# Donald Trump's 2016 General Election Campaign **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [May 4, 2016, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trumps-2016-general-election-campaign/753901 "2016-05-04T02:37:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 15
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2016, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trumps-2016-general-election-campaign/753901/281 "2016-05-12T05:03:22Z")
I’ve become convinced Trump’s candidacy is like a giant Rorschach test for whichever liberal is writing about him. There seems to be no end to the fantastical lengths they’ll go to in order to explain his popularity in a way that is demeaning to his supporters at the same time. The truth is that no matter who the Republican candidate had been we’d still be hearing pretty much the same thing. To the liberal mind there’s simply no rational excuse for voting Republican so there just _has_ to be crackpottery afoot somewhere. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Ace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/6bbea6/32.png) [@Johnny\_Ace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Ace)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2016, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trumps-2016-general-election-campaign/753901/282 "2016-05-12T05:11:40Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > I’ve become convinced Trump’s candidacy is like a giant Rorschach test for whichever liberal is writing about him. There seems to be no end to the fantastical lengths they’ll go to in order to explain his popularity in a way that is demeaning to his supporters at the same time. The truth is that no matter who the Republican candidate had been we’d still be hearing pretty much the same thing. To the liberal mind there’s simply no rational excuse for voting Republican so there just _has_ to be crackpottery afoot somewhere. To this liberal(ish) mind there’s simply no rational excuse for buying all the bullshit that Trump obviously spews…and you know as well as I do that Trump is the definition of RINO. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2016, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trumps-2016-general-election-campaign/753901/283 "2016-05-12T05:15:58Z")
You are so very wrong. Voting for McCain or Romney is not preposterous. Voting for Dubya was pretty dumb, but he talked about compassionate conservatism and had a clever Svengali in Karl Rove. Voting for Drumpf, though, is “full retard”. And not the lovable, huggable kind, but the inbred hillbilly kind, with dried spittle in the corners of his mouth and fear and loathing in his heart. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2016, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trumps-2016-general-election-campaign/753901/284 "2016-05-12T05:24:18Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > I’ve become convinced Trump’s candidacy is like a giant Rorschach test for whichever liberal is writing about him. There seems to be no end to the fantastical lengths they’ll go to in order to explain his popularity in a way that is demeaning to his supporters at the same time. The truth is that no matter who the Republican candidate had been we’d still be hearing pretty much the same thing. To the liberal mind there’s simply no rational excuse for voting Republican so there just _has_ to be crackpottery afoot somewhere. Realizing that Trump is a crackpot is not just coming from our imagination. From Dr. David H. Gorski AKA Orac that also publishes the site _Science-Based Medicine_ and knows a lot about quacks. > **[The Republican Party is on the verge of nominating has made an antivaccine...](https://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2016/05/03/the-republican-party-is-on-the-verge-of-nominating-an-antivaccine-loon-named-donald-trump)** > > \[Note: Since this was written, Donald Trump won Indiana and Ted Cruz has suspended his campaign. This is why I changed the title of this post on Tuesday night. Meet your presumptive nominee, Republicans.\] > [@](#): > > **The Republican Party has made an antivaccine loon named Donald Trump its presumptive nominee.** > > I haven’t written anything about Donald Trump and vaccines in a while. When last I did write about him, I enumerated his long, sordid history of making ridiculously pseudoscientific antivaccine statements linking vaccines to autism dating back at least to 2007. That was when I first discovered him and referred to him as the latest celebrity antivaccinationist drinking the Kool Aid of vaccine pseudoscience. A few years later, I noted his risibly nonsensical claim that a “monster shot” causes autism. Truly, Donald Trump’s history of making idiotic antivaccine statements is long and sordid. Of course, Donald Trump’s history of making idiotic statements about a great many subjects is long and sordid, but antivaccine pseudoscience is what I know better than domestic or foreign policy. > [@](#): > > Still, if Trump were actually to become President, he could do great damage to public health. Sure, school vaccine mandates are a state issue, but the guidelines upon which they are based are developed by the CDC. Over the last couple of decades, there have been various antivaccine legislators who have brought CDC officials before Congressional committees to demand “answers” about the link between vaccines and autism. Just imagine how much trouble a President Trump could cause, with his power to appoint a Secretary of HHS. I was reminded of this again by a video in a story that popped up in my feed yesterday featuring Elizabeth Emken. > > The reason this is relevant is that Emken used to be the Executive Director