You now have new data from the CNN/ORC poll and the Economist/YouGov poll. They both indicate that Donald Trump weathered the storm from his John McCain comments and came out of the controversy in a stronger overall position. I kind of like how Molly Ball summarized the situation:
Trump has the Republican Party by the throat. It cannot figure out how to get rid of him. The party elites, those snobs in D.C. who do not respect or understand the people out there in America, are tearing their hair out over the damage Trump is supposedly doing to the party…
…Yet the party has no power over Trump. He has the money, he has the press, he has the voters…
…Tomorrow, he will be on the front page again; he will lead all the newscasts. The summer of Trump will continue.
You can’t stop it. Nobody can.
That’s where Ms. Ball should have ended her article, but she couldn’t resist adding one more sentence: “Trump is too big.”
Actually, Trump has very little to do with any of this. And Ms. Ball found a Trump supporter down in Laredo who summarized what she supports, and it’s not some hothead from New York City.
Outside in the sun, Elizabeth Allen, a 57-year-old Laredo resident whose brown hair spikes up behind a black headband, cannot contain her excitement. “We can’t go to the dentist because it’s too expensive, but the Mexicans come here and have their babies and get food stamps and welfare and healthcare,” she says. “They live here in the ugliest little houses. They will kill for their flag, do anything for Mexico. They will never love our country. They are here only to use us and to steal our money.”
Interestingly, Ms. Allen’s first language is Spanish. But, then, you have to spend some time along the border to understand the culture of southern Texas. And at least Ms. Allen’s concern about Mexican immigration isn’t based entirely on abstract fear. Her uncle was stabbed by a Mexican.
NEW YORK, NY – MARCH 09: Donald Trump and Melania Knauss-Trump attend the Comedy Central Roast Of Donald Trump at the Hammerstein Ballroom on March 9, 2011 in New York City. (Photo by Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images)
But my point is that she isn’t talking about Donald Trump’s business acumen or winning personality. If Trump drops out and Carly Fiorina starts talking about Mexican rapists, these voters will be ready to pick up her banner.
Let’s just be blunt about it. Donald Trump makes Rudy Giuliani look like a warm and cuddly New Yorker. Trump has nothing in common with evangelical Christians, least of all his approach to women and human sexuality. The anti-crony capitalism Tea Party folks should despise Trump for his support of the Stimulus bill and how he made his fortune. And the conservatives should have a real problem with Trump’s political donations to the Clintons, and prior support for national health care, among other things.
But they all want him in the race.
The majority of those Republicans surveyed that wants Trump to remain in the race includes numbers of those seen as the core of the GOP primary electorate: 58% of white evangelicals, 58% of conservatives, and 57% of tea party supporters.
And I didn’t even mention Trump’s famous birtherism, which ought to make people point and laugh at him. By comparison, those who think 9/11 was an inside job or that the moon landing was faked have significantly more plausible cases to make than the folks who think the president was born in Kenya. If you can overlook Trump having pimped that conspiracy theory, you’ve already left Planet Reality. Your standards are so low that you’ll basically support anyone or anything if only it tickles your hatred zone.
And that’s the key here. Trump is tickling the hatred zone. And the Republican base can’t stop laughing at the pundits and the Republican Establishment.
Trump can go away, and this problem will remain. No one can stop it.
Most likely Ms. Allen can’t afford the dentist only because Texas has refused the Medicaid expansion. And of course welfare was eliminated 20 years ago. I’m not sure where the flag business comes from; there are lots of undocumented immigrants where I live and I rarely see Mexican flags.
I am truly amazed at how much nonsense the rightwing can push through captive media.
Does Medicaid cover dental and vision? Medicare doesn’t without buying Medicare Advantage. Does Obamacare cover dental and vision?
There is part of your issue right there.
And borderland Texas has always been Mexican. Who exactly is the outsider here? There is a region of kinship along the border that one author has called Amexica.
You just can’t steal land and labor like you used to.
