Bribery scandals, a scam university, running multiple businesses into the ground, blowing off debates, acting like a white supremacist, insulting everyone, offering unconstitutional proposals. His latest scandal is his narcissistic comments about the Orlando shooting. Come to think of it, a list of what Trump has done right as a politician would be shorter than what he has done wrong. The media always blasts him for it. But nobody seems to care, except the people who were never interested in voting for him anyway.
If any other politician had done the things Trump did, their career would be over in a flash.
You think most politicians in a scandal want to resign or withdraw with their tail between their legs? They usually do so, I believe, because of pressure from the rest of the party.
What kind of pressure can the Republican Party put on Trump? That’s the whole reason he’s getting the nomination to begin with.
Because every time he opens his mouth someone starts another thread about him.
Trump is a perfect vessel for the fears and resentments of a fading white majority sick of establishment politicians who won’t “stand up” to all the forces wrecking this country. His hardcore supporters don’t care about his scandals because they see him as someone who shoots from the hip explicitly on their behalf. The more the mainstream clutches its pearls over his antics, the more affirmed his supporters are in their identification with him.
Because who else have they got? The relative-sanes would have more strength if they had any leadership. But they don’t.
And because Trump’s message is what their base *wants *now. It’s the party of people who admire Trump.
Because getting about 40% of Republican support was enough to be unstoppable in the primaries.
It is not looking to be enough for the main contest.
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-06-14/bloomberg-politics-national-poll-june-2016
I have to say to the OP that he is wrong about the media and Trump, in reality the media did help Trump with loads of free publicity, but now for the main contest Trump has come also biting the hand that fed him.
That was really a dumb move.
Because there were too many other candidates, and they all brought dog whistles to a trumpet fight.
What makes you think he’s unstoppable? Huffington Post’s polltracker currently shows Clinton ahead by more than five points, a gap that has widened significantly over the last month.
Yes, most of us feel like the gap should be even wider, but it doesn’t change the fact that Clinton would win handily if the election were held today, and will win in November unless some massive game-changing event happens.
They’ll win even if some game changing event happens. If Clinton is hauled off in handcuffs by the Justice department or has a stroke , then either Sanders or Biden could beat Trump easily.
If there’s an even more massive terrorist attack before November then it’s not at all clear that would help Trump, Clinton has a pretty hawkish reputation.
Because the GOP has been fomenting voter anger for decades while knowing full well they can deliver absolutely nothing they promise, and wouldn’t do the things they promise even if they could. The anger won’t go away, but their trust on the party has gone up in smoke. The Republican base is ripe for takeover by any idiot who keeps the promises coming as long as he is not associated with their party.
You answered your own question: because politics is not Trump’s career.
And now they have one who can deliver absolutely nothing he promises. But it is possible that he actually does not know that.
I think it’s likely that he doesn’t know that.
I don’t think there’s any artifice in Donald Trump. I think he believes everything he says as he says it, even if it contradicts what he’s said five minutes ago.
He believes the promises he’s making. And if he somehow gets elected and confronts the fact that he cannot do what he promised, he will either deny making the promises or dismiss them as irrelevant, and he will believe that just as firmly.
People act under the delusion that rational discourse is the best way to engage a populace which on average have ~50% of the populace at 100 IQ or less.
I’m starting to think the TV show “Ow My Balls” would be too high-brow and intelligent for these folks.
Trump isn’t unstoppable, it’s just that in the next several months, there are really only two very specific points where he might be stopped: the convention or the general election. There’s no particular mechanism by which he might get immediately thrown out on his ear for something he says or does on a Tuesday night in mid-June (well, unless he maybe gets arrested for something), so just be patient.
It’s not like Trump had to take on a gallery of greats to win the nomination. All of the Republican candidates were deeply flawed; Trump just emerged as the loudest of the pack.
Historians are going to theorizing about this for decades. Centuries, even – if nuclear winter doesn’t intervene.
Some people are going to have theories having to do with national mood. Others will be more on your side, at least as I interpret it, pointing to specific circumstances that don’t have as much larger significance.
Of course, how many historians will be debating will depend on whether he wins in November. It also will depend on whether he is the first in a series of blatent demogogues getting presidential nominations, or, as I hope, an outlier.
It also depends on how long the United States lasts. If it lasts another fifty years, this will be part of the story of our decline and fall. If we last another five hundred years, it won’t have anything to do with it.
Speaking as a Republican
I am really fed up with my party and the hijack from the TeaBaggers and Bible-Thumpers. I was thinking about the pro-forma sessions to block the recess appointments last year and the refusal to hold hearing on Garland and I realized that the Republican Party has turned into that kid. You know the type: the adolescent lawyer who knew every technicality in the book and used it to run roughshod over everyone but nothing could be done because they were technically correct? Remember how you just wanted to punch him (always a him) in the face? That’s the Republican Party. So that’s one reason - the anti-Pubstablishment vote.
And let’s not forget, people always talk about hating politicians and their equivocations and blatant lies and hidden hypocrisies. We dream of a straight-forward politician like this NSFW. Well, that’s Trump.
Its no secret that the further back we go in the past, the more conservative people were. Over the last few decades however, the conservatives have felt less and less represented by those in power as liberals have gained strength. Several big factors have created major shifts in the social and political arena which have built up resentment by these former majority and completely dominant ideological purists.
One could argue that a good starting point for this would be the civil rights era ending with the 1964 Civil Rights act. Going back further would be picking from historical memory, not living memory, so I won’t go back any more even though history is one unbroken line rather than instances of events. Later, one could say Nixon’s Southern Strategy solidified the base into definable geographic areas as Dixiecrats fled the Democrats and went to the GOP. Based on their own words, 1973 Roe v. Wade was when the religious right decided to fully exercise their muscles in the political arena, having decided that taking the high road was no longer tenable when babies are being killed. More coalescing of the base was done in the 80’s under Reagan, and with the fall of the Soviet Union it was no longer sufficient to simply point at enemies outside the US to inflame their base, a new enemy must be named.
What I’m trying to say is that Trump was inevitable. We’ve seen a clear line of increasingly extremist GOP candidates starting from about 20 or 30 years ago. Each one builds upon the fears of the one before. Before Trump, the GOP establishment was at least able to fight off such challenges, then they had to pay lip service to them, then the Tea Party emerged and it was necessary to play ball with them. Now the GOP establishment lives in fear of the TP and being primaried. This is when someone like Trump, a person who is able to state, in simple, loud, and angry terms, all of the hate and fears of this bottled up energy built up of decades of resentment, is able to harness it.
His supporters don’t care about him lying. His supporters don’t care he’s offensive. His supporters don’t care about racism. They are all lying, offensive, racists. They’ve had to pretend not to be in order to win elections but as the world changes around them and such things are less and less accepted, they feel trapped and cornered and all of this bigotry explodes into an orange tribble with short fingers in the form of Trump. Trump is unstoppable because the traditional barriers that society puts up to marginalize lying, angry racists have been taken over by lying, angry racists, and they refuse to pretend any longer.