of Autism Speaks, an “autism advocacy” group that used to be very much into antivaccine pseudoscience. Indeed, after much foot dragging, it wasn’t until 2015 that Autism Speaks finally grudgingly admitted that there is no good evidence linking vaccines to autism after a large study was published showing no evidence of a link between vaccines and autism and a meta-analysis involving over a million children similarly failed to find a link. It’s not for nothing that Autism Speaks has been quite appropriately accused of speaking up too late on vaccines. > [@](#): > > As the primary season winds down, the Republican Party is on the verge of nominating an antiscience, antivaccine loon named Donald Trump. It looks as though he will have a spokeswoman who, through the use of weasel words like those of the co-founder of the organization she used to work for, will try use her skills to make Trump’s antivaccine nonsense sound more palatable. She will fail. Indeed the people he is choosing speaks volumes about the agenda that he will try to make a reality if he becomes president. [Supporting Trump is a trap](http://www.weeklystandard.com/pass-the-hemlock/article/2002234), and if the Republicans just want to polish that turd they are welcomed to it, they are the ones getting dirtier because they will be embracing more than just anti vaccination. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2016, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trumps-2016-general-election-campaign/753901/285 "2016-05-12T05:35:30Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > To the liberal mind there’s simply no rational excuse for voting Republican . . . Sure there is, if you’re rich. But rational =! ethical. ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2016, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trumps-2016-general-election-campaign/753901/286 "2016-05-12T05:41:43Z")
[Trump doesn’t see himself changing tone for the general election.](http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/trump-new-york-times-interview-223044) > [@Donald Trump](#): > > You win the pennant and now you’re in the World Series — you gonna change? People like the way I’m doing. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2016, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trumps-2016-general-election-campaign/753901/287 "2016-05-12T05:46:46Z")
For me, one of the most absurd, groan-inducing aspects of Drumpf’s personality is one that gets relatively little attention. Some may find it relatively subtle compared to some of his outrageous rhetoric, but I key off on it because it shows him to be incredibly insecure, and surprisingly bad at hiding it, for a demagogue with millions of fans. To illustrate, check out this section of his Meet the Press interview last weekend, and note how many times he repeats some variation of the Stuart Smalley line “That’s OK”: > [@](#): > > DONALD TRUMP: > > Well, here’s the story. I helped Mitt a lot. I raised a lot of money for him. I ruined the carpet in my apartments, I had so many people come. We actually had to have two fundraisers because there were so many people, for his wife, who is a fantastic woman, by the way. > > I had these fundraisers in my apartment. They called me for help. And I did robocalls. I did speeches for him. I did everything during the primary season. During the election season, for some reason, they should have used me in Florida. He would have won Florida. But they had this, you know, campaign manager, Stewart whatever, who didn’t like Donald Trump. He thought Donald Trump was too tough and too controversial, and don’t use him. So they didn’t use me, and that was okay. When it came down to the convention, I wasn’t a part of the convention, and that was okay. > > What happened is I was rough on Mitt because I didn’t think they treated me properly. I helped him, really helped him. Gave him a lot of money. Helped him with robocalls. Every single robocall I made, he won that state. Every single speech I made, he won the state, in terms of the primaries. > > When it came time to the general election, I waited for the call. I didn’t care. Look, if they don’t want to call me, that’s okay. I’m a busy man. I have a lot of things to do. But if I would have been asked to help him in Florida, you saw what I did in Florida. I won in a landslide. I would have helped him. I certainly could have gotten him over the ledge. > > CHUCK TODD: > > Let me– > > DONALD TRUMP: > > Wait a minute. > > CHUCK TODD: > > Okay. > > DONALD TRUMP: > > So if Mitt Romney did that, I would be happy to talk to him. I think it’s great. And I would be because I respect him > > CHUCK TODD: > > You want him to thank you first, for 2012, before you will reach out to him– > > DONALD TRUMP: > > I helped – I helped Mitt Romney a lot. > > CHUCK TODD: > > And you feel like he was ungrateful– > > DONALD TRUMP: > > I did. I believe I won him, or helped him win, five states that he was going to lose in the primaries, okay– > > CHUCK TODD: > > Sounds like you think he was ungrateful. You think he’s been ungrateful? > > DONALD TRUMP: > > He was. He was ungrateful. Which is okay. A lot of people are ungrateful. But he was ungrateful. He did not–They did not respond accordingly. And that is okay. He’s so very butthurt, yet he knows on some level that it looks weak to whine about it. But instead of doing a good job of hiding his poutiness, he just crudely inserts “that’s okay” or it’s okay, I’m a busy man, I don’t care ". It’s so incredibly transparent, it makes me cringe and even involuntarily blush every time I hear it. