* It’s because liberals fundamentally misunderstand what Trump is all about. They think he’s some sort of far-right extremist. In the modern liberal mind, signaling that you’re friendly to minorities is *the, single, issue* that matters, and everything else is boring policy stuff that no one reads or pays attention to. So someone like Rubio who wants to start several wars and cut off Medicare benefits gets moderate cred, because he says nice things about immigrants.
The truth is that Trump is doing so well because he’s dragging the Republican party kicking and screaming back to the center, jettisoning their insane ideas about foreign policy, dropping the unpopular entitlement program cuts, and focusing like a laser on the issues where Republican ideas are actually popular, like immigration control.
Trump is essentially the Republican party’s Bill Clinton.
* Or he’s a Reagan for the 2010s.
What chimp movies were for the 80s, reality TV is in the 2010s.
* That sounds to me like Trump is essentially the Republican Party’s new Eisenhower, not the Republican Party’s Bill Clinton. One thing that clearly distinguishes Trump from Bill Clinton is the beauty of his three wives. No comparison at all to that dumpy women in the pantsuits. Also Trump has invoked the 50′s as America’s great age. That sounds like he wants to take us back to Eisenhower. I believe Scott McConnell over at TAC makes the same argument about Trump invoking Eisenhower.
* Trump might follow up by promising, like Clinton, 300,000 additional police, the aim being to bring law-and-order back to inner city neighborhoods. This, according to Heather MacDonald, is the single issue local residents care about most.
More and better policing together with his promise to bring millions of low-skilled blue-collar factory jobs back from places like China and Mexico should help Trump attract a lot of African-American votes. Plus, they like his style!
* Democrats weren’t insane pre-Clinton.
They actually used to have very pro-worker stances on issues like trade, immigration, financial regulation, and unions . As recently as the early 90s, Democrats were fairly responsive to the concerns of working class whites. It was under Clinton that NAFTA was passed in 1994, the H1b visa cap was expanded in 1998 (with further liberalization of regulations in 2000), and we had the repeal of Glass-Steagal in 1999. Under Clinton, the Democrats went from being a workingman’s party to a financier-corporatist-diversitycrat alliance. For that, the media can’t stop giving him credit.
Republicans, on the other hand, have been borderline insane from W. Bush onward. On immigration, on financialization, on economic inequality, and on foreign policy.
Trump represents a return to moderation on economic issues and foreign policy, with an emphasis on majoritarian policies that benefit the white working/middle class. Clinton represented the embrace of extremist corporatism and financialization.
However, the ruling overclass tends to be rather extreme on most issues these days. So moderation is pretty radical from their perspective, while starting a war with Russia (Carly Fiorina actually proposed this) makes one a mainstream thinker.
* The problem is there is no more CENTER. Globalism undermined the notion of a center. Under nationalism, the nation is the center, and the majority population is the center, and middle class is the center, and core values are the center.
In US, ‘gay marriage’ is now considered the center. Rule by Jewish minority is accepted as mainstream. Favoring Israel over US is mainstream in both parties.
So, what is the center?
* So much has been written about the appeal of his anti-PC rhetoric. Few in the mainstream media have acknowledged the appeal of his largely centrist policy prescriptions. He’s not going to upset the apple cart over nickle/dime World War T-type nonsense. He’s going to focus his fire on immigration, trade, the debt. Jobs jobs jobs. He’s a money guy.
His foreign policy stance has generally been far to the LEFT of Hillary Clinton, who is a chickenhawk. It’s a beautiful combo, IMHO.
I don’t know if he (or anyone) is smart enough to figure out a way to slash the defense budget, raise the age for Social Security, and trim government pensions. But if anyone can cut those deals… maybe it’s Trump.
My biggest fear is that the Congressional wimps in his own party won’t fall in line. If they do he’ll end up on Mt. Rushmore.
* It seems that a lot of Trump’s ideas come from Ann Coulter. I remember Steve and David Frum separately making this claim. Also, Coulter is one of the few political people Trump follows in Twitter. He spends A LOT of time in Twitter.
I just saw Coulter mention there how she connected with Trump:
“…I attacked him on the Obama Birther stuff and he invited me to lunch.”
This is pretty important from the historical perspective. Who was influenced by whom and how? I remember Coulter writing things that strongly implied that she read iSteve.
* Lots of foreign oligarchs live in Trump properties. Trump himself uses who is buying and who is selling to get some sense of what’s going on in foreign countries.
* If Trump is serious about his biggest slogan, then he wants to be America’s Putin, who is the polar opposite of Yeltsin. Putin HAS made Russia solvent, functional and important again.
