2016 Presidential Campaign

[flyfishing3]

Lol.

 

all eyes on Alabama tonight.

[Burn-E]

What the hell is going on in Alabama tonight?

Wait, you're talking about this?

The Trump circus rolls into Mobile

Who cares?  Trump will dissipate like a fart in the wind in a few months and it will be one more historical anecdote about how millionaires and billionaires with too much time on their hands dabble in politics until the public gives them the boot.  He'll be a future question on Jeopardy:

What do Steve Forbes, Ross Perot, and Donald Trump have in common?

[flyfishing3]

 

What do Steve Forbes, Ross Perot, and Donald Trump have in common?

they are all still stupid rich and make politicians dance like monkeys?

[Burn-E]

they are all still stupid rich and make politicians dance like monkeys?

I thought that was the party of Koch, Adelson, Steyer, Soros, Murdoch and Pritzker

Those other guys are the peanut gallery comparatively.

[theForgottenone]

Anybody net worth at least one Billion is consider stupid rich in my dictionary.

Edited August 21, 2015 by theForgottenone

[Burn-E]

I don't want a billionaire for a President.  Otherwise we become just like Italy with Berlusconi and all the excess that comes with that.  The day we elect Trump is the day I pack up and take the family to Canada.

But Trump is clearly not going away and he's playing a very unusual game with unpredictable results.

It’s also possible that a Trump who is losing would be more erratic than the one who is winning. “His numbers are going to come down, and then he’s going to panic,” a Trump friend told me. “He doesn’t believe it willever happen. He has not confronted this in his mind,” says another conservative who knows Trump well. So, if you think Trump has been unpredictable now, just wait. “The things that have already come out of his mouth are so much worse than so many things that sunk Herman Cain and the other flavors of the month last time,” another Trump friend says. It’s not hard to imagine Trump launching a kamikaze mission against the candidates left standing.

...When — if? — Trump withdraws from the campaign, he will no longer have a ready landing pad on television. (His Apprentice deal with NBC has been canceled, too.) This is a prospect that is likely terrifying for Trump — and should, in turn, be terrifying for Bush. In a recent phone call with a longtime friend who has been acting as an informal adviser, Trump warned: “If I’m going down, then Bush is going down with me. He’s not going to be president of the United States.”

What did we do to deserve Trump?  Seriously?  How does a 1% leader carry sway with so many middle class voters?

This Primary season is a political journalist's wet dream. 

[theForgottenone]

All he have to do is get Google to be on his side. They can sway enough of voters.

[Zappo]

Wait, Trump has a friend?  Are they sure it isn't just a yes man?

 

[Fudge_Brownie]

I don't want a billionaire for a President. (..) The day we elect Trump is the day I pack up and take the family to Canada.

What did we do to deserve Trump?  Seriously?  How does a 1% leader carry sway with so many middle class voters?

Quoted for evidence when he gets elected. We can hold you to it, right?

Trump seems to have pull with viewers, but not necessarily voters. This gets him enough spotlight to sway a few voters to realize "hey, maybe he's on to something, and not as crazy as I thought". I'm surprised congressional voting histories don't play more of a media role for those who have one, but I'm not sure the voters value that. Like you said earlier, they want a personality.

[Tommy.]

Deez Nuts 2016.

 

 

[Burn-E]

Quoted for evidence when he gets elected. We can hold you to it, right?

Trump seems to have pull with viewers, but not necessarily voters. This gets him enough spotlight to sway a few voters to realize "hey, maybe he's on to something, and not as crazy as I thought". I'm surprised congressional voting histories don't play more of a media role for those who have one, but I'm not sure the voters value that. Like you said earlier, they want a personality.

Your quote contains nothing I need to worry about being held to.  Speaking of Canada, this is one of the funniest things I've read all week.  And I never expected it from this Chicago Tribune journalist:

Deport Trump Supporters to Canada

Talk about a clash of cultures if something like that happened.  Canada would implode.

[Fudge_Brownie]

Uh, um.....      ..............        ...............   ... It does now! I mean it always did!

Your link requires an account.

[Burn-E]

Can't fix that but I can quote the article: 

I was on vacation the past couple weeks, spending time in Canada for three specific reasons:

1) They put cheese curds and gravy on french fries and call it dinner. (They also call it poutine. How was this not invented by an American?)

2) You can ask for maple syrup anywhere and a bear will rush over and start pouring it in your mouth.

3) Donald Trump doesn't live there.

(I assure you, those are not ranked in order of importance.)

I assumed I would return, refreshed, to a country in which Trump — America's car alarm going off for no reason — had faded from view and been overtaken by more serious presidential candidates.

It looks like I should've stayed in Canada eating poutine with the maple syrup delivery bears.

Not only is Trump very much still around, he's driving the conversation on the GOP side of things, goading his fellow candidates into awkward stances on everything from birthright citizenship and the 14th Amendment to the appropriateness of the term "anchor babies."