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2016, 6:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trumps-2016-general-election-campaign/753901/288 "2016-05-12T06:43:11Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Realizing that Trump is a crackpot is not just coming from our imagination. My point was that to the left there’s no rational reason for anyone to vote Republican, therefore those who do must be crackpots of some kind. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2016, 7:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trumps-2016-general-election-campaign/753901/289 "2016-05-12T07:00:26Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > He’s so very butthurt, yet he knows on some level that it looks weak to whine about it. But instead of doing a good job of hiding his poutiness, he just crudely inserts “that’s okay” or it’s okay, I’m a busy man, I don’t care ". It’s so incredibly transparent, it makes me cringe and even involuntarily blush every time I hear it. Just a difference in interpretation I guess. To me when he says ‘it’s okay’, what he’s really saying is that it’s of no real consequence. What he’s doing in this case is letting people know of the betrayal so they’ll think ill of Romney, but also letting them know that said betrayal wasn’t of any great consequence to him. But what he’s really doing is punishing Romney for turning on him. Trump’s always made it a practice to punish people who attack or cross him. One of the primary reasons for this is that it teaches other people not to attack or cross him. I wouldn’t have thought such an approach would work in a presidential campaign however, and I’ve been very surprised at how effectively he’s been able to employ it so far. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2016, 8:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trumps-2016-general-election-campaign/753901/290 "2016-05-12T08:12:32Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > I’ve become convinced Trump’s candidacy is like a giant Rorschach test for whichever liberal is writing about him. There seems to be no end to the fantastical lengths they’ll go to in order to explain his popularity in a way that is demeaning to his supporters at the same time. The truth is that no matter who the Republican candidate had been we’d still be hearing pretty much the same thing. To the liberal mind there’s simply no rational excuse for voting Republican so there just _has_ to be crackpottery afoot somewhere. I thought it was creditable of you to finally say that you could no longer support Trump, but stuff like this just demeans your credibility again. Trump’s popularity **is** an indictment of his supporters because the man is an idiotic demagogue of appalling ineptitude and a sociopathic bigot to boot. The backlash the voters feel against the political establishment is understandable, but choosing Trump as their standard bearer is incomprehensibly stupid. The truth is that with different Republican candidates at different times you’ve been hearing applicable criticisms based on the evidence at hand. I actually had relatively few criticisms of McCain, for instance, until his inexplicable choice of the moose from Wasilla as his running mate. And then there was Romney, who actually had potential, as Republicans go, until he decided that – as Andy Borowitz so nicely put it – he had to wear a rubber chicken on his head to prove that he was crazy enough to get elected by the current Republican mainstream. The craziness manifested in things like outright rejection of the ACA despite it being both a historical conservative policy recommendation and his own policy in MA, and appointment of Paul Ryan for the VP slot, he of Ryan budget fame destined to completely decimate what little was left of progressive taxation and social policy. And for a variety of reasons this election cycle has led to Trump and Cruz being the front runners, and there’s really nothing more that need be said about that. It doesn’t matter that Cruz is out, at that point there was no sane choice on the Republican side. In 2012 people thought the Wasilla moose was some crazy aberration in the Republican party, in 2016 insanity is the norm. Even the nutbars in the party are rallying against Trump, and the moose itself came out of the woodwork to support this lunatic demagogue by giving a screeching speech comprised of an incomprehensible jumble of words devoid of sense or meaning. This is supposed to be a presidential election. It’s a freaking circus sideshow. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2016, 8:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trumps-2016-general-election-campaign/753901/291 "2016-05-12T08:19:17Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > I’ve become convinced Trump’s candidacy is like a giant Rorschach test for whichever liberal is writing about him. There seems to be no end to the fantastical lengths they’ll go to in order to explain his popularity in a way that is demeaning to his supporters at the same time. The truth is that no matter who the Republican candidate had been we’d still be hearing pretty much the same thing. To the liberal mind there’s simply no rational excuse for voting Republican so there just _has_ to be crackpottery afoot somewhere. I certainly don’t. My view is that TRUMP is the expression of the anger of the American people. > [@SlackerInc](#): > > You are so very wrong. Voting for McCain or Romney is not preposterous. Voting for Dubya was pretty dumb, but he talked about compassionate conservatism and had a clever Svengali in Karl Rove. > > Voting for Drumpf, though, is “full retard”. And not the lovable, huggable kind, but the inbred hillbilly kind, with dried spittle in the corners of his mouth and fear and loathing in his heart. Why is it “not preposterous” to vote for candidates who’d advocate such insanities as endless foreign war, destruction of Social Security and Medicare etc. but “full retard” of the “inbred hillbilly kind” (to quote your regionalist/classist language) to vote for a candidate who opposes it and who in fact in a nationall televised Republican debate [denounced the Iraq War as based on lies](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4ThZcq1oJQ), which no Democratic presidential candidate excepting possibly Dennis Kucinich has done? Seriously, I can’t believe how liberals have ignored that remarkable moment in favour of same old “Drumpf” jokes. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2016, 8:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trumps-2016-general-election-campaign/753901/292 "2016-05-12T08:56:22Z")