* I agree with your depiction of Clinton and his affect on the dimocrats. I’d just add that Clinton’s foreign policies were as bad as his domestic and even more influential. George Kennan described Clinton’s NATO expansion as one of the biggest foreign policy blunders of the 20th century. Clinton doubled down on this by involving the USA and NATO in a series of confrontations with Russian allies in the Balkans and the Caucusus. One outcome has been the conversion of Kosovo into a narco-terrorist state on the southern flank of Europe. All Clinton’s disastrous policies were neocon gambits and foreshadowed the disastrous neocon/zionist hijacking of US foreign policy under Bush II and BO.
* Have Hillary’s comments about Bill’s sex crimes struck you as unusually odd? Why? I think I know why.
Her responses are abnormally tangential, even for Hillary, to the point where she seems to have gone temporarily deaf and not heard the question. The responses are not just evasive, but almost completely off topic. She says things like “that is for the voters to decide” or “women victims should be believed unless there is a reason not to believe them,” and then she shuts up.
I think she has to do this for fear of a defamation lawsuit. Any denial, even the tiniest denial on her part would defame Juanita Broadrick and the other women, and could call down a nightmarish lawsuit that would drag on forever and force her to testify. She definitely can’t say “Juanita is lying” and she can’t say anything that implies Juanita is lying, such as “there is no credible evidence”.
Lawsuits based on her original actions are barred by the statute of limitations. Any new statement, however, would be a brand new offense and not barred. Her responses sound so odd because she is basically taking the Fifth without explicitly saying so.
* One of Nate Silver’s points is that enthusiasts for a candidates often exaggerate the likelihood a trend will continue. If Candidate X has risen from 5% to 20% in the last two months that doesn’t mean he’ll rise from 20% to 50% in the next four months. Lots of Republican candidates in 2011 and 2015 topped out after a nice little rise.
So far, Trump has been the exception.
The Le Pens in France are an example of the difficulties of extending trend lines.
* Perhaps Trump has activated in America’s collective unconscious the need and desire for tribal safety, survival and growth. We are under attack, from without and within, and a strong fortress border and military to defend the country is paramount. We crave unity, purpose and prosperity and subconsciously recognize that many so called immigrants are more like invaders and parasites with widely different values and cultures rather than those of the past that willingly became Americanized. We want to be winners and not losers. We don’t want to start unnecessary wars, but if attacked we will destroy the enemy. We want peace and friendship among peoples and nations and wish to maintain our own strong national character and abide by our own supreme law and Constitution.
Seems to me if Trump is elected Chieftain to ensure these needs are met he would be far more like Washington than Clinton.
* The big picture: outside of the Anglosphere, Western Europe, Japan, Israel, South Korea, Singapore, and Brunei, the world’s tap water isn’t safe to drink. We take it for granted, but clean tap water seems to require levels of competence that are relatively rare.
* You forgot to mention the Gay Nazi Bodybuilder contingent. We’re very much a part of Trump’s support.
The gay anime nazi bodybuilder Alt Right types developed cuckservative, the most effective verbal shiv we’ve seen in forever. Meanwhile the “respectable” types with the big brains sat around like they have for the last decade moaning about how we’re all doomed because Demographics while they LARPed as doomed intellectuals. We’ve caused Rick Wilson to meltdown on live TV about how Trump’s support is “anime nerds jerking off in their mom’s basement”, among others.
The GOP Smart Set tries to pretend that “I know posting this is going to get my TF flooded by nazi animes” is some sort of in joke, but it obviously bothers them after about five minutes of getting their ideas shredded by someone with an anime avatar and then called a low test cuck faggot who can’t please his woman on top of it, usually with photoshop of them in cuck porn.
* Two related issues history shows are stupid to run on:
1) Reducing the growth in entitlement spending/making Social Security and Medicare sustainable.
2) Reducing the federal debt.
That doesn’t mean they’re stupid issues, they’re just stupid to run on. They’re easy for opponents to demagogue, and there’s no political benefit in addressing them before circumstances force the issue (e.g., the bond market balks at our debt and starts demanding high interest rates to buy it; the OMB or some other nonpartisan watchdog raises an imminent warning about Social Security and Medicare).
When circumstances force the issue, you hammer out a bipartisan fix and you move on. But running on it is just asking the other party to kick you in the nuts.
* Republican voters are going to get serious and choose an establishment candidate any day now, you know? Trump’s hateful rhetoric isn’t who we are.
* Chaim Amalek I think that is correct. Trump was fun, but I really am torn between Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio. Each has crossover appeal to hispanics (republicans even if they don’t yet know it) and each has the steady hand not to rock the boat in trade talks with China or Mexico.
David Kelsey There’s a huge difference between Jeb and Marco on so many important issues facing us. Not sure why anyone would put those two together.
Chaim Amalek Exactly! I just cannot make up my mind as to which I prefer, since they both make a lot of sense to me.