Anglos in Amexica are not nearly so interesting as Anglos with few Hispanics around. Or the folks in Steven King’s district in Iowa, whom the meat processors brought in for cheap labor. The same business owners who support the crazies of the Republican Party. The crazy is cultivated and institutionally support and reinforced by the article that BooMan’s post quoted. That has created the simulacrum of a political reality.
Some states include dental and vision in their Medicaid programs. That might be universal for children covered under Medicaid. With the Medicaid expansion, states generally followed whatever existed under their program.
S-Chip includes dental and vision.
Not sure how any of that relates to the affordability of dental care for that woman in Texas. But I suppose it’s understandable that an adult not privileged to have dental care insurance or adequate income to afford it would resent the fact that Medicaid beneficiaries up to the age of 21 get free dental care.
Correct about Medicare. I can’t afford a supplemental plan, so I haven’t been to the dentist in quite a few years. My wife and children under Maryland’s CareFirst (BCBS) can’t afford dental coverage, so, since the time both children had dental emergencies earlier this year, we’ve been struggling along with installment payments for the full cost.
The evidence from Remote Area Medical free clinic fairs is that dental care is why most people show up for them. Suggests that medical care for low income and poor people was easier for them to access before the PPACA than dental care.
Ya know, it’s just a mite POSSIBLE that Ms. Allen has an incorrect view of the many lavish benefits undocumented immigrants from Mexico receive. It’s also just a mite possible that all Republicans are terrible human beings who revel in their sadism.
It would really be hilarious if it wasn’t so scary. Party ideologues from Bill Kristol to Reihan Salam imagine their voters really care about the Constitution or free markets theory or the souls of the unborn or what have you, and here comes Trump to reveal that no, they’re just pissed off and resentful, with no coherent ideas at all.
As proven by the comments made by the woman from Texas, people are going to believe what they want to believe and back the candidate who expresses those beliefs. Trump says what a lot of people believe but aren’t comfortable saying, unfortunately. He makes it okay for them by saying it out loud instead of behind closed doors.
Trump, in his usual hamhanded style, made his comments about McCain as a slur, but what he probably was trying to say was that McCain was bad at his job. McCain was a poor student in the military academy, he crashed planes, and he was captured. Had Trump framed his disparaging remarks in that way, that McCain was bad at his job, the press and public would not have been so horrified. But Trump has no filter between his brain and mouth.
And guess what: that’s why his fans love him!
I call “The Hatred Zone,” the ‘GOP-spot.”
Whatever you want to call it, he’s not just tickling it, he’s caressing and massaging it.
Whew…
Is it getting hot in here, or is it just me?
Next he’ll be sucking and licking at it.
GOP-spot. I love it!
I talked with an NYC cab driver, immigrant from a Latin American country who supports Trump b/c of his views on Mexicans, which my cab driver shares. He didn’t take T’s comments as racist or anti-Latino, but as an accurate depiction of Mexicans.
I expect it’s like futbol…
Trump’s playing against El Tri — so root for Trump.
Oh yes, so much for Latino solidarity. Try talking to Central Americans about Mexico. To them, Mexico is the ham handed Colossus of the North.
I hear this a lot. Fill in the blank: Mexicans/Blacks/Arabs/Hindus. Of course it’s racism but what I can’t understand is when I tell these people that they should complain to the politicians that they want those benefits too and we should all have them as a right, they recoil in horror. “What are you, some kind of Communist?” They resent the government giving someone else having a benefit (forget for now whether it’s true or not) but instead of demanding that benefit (free phone/free internet/free healthcare …), they demand that no one have it. Brainwashed by the one percent who are the only people who benefit.
Oregon just recently passed a bill mandating 5 (!!!) days of paid sick leave. Comment sections are filled to the brim with “Why doesn’t that unelected communist Kate Brown go to Cuba where she belongs!”
For FIVE days of paid sick! Federal employees get 13 days of paid sick annually, and these days can accrue indefinitely. That should be the MINIMUM standard.
They are the ones calling the bankruptcy lawyer if they need an operation and are out of work for sixty days. Idiots!
