I keep hearing how a Trump nomination will guarantee victory for the Dems from the top to bottom of the ticket. But yet in the primaries he keeps surprising everyone. No matter what he says, he thrives, he beats out his competition, he keeps on keeping on. Everyone’s been wrong about him so far, so is it possible everyone’s wrong on his prospects in the general too?
I get it that a lot of what he’s saying is political poison with the general electorate. But I think above everything else, Trump is a showman. He knows what people want, and he gives it to them. He wrote bestsellers because he figured out what people wanted to read about (him), and he wrote it. He starred in a very popular reality show because he figured out a formula and persona that people wanted to see, and he put it out there.
Is it possible, he has figured out a strategy to winning an election, even when everyone else thought his tactics were foolishness? Has he figured out exactly what he needs to say to win the nomination? And just when he secures the nomination, perhaps he’ll pivot because he’s figured out exactly what he needs to say to win the general-- to win back all those people who thought he was “too offensive and out there.”
He’s potentially got a lot of issues in his back pocket on which he is somewhat of a liberal or moderate or an unknown. Perhaps once he has the frothing hard-core base on his side 110%-- willing and able to even murder puppies on his behalf-- and has secured the nomination, he could very easily ease back on the divisive issues, and begin focusing on things like fair trade, replacing Obamacare with a universal/single payer option, and bringing back American manufacturing, all to win the hearts and votes of people in the middle, people in labor, etc.
These are just some thoughts that keep me awake at night. I don’t think his path to the presidency is as far-fetched as, say, Ted Cruz’s is. And that’s why I’m a teeny bit worried that we could have a showman as our next president-- a manufactured candidate who has simply figured out how to win for the sake of winning, not because he wants to actually serve the nation as president.
Trump has managed a multi-billion real estate develpment firm for years; his experience is vastly greater than the Nobel-prize winning “community organizer”. Of course, the current president was an ace lawyer (he was head of the “Law Review” at Harvard…but nobody knows what he wrote to deserve this. Trump could certainly not be any worse.
Yeah, even if you accept the dubious premise that the government should be run like a business, does anyone want the government run like Trump or Fiorina runs a business?
Actually he doesn’t really worry me much. He is a very capable man, far more so than our two most recent presidents. He is not a true-believer in any of the nonsense he spouts, he’s a businessman, he’s after a goal and he’ll turn on a dime to get what he’s after. What is he after? I think he’d be a 100% economy president because it’s what he understands. We’d probably get a Reagan like sham economy as a result. But it doesn’t worry me anymore than if Hillary or Bernie gets elected, I doubt they’ll do any better, and I think their potential to do worse is greater. Frankly, I don’t see any of those three as being effective presidents over the long term. All of the other candidates worry me much more.
You may be right in everything you say, but to be fair, there hasn’t BEEN a primary yet.
Right now, Trump is trailing Cruz in Iowa. Let’s say he finishes second to Cruz in Iowa and (entirely possible) second to Christie in New Hampshire. Trump would be 0-2 and worse, shown to be vulnerable to two candidates with different consituencies.
At that point Trump’s coalition of angry white guys who don’t examine him too closely will start to come unglued.
Whatever else he is, Trump is extremely naive about the power of the presidency. If he were to win, he will be in for a rude awakening about just how little of his agenda can be pushed through with a blustery phone call. And of the candidates, he would probably have the least power as President having no political experience to speak of and much opposition from the establishment of his own party.
Yes I worry about Trump in the general election. My fear is that in late October, there will be a major terrorist attack in the US by Muslim extremists. Islamophobia reaches new heights and Trump rides fear into the White House.
Once in, I’m afraid he’ll fall into the GOP pattern of cutting taxes for the rich in the hopes they’ll create jobs and shredding the social safety net. Goodbye ACA and say hello to guns in vending machines. In foreign affairs, it will be stomp loudly and launch the nukes.
I really wonder at times about the folks who fixate on Obama’s three years as a community organizer to the exclusion of his eleven (pre-Presidency) as an elected official.
I wonder even more about people who look at his pre-presidency stuff as opposed to his several years as President when trying to predict or analyze what he will do as President.
You have to be at least a little worried, this is democracy in action. People of my ilk fall into two basic varieties, the “No!” camp and the “Oh, HELL, no!” camp. And we will vote, Hugh Bethca! We won’t rally for Hillary, we won’t give her money, but we will trudge wearily to the polling place and vote against her opponent.
I think of Bernie’s campaign more as a negotiation than as an actual campaign. We want Hillary to commit. She’s “stealing” his positions? Good, long as she keeps them! I’m suspicious of the whole Clintonista Republican Lite “business friendly” menshevik “centrism”. Now, if she wants to claim that’s all in the past, maybe it was Horndog Bill’s idea all along and she wasn’t that enthused, well…OK.
But, yeah, I’m a little worried. This is about people, and people are nuts. Such is the price of democracy, you take that as a given, there is a risk. Democracy isn’t smarter, it isn’t more efficient, it isn’t more effective, it is only more just. That’ll do.
Trump appeals to people as a sort of protest vote, which is easier to do in a poll than when casting a real ballot
Winning primaries and elections needs a lot more than Twitter and one-liners. I think social media is grossly overestimated in importance because it’s easier to see. There’s a lot of campaign organization required to get out the vote at all levels.
Once people become President, they aren’t dealing with voters anymore. Now they have to deal with reality and bureaucracy. If you compare Obama-as-candidate to Obama-as-President, you see just how much of a moderating influence that is. Maybe there’s a 1% chance of Trump becoming President… even in that worst-case scenario, I expect he will accomplish nothing he has promised so far.