I think both theories are true. Trump is an expression of the legitimate anger of many Americans, but he’s also a very poor outlet for that anger because he’s a con man. The people chose poorly, and if he’s elected, I’ll say the same thing. I understand why the voters did it, but it was still a very bad idea. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2016, 11:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trumps-2016-general-election-campaign/753901/293 "2016-05-12T11:23:05Z")
Yes, the Republican nominee reflects the desires and thoughts of Republican voters. Tell us again why you’re one of them. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2016, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trumps-2016-general-election-campaign/753901/294 "2016-05-12T12:23:57Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > But what he’s really doing is punishing Romney for turning on him. Trump’s always made it a practice to punish people who attack or cross him. One of the primary reasons for this is that it teaches other people not to attack or cross him. I wouldn’t have thought such an approach would work in a presidential campaign however, and I’ve been very surprised at how effectively he’s been able to employ it so far. For a long time it was considered “beneath” someone respectable to be openly vindictive and do his settling of scores in public for applause. The Trump style of the Middle School nicknames and the “yeah whatevs” one-liners would also have been seen as gossippy and dirt-dishing and not how a grown-ass executive deals with things in public. The Way was: You ream people out in private, whip them at the negotiating table, and letting the audience see them shut up and fall in line while you a have your way is the best revenge. Trump however had nothing to lose on that front before public opinion, having been consigned to punchline status by the “respectables” for decades and this entire last year having been a chance for him to cut them down to size in front of everyone. And the audence loved it because they wanted to see others squirm. His unpredictability and inconsistency becomes a virtue because what becomes important in the Trumpian worldview is what puts you on top RIGHT NOW and to have everyone else on defense always; you do what it takes to assert dominance for dominance’s own sake. ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2016, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trumps-2016-general-election-campaign/753901/295 "2016-05-12T12:38:05Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > I certainly don’t. My view is that TRUMP is the expression of the anger of the American people. > > Why is it “not preposterous” to vote for candidates who’d advocate such insanities as endless foreign war, destruction of Social Security and Medicare etc. but “full retard” of the “inbred hillbilly kind” (to quote your regionalist/classist language) to vote for a candidate who opposes it and who in fact in a nationall televised Republican debate [denounced the Iraq War as based on lies](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4ThZcq1oJQ), which no Democratic presidential candidate excepting possibly Dennis Kucinich has done? Seriously, I can’t believe how liberals have ignored that remarkable moment in favour of same old “Drumpf” jokes. Isn’t it time you laid this silly all-caps thing to rest? Does Trump deserve some super-duper respect that FDR and Lincoln did not? Trump represents anger, all right, but not legitimate anger. He represents fear and loathing of “the other”. It’s those Mexicans coming over to steal your job, sell you dope, and go after all the white women. It’s those Muslims who want to come here and blow up your town. It’s those liberals who want to take your guns and give all your money to lazy black folks. Trump is just one more plutocrat saying “I feel your anger and I want to fuck over those other people just as much as you. Oh, and all I ask in return is to keep those tax cuts coming for the elite.” Trump’s history on the Iraq war is not as squeaky clean as you state. On Sept 11, 2002 he was asked by Howard Stern if he was for invading Iraq and said “Yeah, I guess so.” So this noble opposition that Trump the con man is selling is nothing more than smoke and mirrors. Does Trump oppose endless war? Not when he talks about seizing the oil fields. Not when he refuses to rule out the use of nuclear weapons against ISIS. Think Trump gives a rat’s ass about preserving Social Security? His serious proposal is to save it by eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse. Seriously. You really think this would be a priority for him? If you are seriously considering voting for this con man, you cannot call yourself a good citizen. He is nothing less than the greatest threat to the nation since Jefferson Davis. Fawning over him and giving him these written curtsies in the form of all caps just emboldens the sick fucks who want to elect him. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2016, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trumps-2016-general-election-campaign/753901/296 "2016-05-12T13:05:39Z")