One part of the federal sick leave that I don’t like, and I’m not alone in this, is that you can only donate your annual leave (vacation) to someone who has run out of sick leave. Working with an older crew (and a lot of smokers), I know several people that ran out of their sick leave battling cancer. i retired with four months accrued. The rules gave me four months credit toward the pension but that’s only a dollar or two a month. I would have gladly donated it to someone who really needed it.
In a big facility a dozen people donating a week or two of accrued leave can make a big difference to someone too sick to work because of chemotherapy.
At least it accrues indefinitely. Many private shops — if they even separate vacation leave from sick, which many don’t — it’s a use/lose situation where you need to use it before the year is up.
Makes. No. Sense.
And then the people who think “burger flippers” aren’t entitled to sick leave. Do you want these people sneezing in your food?
Both forms have merit. I rather like not splitting earned days off into vacation and sick leave. For those like me that rarely needed a sick day, I didn’t like having to lie to access a sick day time off (which was also rare as at one time I had over six months of accumulated sick time). Otherwise, it doesn’t make much difference for those that don’t abuse sick time. The abusers hate it because the combined, accrued vacation/sick time was more generous when it was split.
As a new employee in a company that didn’t split the days off and for the longest time, I couldn’t figure out why one of the assistants complained continuously about the time off policy. It was skimpy but not draconian. I finally asked one of the other women. Apparently before the operation was sold to another company, they’d been there long enough to get three weeks of paid vacation. Under the new owner it was three weeks time off. An adjustment for all of them, but not a significant one except for the complainer. The old policy had no limit on sick days and she’d been accustomed to taking a Monday or Friday sick day every three weeks or so.
I’m the opposite. Because sick time accrues indefinitely, I’d like it for paternity leave if I have children (probably won’t, but who knows), or if not then I could retire early. So if I’m sick, I take vacation time, which has a use/lose limit (and is also perfectly valid if your supervisor approves, which mine does (he hasn’t taken 1 day of sick leave in his entire stint and he’s been here since the 1980’s; he uses vacation time for when he’s sick)).
Further, paid vacation time accrues faster with seniority, whereas paid sick stays the same throughout the entire career.
If your paid vacation could accrue indefinitely, then it’s not terrible to not have it split. The problems arise when they’re both split and use/lose. They should just be split, and mandate by the government like a social security insurance system. Guaranteed paid sick and guaranteed paid vacation. Abuse happens everywhere and with everything, but is rarely widespread.
When they’re both combined* and use/lose.
What would a national employee earned time off benefit look like?
Is there a structure that would wouldn’t favor one person or group over another?
I imagine it would be structured a lot like how Social Security and unemployment benefits are structured. You pay a percentage into the general fund from payroll taxes, your employer covers another share from payroll, and it acts like insurance.
Most of these programs are integrated with their national health services, though, and include maternity/paternity benefits, health care, retirement, disability, and working compensation all in the same system.
PwC: Social security systems
around the globe
And then our own Social Security website provides overviews of how they’re structured worldwide:
SSA: Social Security Programs Throughout the World
Okay — but let’s get real. We’re talking about a country that doesn’t mandate any paid holidays, vacations, and sick leave. And employers and employees are phobic about payroll taxes.
So, is there a floor structure that the vast majority of Americans could agree upon? That wouldn’t be subject to manipulation and distortion by the politicians and cheap labor capitalists?
Probably not, but I don’t see how it would work otherwise. Either we do it via payroll taxes, or the government forces the employers to eat the losses…
Many employers provide sick benefits and vacation at the moment, but those are employers above the median pay scale. ~50% of the bottom 25% (on an hourly basis) receive vacation (don’t know about sick), the average being 9 days annually (4 days is the average if we include workers who don’t get any).
So where does that leave us? Doing nothing? Many people advocated for single payer, which would have to come from increasing payroll taxes. It’s why Vermont abandoned their plan to do it. How would the administration have gotten that across if we can’t even get 5 days of guaranteed paid sick to be raised into consciousness, let alone be fought over on the Congressional floor?
We start with a conversation/dialogue and inform the public of realities that don’t exist in their cocoons.
