I don’t wish to boast but I’d like to contrast my predictive record with that of our conservative friend:
Of course they do-the real fever dream is the idea that anybody besides Trump, Cruz, Rubio, and possibly Christie can get the nomination.
Qin_Shi_Huangdi:
That assumes their candidacies, especially in its relation to Iowa were equivalent. Romney was one among relative equals (Giuliani, McCain, and possibly Huckabee) in late 2007/early 2008 and needed to do well in Iowa as a candidate of the conservative part of the Establishment. TRUMP otoh has a healthy lead (the shitty Quinnipac poll not withstanding) over all the other candidates and his expectations aren’t as tied to Iowa but rather New Hampshire and South Carolina which is far more tailored towards his strengths (low turnout voters who obviously would show up more often in primaries and in cultural terms the populist Trump has far more of a resonance with ethnic Catholic blue collars in the Northeast or Scotch Irish Southern whites then with Midwestern types regardless of how conservative/liberal they are-there’s a reason why Trump is polling terribly in Yankee WASP descent areas like Mormon Utah)
That’s because both McCain and Romney were extremely strong candidates for NH-something that isn’t the case when the Establishment is divided among four candidates. And this ignores that Trump’s attractiveness is due to his unorthodoxy.
I find it rather ironic I have a higher opinion of the average Republican primary voter then you do. You seem to think that simply deluging the TV with “pollster tested” sleek ads is enough to sway voters while I think Republican voters will vote in their self interest regardless of ads. Indeed the brilliance of Trump’s strategy is that he’s exploded the idea that you need to spend huge amounts of money on expensive TV ads rather than just directly speak your mind via Twitter in an age when everyone and their grandmother are on the Internet.
Except that won’t happen.
Yes and that’s why Trump’s so popular. Christie just appears a piss-poor imitation of Trump in that regard especially with the baggage of Bridegate.
And that highlights the problem with the Establishment. All four of these Establishment candidates need to do well in New Hampshire and aren’t going to drop out before it which practically guarantees a Trump victory. Indeed with Cruz gobbling up the Tea Party/evangelical vote, its probable that none of the Establishment candidates will even come in second place.
Trump doesn’t need Iowa just like McCain.
As the article also notes, TRUMP leads in all demographics-those are just the demographics he happens to be the strongest with. And he is undoubtedly being underpolled due to TRUMP’s perceived lack of respectability.
LOL. There is no “expectation” that TRUMP needs to win Iowa and considering both Huckabee and Santorum won Iowa while being crushed in the course of the primaries, its clear the caucauses are not particularly reflect of the national contest. That said, Trump’s been tied or nipping at Cruz’s heels in most of the polls. Even assuming he is underperforming there’s no way TRUMP won’t get a respectable second place-Iowa likes the Establishment quartet even less, Carson’s campaign is in terminal decline, and Huckabee/Santorum/Paul all have abysmal numbers.
Keep telling yourself that.
Except of course unless they decide to change their registration.
Exactly-my predictions are based on current polls and the evidence of the past few months.
Those primaries and caucuses occurred in a context where fewer candidates were running and where there was a definite candidate in each camp (ie the Establishment, Christian Right, Libertarians). Here you have candidates with a certain minimal base of support owing to previous contests (Huckabee and Santorum), a divided Establishment, and of course Rand Paul’s core libertarian support.
And conversely someone dropping Cruz is more likely to move to Trump.
ARG is literally a garbage poll that makes the 1936 Literary Digest poll look accurate, so there is nothing to discuss here (Kasich at 13% LOL).
While this pains me to say as a Sanders supporter, its clear Sanders has failed to gain any significant traction among working-class voters so it seems to be that there’ll be little chance of overlap between the Sanders and Trump coalitions as much as wish it were otherwise.
They are based on both.
And they’ll be so bored at the murmurings of the usual pieties and mantras of fusionist conservatism-the paens to soulless Capital, the shrieking praise of unilateral right-Trotskyite foreign policy and the platitudes against abortion and for guns that they’ll tune it out in 15 minutes if they don’t watch something more interesting like BDSM porn.
That’s what they’ve said for the past half-year. Yet it is so self-evidently false that the humble American voter has not fallen prey to these libels. If anything the disgusting mutual masturbation sessions that a Trumpless GOP debate will inevitably be, with all the candidates desperately begging for the moneyshot from the cocks of the Kochs will cause revulsion in all patriotic souls and entrench the support behind the only Republican candidate who even remotely stands for the interests of the middle-class.
Yes, people disagree on tactics, so what?