**BobLibDem** , FWIW I’ve come to believe that Trump does not represent (or appeal to) anger, or even fear, as the prime emotion at all, but _resentment_ without the baggage of anything else. (Of course I feel that is also the prime motivation behind some of Sanders’ support as well.) ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2016, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trumps-2016-general-election-campaign/753901/297 "2016-05-12T13:19:39Z")
Trump’s resentment fires in all directions. SAnders’ only has one target, and it’s the target Americans resent the least: the rich. Trump targets the rich more specifically(outsourcing), and on what used to be Democratic ground no less, as well as the political class, and of course foreigners. One thing that a lot of liberals miss about his “message of hate” is that he does not blame poor people, or even American citizens at all, for the nation’s problems. He’s not out talking about “super predators” or “welfare queens”. His bugaboo seems to be mainly foreigners and how the political and business class sell us out to them for votes and profits. Which is a message that can strongly resonate in places where it wouldn’t traditionally resonate. Trump is the first Republican candidate ever whose base is not the wealthy elite or Christian conservatives. As Silver points out, Trump’s base is wealthier than the average voter, but a lot poorer than his Republican opponents. And unions are worried about their membership. The troops also like Trump best by a wide margin. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2016, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trumps-2016-general-election-campaign/753901/298 "2016-05-12T15:17:59Z")
He also fires his resentment at women addie. [Interesting bit](http://www.npr.org/2016/05/10/477423028/is-donald-trump-playing-the-man-card): > [@](#): > > In a rally over the weekend, Trump took his claim that Clinton is using the woman’s card further. > > “She’s going — did you hear that that Donald Trump raised his voice while speaking to a woman,” he said. “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I mean all of the men — we’re petrified to speak to women anymore; we may raise our voice.” > > Trump then continued with a new complaint. > > “You know what? The women get it better than we do, folks,” he said. > > The comment seemed counterintuitive for a man trying to improve his status with female voters. But Dan Cassino, a political scientist at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey who focuses on political psychology, says Trump’s talk about women is not about women: It’s a message directed at men. > > "This is an appeal, saying basically to other men — ‘Hey, the women are ganging up on us, the women are using their gender to get power from us’ — that’s what the woman card is — ‘all the women are gonna get together and vote for Hillary Clinton, we have to band together as men to stop Hillary Clinton.’ " > > Cassino says Trump is playing on gender resentment. > > And Cassino’s research has found that gender roles make a difference for some voters. In a recent recent presidential poll, he conducted an experiment, asking voters this question: > > “There are an increasing number of households in which the woman makes more money than the man. How about in your household?” > > Cassino discovered that when men were asked that spouse income question at the beginning of the poll they were more likely to support Trump over Clinton, regardless of the actual answer to the income question. [From the actual study:](http://view2.fdu.edu/publicmind/2016/160323/) > [@](#): > > All told, reminding men about gender issues, leads to a 24-point swing in the match up, from a 16-point advantage for Clinton to an eight-point deficit. … Of course the gender prime impacted women too, in the other direction. But half as much: a 12 point impact. His path depends on resentful White males coming out in numbers way beyond they ever have before. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2016, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trumps-2016-general-election-campaign/753901/299 "2016-05-12T15:26:54Z")
Trump’s gender resentment is personal. He has no policies planned to deal with the “woman problem”. Nor are his supporters motivated by sexism. They just look past his sexism. Nativism is the primary driver of Trump’s support, as well as disgust with the political class. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2016, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trumps-2016-general-election-campaign/753901/300 "2016-05-12T15:39:32Z")
Why does no one ever understand that racism and sexism do not need to be explicitly endorsed to impact behaviors, including voting behaviors? I am sure that fairly few of those men who would have said Clinton without the priming question and said Trump with are explicitly sexist. Most would explicitly endorse statements in favor or equal opportunities and equal pay and would reject policies to deal with any “woman problem”. Nevertheless priming with a resentment inducing question about women increasingly making more than men led to a 24 point male swing to Trump. This is clearly not just “looking past”; it is motivated by, on an implicit level. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trumps-2016-general-election-campaign/753901.md?page=14) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trumps-2016-general-election-campaign/753901.md?page=16)