.
“He’s not one of them,” Sands said. “He’s a Rockefeller Republican. There aren’t any more of those around.”
Ok, anecdotal. Second, this:
With Super Tuesday victories in his back pocket, Trump at a press conference in South Florida pledged to expand the base of the Republican Party, calling himself a “common sense conservative” while assuring voters he considered women’s health issues “very important.”
“Planned Parenthood has done very good work for millions of women,” he said. “But we’re not going to allow and we’re not going to fund, as long as you have the abortion going on at Planned Parenthood. We understand that, and I’ve said it loud and clear.”
“We’ll see what happens,” he continued, “but I’ve had thousands of letters from women that have been helped. This wasn’t a set-up, this was people writing letters.”
Of his tack on Planned Parenthood, Trump conceded it was “not a perfect conservative view,” but offered a counterweight by promising to be “more conservative than anybody on the military, on taking care of our vets, on the border, on the wall.”
That’s the terrifying thing about a shameless demagogue who is unhindered by the truth and unmoored from any principles. He can and will say anything. He doesn’t give a shit. He will, without flinching, weave from left to right on any and all issue. So what do these things have to do with each other and why does it show we are unprepared.
Well, there’s this:
Payday lenders have been gunning for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau since the day President Barack Obama tapped Elizabeth Warren to set up the new agency. They’ve had plenty of help from congressional Republicans — longtime recipients of campaign contributions from the payday loan industry. As the CFPB has moved closer to adopting new rules to shield families from predatory lending, the GOP has assailed the agency from every conceivable angle — going after its budget, attempting to tie its hands with new layers of red tape, fomenting conspiracy theories about rogue regulators illegally shutting down businesses and launching direct attacks on payday loan rules themselves.
To date, the GOP blitz has resulted in a few close shaves for the young agency, but no actual defeats. But the industry has cultivated a powerful new ally in recent weeks: Democratic National Committee Chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.).
Wasserman Schultz is co-sponsoring a new bill that would gut the CFPB’s forthcoming payday loan regulations. She’s also attempting to gin up Democratic support for the legislation on Capitol Hill, according to a memo obtained by The Huffington Post.
Trump is lying when he claims he is self-funding his campaign, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that Trump is now going to quite easily pivot to the left and cherry-pick Bernie’s arguments about Wall Street, and Trump will use them to bludgeon Hillary. And given that DWS and the DNC just rescinded the Obama era rules regarding the DNC receiving money from lobbyists, and well, you can see the problems. And it doesn’t matter that Trump wines and dines and lives with the folks he is going to use to smear Hillary, he doesn’t care. He’ll be screaming about her speaking fees, mark my word.
He’s just going to scream that the whole thing is broken and that he can fix it, and point to the parts the DNC keeps breaking and saying there is really no difference between the two parties. And on the surface, it looks like he is right.