Begin with — shouldn’t all workers receive sick leave pay? And not all workers should receive five days a year of sick leave. The former asks people to consider what’s right and fair. They don’t want to be around people that are sick but can’t afford to stay home until they’re well. Telling them it should be five days causes them to consider their personal experiences. Many don’t average more than a day or two per year themselves. And their perception of lower paid workers is that they abuse sick leave benefits and that pisses them off.
Shouldn’t all workers receive some paid holidays and paid vacation time? Get agreement on that (which isn’t as high a hurdle as our current political discourse makes it seem) then we negotiate what the minimums in all those categories can and should be.
Conservatives only win when they can hide/mask the basic fairness of a question/issue. Remember Terri Schiavo. 60% of the public rejected the GOP position when they got what the issue meant for them.
Sure, that’s fine. The specifics are an alternate story that the lawmakers deal with. You get support by just raising consciousness about the issue in generalized terms and fairness.
But you seemed to imply that even after getting people to support the plans in general, once the specifics are laid out, they’d be easy to attack, demonize, and take away because of people’s aversion to payroll taxes. Similar to how people in general support “action to combat climate change and keep our environment clean” until they hear specifics of what that actually entails (increasing gas tax, for example).
No. I’m saying when a principle is agreed upon that we then negotiate the specifics of how to implement the principle. At that point the principle is no longer a subject for debate.
With sick leave there are two principles:
Too often we leap to a policy solution that someone likes without buy-in of the principle and too often that solution leads to contentious disagreement and then nothing gets done.
Personally, I don’t like Sanders post secondary education proposal. It was fine in the post WWII period when the percentage of college graduates was low and the economy couldn’t quickly absorb the millions of vets. The proposal leaves too many people out and continues to hype the notion that college is the way forward for individuals to get jobs and that it’s what employers need. We could get more bang for the buck by subsidizing OJT jobs for high school graduates. Set different and higher standards for high school graduation that take advantage of student talents and inclinations and inform them of the standards they must meet for one of those OJT jobs.
Either we start having infrastructure that includes some form of income maintenance infrastructure or we don’t. It’s the idea of infrastructure that is difficult to persuade people of–even roads and schools and water supplies these days.
Gotta slay the “socialist” bogeyman to move forward.
The folks who don’t want it are those who have the political power within private organizations to suck away the results of other people’s productivity.
A reasonable benefit includes health care (that reduces the incidence of sick days) and allows for catastrophic event times off. The issue of claiming sick days to get off is a management issue and generally a symptom of something structurally wrong in an organization. Which goes to better opportunities for folks doing actual meaningful work and less bureaucratic makework. For example, in a single payer system in principle large billing and collections staffs are not needed. It is only if the government is playing games with the system or the providers are playing games with the system that a simple bill-and-payment system will not work.
Does health care reduce the incidence of sick days? Or does not being around sick people reduce the incidence of sickness?
Our company gives us 8 sick days per year. We have to either us those or lose them at the end of every year. Unlike my wife’s company, though, where if they suspect that you took a sick day when you weren’t actually sick they might force you to prove your illness with a doctor’s note; my company actually encourages people to use all their “sick days”. This works well for people like me, who has never had to take a day due to illness during my 15 years there. So I have those days for illness, should I need them, but they are really just another 8 vacation days for me. Tack those onto my earned vacation and I end up with 5 1/2 weeks of paid time off every year. The problem then becomes the ability to actually use all the days you have accrued.
As I was pointing out, it’s complicated and employer worker requirements vary so much that a one size fits all policy is difficult to construct.
Lots of penny-wise dollar-foolish makework and cost in that system. They likely save very little as compared to trusting their employees.
Also, while that should be the minimum standard, it’s by no means ideal. Many countries don’t do an accrual method, but instead you take as much sick leave as needed at a pay cut (like 80% of pay) with a doctor’s note.
Perhaps five days for colds and flu and the like, but some sort of pay continuation insurance for major illness and surgery.
The banks should like that. It would reduce bankruptcy rates and they could make a profit through their insurance subsidiaries by selling insurance to business.
Although I oppose individual mandates, mandates on business are Constitutional through the interstate commerce clause. What business isn’t engaged in interstate commerce these days?