Yet Trump’s nuggets of wisdom have packed enough fight in every previous case to utterly annihilate and reduce to atoms the carefully amassed, pseudointellectual critiques of him.
More proof that ARG is a garbage poll. How contemptuously can they view the people of New Hampshire to think Kasich the Kermit the Frog is going to get second in NH?
The difference is as pointed out, Giuliani had nonexistant support in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. TRUMP is leading or at least close to leading in all of them.
Rubio is just as exclusive-only on the basis of class.
Or perhaps it will make TRUMP recognize his strength never lay in such a cuck state like Iowa anyways especially with its reactionary caucus voting system and to double his efforts in New Hampshire and South Carolina.
Many of which unions have endorsed Clinton.
Couple of problems here-Iowa is very undemocratic in being a caucus and thus had a class bias against economically marginal and less-educated voters which primaries such as New Hampshire have less of a problem of. Not to mention in general Iowa is a pretty shill and low-energy state that was always one of the worst states for TRUMP due to its combination of Midwestern evangelical moralism and annoying “Minnesota nice” culture (which the Mormon apostates share in spirit) who shrink from the Donald’s bluntness and sincerity. The more hardass regional cultures of New Hampshire with its large bloc of blue-collar ethnic Catholics and the Scotch-Irish rednecks of both states will be far more amenable to TRUMP’s message of national greatness and genuine principle compared to the undisguised plutocratic panderings of the two Cubans in this race.
The lack of ideological thinking on this thread is stunning. Even after months of political success, people here (possibly due to many of them being oldthinkers having intellectually matured in the postwar American atmosphere declaring the end of ideology as outlined by men like Daniel Bell or somewhat later, the grandiose declarations of the “end of history” given by the likes of Fukuyama after the fall of the Soviet Union) still seem to see TRUMP as just a celebrity pseudo-candidate who is but a flavour of the month just like Herman Cain or Rick Perry in 2012 even after months of electoral victories in every region of the country. They fail to see that TRUMP has espoused a coherent vision of “radical centrist” populist nationalism since at least the 1980s and that he is leading an ideological revolution in a major party not seen since Goldwater’s “movement conservative” takeover of the GOP in 1964 and McGovern’s New Left capture of the Democratic Party in 1972. Instead they refuse to see History has indeed returned, that there indeed will be no Millennium of free trade Kantian utilitarianism and instead (perhaps somewhat more uncomfortably each time the Donald wins a new state) tune into John Oliver’s latest joke about “Drumpf” (that must be the most overhyped “joke” if it deserves to be called that in the history of humanity).
Once the big states that are far less moralistic in demographic composition vote, that is to say states that are far more marked by Celtic fire and Latin vigour then the dessicated pseudo-puritanism of the Anglo-Saxon and the Nordic, the tide will definitely once again turn in his favour. Consider for example that the next few big states are his native New York where millions of Irishmen and Italians are marching behind his banner, Pennsylvania which is the ground zero of the Plutocratic caste’s war against the American working-class unmatched in brutality since Stalin’s attack against the Kulaks, and California where immigration issues are primary.
Let’s see here:
New York of course is TRUMP’s home state and has an enormous ethnic Irish and Italian population in both the NYC metro area and upstate who have been overwhelmingly favourable to TRUMP’s message of populistic nationalism. It is this Catholic working-class/lower middle-class who makes up the core of Middle American Radicals who is the Donald’s natural constituency. Of course, polls here have him leading by overwhelming margins , exceeding 50% in every recent poll.
Pennsylvania has a large share of ethnics as well as well a significant Scotch-Irish population who also are naturally very responsive to TRUMP’s populist style. Not to mention Pennsylvania has been economically devastated by deindustrialization. One need only look at coal country around Pittsburgh to verify this truth. Similarly TRUMP has maintained a lead in all recent polling.
Everything I said about New York applies to New Jersey as well.
Now California is the most difficult case because admittedly it has undergone significant white flight and thus reduced significantly the number of white working-class and lower middle-class individuals which has strengthened the position of wealthier professional types in the remnant of the California Republican Party. Nonetheless if returns from Arizona and Nevada indicate anything, it is that any states with a large Hispanic population leads to a polarization of the immigration issue and in turn, to Republican voters supporting the most openly nativist candidate in the race-namely Donald TRUMP. Remember, this is the same state that passed Prop 187 two decades ago. Also the poll numbers have Donald in the lead.
I apologize for the excessive use of a certain term I’m now banned from repeating, but it is clear that my predictions were among the best on this board for the Republican primaries in predicting the final victory of Donald J. TRUMP.