With the egos those two have, I can’t see either one willing to be VP.
How does it make him into a “kingmaker”? An independant whose base mostly leans Republican takes votes from the Republican candidate. An independent with a Democratic leaning base takes votes from the Democrat.
Trump is running right now as a Republican. His supporters lean Republican. He will siphon votes from the Republican candidate. In a three-way race with one liberal and two conservatives, the conservative vote is split. That’s a huge advantage for the liberal candidate, and doesn’t give the third place candidate anything.
Unless you mean that he’ll run, and then drop out when he gets his ass kissed enough by the GOP? And then his supporters all line up to vote for the GOP candidate? The thing we’ve learned about Trump supporters is that they don’t fall in line.
On balance, I would have to think Trump running as an independent hurts the Republicans. But it’s not as bad as might seem at first glance.
The votes Trump gets would be mostly votes that would otherwise have gone to the GOP candidate, true. But the flip side is that Trump being a major part of the equation puts the GOP candidate in the position of the moderate sane candidate in the race, and makes the standard accusations that the GOP candidate himself is a right wing extremist harder to stick. (It also makes it easier for Republicans running for Senate and House seats.) And if - like most third party candidates - Trump’s support shrivels up as the election gets closer, the impact of the actual conservative votes lost would be relatively minor and could be offset to a large degree by votes gained from moderates.
But on balance I agree that he does hurt the Republican candidate.
I mean that by running as an Independent he ensures a Democratic victory. The GOP knows this. He threatens to run as an Independent until he bleeds any an all concessions that he wants out of them. I’m sure there’s legislation that the Republican controlled legislature can ensure passes.
The thing is, Trump isn’t exactly conservative. He has a few hot-button issues that he’s continuously pressing for which he holds ridiculous parodies of conservative beliefs. No one really talks about how Trump feels on most every other issue of concern to conservatives, because he’s not conservative at all in those respects.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: If Trump runs and his presence in the race hands it to the Democrat, he would consider that a better outcome than if he were to actually win. He wants to be able to say “Look at me; I’m so important that I was able to change who became President”. He would, I’m sure, claim this even if the Democratic candidate got a clean majority.
People keep saying this, but The Apprentice is gone. NBC gave the show to Arnold Schwarzenegger more than four months ago.
What concessions does he want?
Exactly. Trump doesn’t want any policies enacted, he doesn’t have pet projects to fund. He wants to be in front of cameras and have everyone talking about him.
Maybe he wants to host The Colbert Report once Larry gets the boot.
I know this is a joke, but for the record Hogan is an independent who voted for Obama in '08.
Trump has threatened to run, several times before, and he was always able to get publicity about it. But this time, if he just threatened to run, he wouldn’t have gotten any publicity, because everyone would have assumed it was like before. And because there were so many people actually jumping in the race, him merely threatening to run wouldn’t bring him any publicity. So this time he either had to actually run or he couldn’t get publicity this way. And then he turns out to do much better in the race than anyone could have expected.
I don’t know what his endgame is. I don’t know if he actually wants to be elected president or not. I don’t think he would actually want to be president, because it’s a lot of work, and I think he’d much rather do some business stuff then go play golf or relax in his gold-plated penthouse. Not nearly enough of the White House is gold-plated.
Also, while many see him as a modern fascist, a lot of people see him as a strong, opinionated leader. Maybe him running makes him seem like a stronger business leader, and those people are more likely to do business with him, even as other people are less likely to do so. Or maybe it is just a big ego stroke, that wouldn’t be out of character for him.