It’s that same stupid attitude. “I don’t have any paid sick leave so nobody should.” Don’t you just want to grab them by the hair and bounce their heads on the wall a bit?
You can build a whole political party on that:
“I could make your life better — but I won’t. Instead, I’ll make someone else’s life worse, and let you watch.”
I bet you could take both Houses of Congress on the strength of that sales pitch…
I think they already did that. Further, they fuck up the country and blame the “libruls”. It’s funny, in a disgusting wat, to read comments blaming current status on “the librul Congress”. But then comes the disquieting thought. Maybe he really does think the John Boehner and Mitch McConnell are Liberals.
Also, they embroil us in the Mideast then complain about “Democrat(sic) wars”.
thought liberals understood this, and it took years before I understood it.
Working class people derive a sense of accomplishment in being independent. Arguments for making something free actually strike at a core sense of that accomplishment.
People derive a sense of accomplishment from work and supporting themselves and their families from their labors.
With socialism so thoroughly maligned in this country, we don’t have the proper words for collective financial benefits to insure that nobody goes without the basic needs being taken care of. Hand ups not hand outs.
Because for most working people, their lives are so controlled within the corporate premises that the notion of liberty extended by the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution is a cruel joke.
They see too many times when management orders them to do stupid things. And yet they must obey unquestioningly.
They also are clear that the money comes from somewhere and where it comes from can be easily (because of the fickleness of power) be withdrawn. Most have a sense of accomplishment in the results of their labor, if that assignment of responsibility is allowable in their industry.
response.
You aren’t really listening to them. You belittle their pride.
I used too as well.
We are constantly told that we don’t have the resources to fix our roads and bridges. We don’t have the resources to help the poor, the sick, or all of the elderly. We are told it will cost too much.
So this argument about immigration will always resonate. Why are we letting more people into america when we can’t take care of our won? Why are we spending money to wage wars in the middle east or rebuild all these horrible countries full of terrorists when we can’t take care of our own?
If progressives had answers to these questions, they would find a somewhat more receptive electorate. The answer, of course, is that we need to raise taxes to pay for all this stuff… or else we need to borrow more.
Personally I would prefer we stop waging wars, stop trying to rebuild the rest of the world, and stop letting new people into the country while at the same time taking care of our own. But… none of that is going to happen. Why is that? Why can’t we bring ourselves to stop being the world’s policeman or the world’s refugee camp? Is it our so-called values or something else?
Europe is being overwhelmed with refugees from Africa and the middle east wars. As conditions around the world deteriorate further due to climate change and conflict, does it make sense to let all those people come to safety here and in Western Europe? I’m not so sure.
It would help if certain western nations would stop the insanity of supporting military ventures to topple foreign regimes they find unhelpful, leading to political destabilization and a huge refugee problem.
There’s also the problem few liberals or anyone else wants to address — overpopulation — which is exacerbating the situation and will continue to cause economic-political upheavals all over the world. The major nations of the world need to get together to agree on a population freeze or limit (one) on children. Especially pressing as climate change causes natural resource depletion.
As for funding for our stateside problems, we can start by cutting the Pentagon and intel budgets by half. Then raising the upper income tax rates, not back to 90% but 55-60%. Won’t happen in my lifetime of course — the other party is too deeply dug in on opposing tax increases on the wealthy.
Is that a problem of overpopulation, or capitalism? I’d argue the latter. Of course, the best way women can improve their livelihood in almost any circumstance is through family planning and taking control of their reproduction. But the other side is that progressive politics does have a history and flirtation with eugenics, and talks about overpopulation inevitably land at the feet of “those people” when it’s the resource extraction and consumption of western nations that’s causing the bulk of the problem.
Maybe when there were “only” 3b people on the planet the overconsumption issue would have seemed plausible, but not with the current 7b (or is it actually 8b) plus we have now. That grim number (whichever is more accurate) combined with climate change is going to mean a severe stress on the planet’s infrastructure of resources, no matter how much we cut back on consuming. Well, unless the vast majority of the over consuming populations can accept living a 19th C non-technological, rural existence, which they won’t.
It does need to be a coordinated worldwide effort however, not just the first-world largely white western nations calling on the third world to stop what they’re doing.
We don’t know what the potential carrying capacity for human beings on planet earth is. We only know that its too small for the current population if everybody had a US standard of living.
Had world population not increased over seven times from 1800 until today, say at half that rate, everything today would be more manageable. Science/tech and cultures wouldn’t have struggled to keep up with a more crowded planet.
And let’s not put the onus for corrections on the backs of women. Few are like that Duggar wife. Men and patriarchal cultures and religions are what has prevented women from taking full control of their bodies.
Men and patriarchal cultures and religions are what has prevented women from taking full control of their bodies.
Yes, that’s what I mean. I apologize if I at all put the onus on women with the way it came out; didn’t mean it that way. I just meant that living standards drastically improve (for all genders and sexes) when men and patriarchal cultures GTFO and leave women be.
I tipped your comment; so, I was sure it wasn’t exactly what you think and feel. We all lapse into conventional speak about certain issues without recognizing that while such speak has been politically, culturally, etc. helpful that it leaves out much and in doing so can appear racist, etc. without any such intent on the part of the speaker.
I don’t think that it is possible to prevent much of the illegal immigration. All the stuff we’ve done so far hasn’t done much. Walls, fences,electronics, drones, aerostats, more personnel, Perry’s National Guard, etc etc. Yes we could do more but we are already into diminishing returns,imo. Plus it’s not just the 2000 mile Mexican border, there is another 10,000 miles of border and coast, and hundreds of airports. So, forget that as an option.
Mexico isn’t the problem.
A poor US domestic economy, and a Mexican fertility rate headed towards replacement by 2025, has managed to reverse the numbers on illegal immigration from Mexico. This despite the drug-relate crime problem especially in Mexico’s border states, and a worsening Mexico/US GDP ratio.
The net has been zero since 2010.
Good information, thanks. It’s interesting to see that these are non-military factors that are apparently more effective than the military factors. And if those factors should change, or other unknown factors come into play, I don’t think there is much to stop the situation from reversing again. I’m not one of those who see this as a problem, either way. The problem is their lack of documentation keeps them from participating fully in American life, vulnerable to exploitation and increasing their “cost” to all of us.
Betcha a majority of illegal immigrates arrive in the US by airplane with a passport and picture ID from their home country. They just never go back when the VISA expires.
Hence the stupidity of “The Fence”.
It’s not-the-answer to not-the-problem.
Some high-profile trials of employers who are attracting and employing undocumented immigrants and keeping them in conditions of effective servitude would have a salutary effect.
Progressives don’t really have a very good answer to this.
Trump has nothing in common with evangelical Christians, least of all his approach to women and human sexuality.
Wrong!! Because Evangelicals don’t really give a shit about Jesus, if you haven’t noticed. Someone wrote an essay about why the Evangelicals love Trump. Wish I could find it but I only saw it because of Twitter and and I don’t know who tweeted the link out.
My parents’ are fundie evangelicals. Next time I’m home I’ll try and get a read on it.
Trump: mutatis mutandis, what George Wallace was to the Democrats in 1968?
Unfortunately, Trump has made it almost acceptable to be a bigot. The national conversation has been lowered.
You give Trump too much credit. Sadly, the bigotry was accepted long before Trump ever opened his mouth about illegal aliens, or even before he started his quixotic birtherism….and it largely stems from 2 decades of propaganda on AM talk radio and Fox News post-9/11.
The difference is that Trump’s message isn’t coded; much to the chagrin of the GOP Establishment. He’s saying the things that they actually think, and what the radical fringe want to hear, but most candidates are politically savvy enough to not say.
This could work out very well for the Dems (and Hillary in particular) if they can capitalize on painting the GOP (and their rabid base) as being the out-of-touch, racist, fascist, hypocrites and elitist plutocrats that they really are and drive Independents and Moderates to the Democratic side.
It was overt and widespread by 1968 and that’s almost five decades ago. The politicization of the fundiess came a decade later after Carter made it okay to add Jeebus to political identity. (And everybody knows that Jeebus was an anti-communist capitalist.) Which extended its reach and allowed it to become more entrenched.
Sounds good, but I tried a version of that last night at dinner with my young Repub tenant who has worked in the campaigns of a couple of current GOP presidential aspirants and in the Bush WH. She wasn’t buying my portrait of at least a wing of the Repub Pty as being fascist. She just shut me down and got a tad defensive.
Neither did my brief rant against the crook Dick Nixon persuade her. Surely she wouldn’t object to some choice words about the only president forced to resign. But no, someone I thought was only moderately conservative and moderately joined to that party, she just refused to engage in that conversation and I felt guilty for even testing those waters.
Maybe I need to work on my approach, because I thought she’d shown signs previously as being one of those reasonable remaining types in the GOP.
Team spirit is strong….
It might be that you need to approach her with George Lakoff’s approach (if you haven’t read his books, he’s a must read) — basically it’s about moral framing and not about facts.
I think the key is to attract Independents and Moderate Republicans that do not want to associate with the hard-right GOP, and the kind of buffoonery that Trump (or whoever the flavor-of-the-month is) imparts will work to further alienate the portion of the electorate that could ultimately tip the scales.
That’s true, but fortunately there are some pretty strict limitations on how far this can go.
One thing I’ve been trying to figure out is how the number of people who are revolted by Trump compares to the number who are jumping on his bandwagon. There was a poll about a week or so back where 48% said Trump’s comments on Mexicans were important to them; and of those 15% said they were more likely to vote for him because of those comments, while 48% said they were less likely. That’s about 3 to 1, which feels about right to me, but that’s really just a guess.
I’m not unsympathetic here. We just miss the cut for Obamacare subsidies and even with exchange insurance it’s not easy to pay medical bills. But the answer here is single payer not driving out people who depend on state assistance.
There’s only so much information that can fit on a bumper sticker. So for the Trump supporters, their line of sight won’t ever see beyond Build a Wall.
Booman…you say essentially the same thing twice in this article:
They both betray a kind of progressive wishful thinking that is actually very common. “It’s not the person that’s the problem, it’s the problem that’s the problem.” I offer the disastrous presidencies of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan as evidence that this is simply not the case. Both of them ran on themselves, not really on the issues. Not really. You could make a case for the candidacies of JFK, RFK (I believe that he would have won had he survived) and Bill Clintons as well.
It’s a stardom thing.
An emotional thing.
Some people have it, and some people don’t.
Trump has it in spades, and…bet on it…he’s not dropping out so Carly Fiorina or some other joker can take over. He is basking in the attention. It’s his lifeblood. It’s almost sexual in nature. It’s an addicition. These are the symptoms of a serious mental and emotional illness, in my opinion, and combined with his enormous wealth they make him a most dangerous man. If he does disappear for some reason, his constituency will scatter to any number of other, less charismatic candidates. But he’s not going anywhere. Not voluntarily, anyway.
So…as is implicit in his every appearance…I repeat:
The only thing that you…we, actually because as much as I have opposed the various (largely failed, unfortunately) so-called “progressive” efforts of the past 7 years or so, I cannot sit idly by and watch this madman bluster his way into the White House……the only thing that we can do about it appears to me to be to put up an equally charismatic Democratic candidate who offers a better platform than demonizing Mexicans, valuing the power of big money and almost literally jerking off onstage.
Maybe the PermaGov will somehow eventually isolate him to the point that he needs to start a third party to take care of his obviously very rapidly growing…metastasizing, in a word…attention addiction and then manage to put the fix in for a loyal DemRat like HRC, but other than that?
Who’s a potential DemRat candidate who could meet him head to head and prevail?
I can only see two, myself, and it’s neither Hillary Clinton nor Bernie Sanders.
Who?
Martin O’Malley, an outside chance of Joe Biden or a really good chance (if done right) of a Biden/O’Malley ticket with O’Malley the designated attack dog on Trump while Biden plays the experienced statesman role.
Trump would massacre either HRC or Bernie Sanders in a debate. HRC just doesn’t have that populist fire and Bernie? When the “Black lives matter” folks gave him some real red meat opposition…red meat opposition that pales in comparison to a Trump attack… he transformed into immediately being just another whining old Brooklyn-style liberal. (“These people today…they just don’t play fair!!! They aren’t listening to me,” etc., etc., etc.) O’Malley actually handled himself quite well under the circumstances. He went neutral and let the fire burn itself out. Good instincts. Opposition would have bred more opposition and capitulation would have bred some very bad press. “He’s weak!!! Like dat. He Aikidoed ’em and then disappeared down the street with little or no real damage to either side. Like I said…good instincts.
Dassit. That’s all I have to say on the matter except that the Trump candidacy is scaring the living shit out of me. Scaring me enough to begin looking for where to go if the Trump hits the fan.
Really.
Denmark comes to mind.
Later…
AG
This reply is now a stand-alone post. Make No Mistake. Trump Is NOT Issue-Oriented. He Is TRUMP-Oriented.
Comment there if you wish to do so.
Thank you.
AG
The perfect modern candidate:
Now you say. And it is working amazingly well for him just now, with the eager press following his every move; one eponymous jet and a $10 hat yields $100M free media. Who knew? Laugh softly, dear friends, this marriage of Reality TV and politics might prove to be a dubious turning point for all concerned and difficult to put asunder.
Take a closer look at the YouGov poll. If you compare Trump’s favorability ratings with Clinton’s, it seems pretty unlikely that he’s ever going to be president. Clinton isn’t that popular overall, with a net -2 favorability, but Trump’s at -27.
And that of course is directly related to his popularity among the Republican base. Naked bigotry alienates a lot of people besides the ones it’s aimed at. And it’s not going to play well in the debates either. Regardless of who the Democrats nominate, Trump is only going be be massacring himself if he continues with the “Mexicans are rapists” shtick. And it’s a little too late for him to try walking that back.
So you< say. If you’re right? More power to you and probably a little more power to the rest of us as well. If you’re wrong? If we all sit around waiting for Trump to run out of himself and he doesn’t?
UH oh!!!
Better to oppose him effectively than to wait. Taking Hitler for some kind of clown is what destroyed Germany.
Wanna be next?
It could happen…
AG
This neutral, freighted adjective seems to be the media’s new way of slyly acknowledging their infatuation with Trump without admitting their addiction.
There is actually a simple answer to the illegal problem.
Ignore the fence. Stop building the fence.
Use a national ID card, for all 1) jobs 2) rentals 3) transactions > $500.
In addition to the fact that this would immediately end illegal immigration (if you can’t work or rent, you will not stay here), states could save billions by using the National ID card as a driver’s license.
…Yet the party has no power over Trump. He has the money, he has the press, he has the voters…
This sentence holds the single key to explaining Trump, yet the author didn’t realize it.
He has his own money, enough to fund a full Presidential campaign. Even Jeb Bush doesn’t have that much – he is entirely dependent on donors. So does every one of the other GOP nutcases, declared or not, running for President.
The last time someone with that much cash, and a willingness to flush it down the Presidential campaign drain, ran? Ross Perot.
So Trump can talk like a Limbaugh or Hannity and stir up the base, but unlike the past examples of short-lived GOP candidates who did just that, he won’t see his funding dry up. When the anti-Trump news bytes start appearing more and more often on right wing media – as they did with Gingrich and Bachmann and Santorum and all of the other flame-outs – Trump will be able to counter.
This is becoming an interesting test. Trump is refusing to cow-tow to the party elders, and he may have the funds to get away with this.
I’d say “pass the popcorn” if the consequences of the GOP gaining the presidency weren’t so catastrophic.
There is NOTHING that Donald Trump is saying that is out of the mainstream GOP.
NOTHING.
Their problems…I will continue to hammer on this..
Is that he’s saying it in non-Frank Luntz-approved language.
THAT is the problem, because then the MSM can’t pretend that they don’t hear the dogwhistles.
that’s their anger at Trump.
I just want him on the stage for that first debate. I will actually watch it.