He's not just leading the GOP field, he's within striking distance of Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton — down only 6 percent — in a recent CNN/ORC national poll.

To echo what the Canadian people, and probably many of their bears, are asking: How is this happening?

It's certainly not because Trump is laying out a concrete explanation of how he'll manage immigration, which has become his signature issue/yelling point.

On ABC's "This Week" on Sunday, host George Stephanopoulos repeatedly asked Trump for specifics on how he would round up and deport millions of immigrants who entered the country illegally.

"What are the specifics here?" the host asked.

Trump said: "George, it's called management."

That's as specific as he got. It's management, dummy. I'll just do it and it'll work — next question.

Trump's answer would make sense if all we demanded of politicians were one-word policy platforms.

"How will you improve the economy?"

"Jobs!"

"What about national security?"

"Military!"

"How will you deal with health care?"

"Doctors!"

Historically, we have asked for a bit more than that, but Trump continues to impress, ostensibly because he's a straight-shooter who thinks political correctness is for dumb loser meatheads.

A New York Times article over the weekend looked at Trump's fans: "Tellingly, when asked to explain support for Mr. Trump in their own words, voters of varying backgrounds used much the same language, calling him 'ballsy' and saying they admired that he 'tells it like it is' and relished how he 'isn't politically correct.'"

The story quoted retired New York City police Officer Carl Tomanelli: "People are starting to see, I believe, that all this political correctness is garbage."

A recent Politico story quoted Bob House, a maintenance manager, saying of Trump: "He tells it like it is. None of this political correct stuff."

And, of course, Trump himself said during the first GOP presidential primary debate: "I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct."

Yes, clearly the big problem we face right now is an outbreak of Americans being too nice to each other. Thank goodness Trump has come along to call Mexican immigrants rapists and women he doesn't like dogs or disgusting pigs and anyone who disagrees with him a dope, a loser or, in the case of fellow candidate Sen. Rand Paul, "a spoiled brat without a properly functioning brain."

Saying that you're sick of political correctness is another way of saying, "I'm sick of using the part of my brain that keeps me from being a complete jerk." (Sorry if that's politically incorrect.) So what Trump has proven is what most already suspected: There is a sizable coalition of Americans who are jerks. (Again, sorry for the lack of political correctness.)

If we all started walking around saying whatever popped into our heads, with no regard for how our words might offend others, the entire country would break out into an Old West-style saloon brawl within minutes.

The reason we need political correctness is because there are people out there — you can spot them by looking for the "Trump 2016!" bumper stickers — who think being nice to other humans is a waste of time. Were it not for those people, political correctness wouldn't be called political correctness — it would just be called normal behavior.

Come to think of it, that sounds delightful. If the other GOP candidates want to pull ahead of Trump in the polls and build a truly broad coalition, they need a different deportation plan: Round up all the Trump supporters and send them to Canada. (Sorry, Canada. You're welcome, Canadian bears.)

I realize it might not be politically correct to suggest deporting millions of people en masse, but sometimes you have to do what's best for the country. A sweeping jerk removal will make America a kinder, happier place to live. Granted, there might still be problems with jerks sneaking across the Canadian border to have babies on U.S. soil — anchor jerks — but we can deal with that later.

And if asked how this jerk deportation will be accomplished, a candidate need only say: "Management!"

Because apparently that's all it takes.

rhuppke@tribpub.com

[Zappo]

I am surprised at how long Trump has lasted, but remember that Herman Cain was also leading the polls in the last election, and he vanished a month or so later.

[Burn-E]

I completely agree with you.  The performance of other early poll leaders is the metric many are using to say this is just a noisy flash in the pan.  The problem is none of those previous early leaders had Trump's retail brand recognition (everyone knows who he is) nor did they have his money and this year feels very different from previous election seasons.

I just keep wondering whether this is the black swan event of electoral years and as such all of the historical wisdom is wrong.

Likelihood in 2016: High
Impact: High
Level of stupidity: Very high

To be clear, I don't think Trump has any chance of winning the nomination.  But he is dragging the political discussion so far afield from truly critical matters and so polar opposite of where the conversation needs to focus that I remain baffled on where this all ends. 

I no longer identify with the Republican Party - at least not the branch that seems to identify with Trump and his ilk - but I cannot accept what Bernie or Hillary represent.

This seems to sum up what I'm seeing:

The Trump drama, Wilson and others note, comes at a time when the probable Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, is struggling with image problems, a protracted scandal, and her own party’s divisions—but the focus on Trump has prevented Republicans from capitalizing on Clinton’s troubles. “He’s framing up a scenario where the election in the fall doesn’t become a referendum on the tenure of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, but on the Republican positions advanced by Donald Trump—which are not particularly Republican, and not particularly conservative,” Wilson said.

But the establishment feels embattled—and helpless. A Politico survey of Republican insiders in Iowa and New Hampshire, published Friday, found 70 percent saying Trump’s immigration plan was harmful to the party’s image. “He’s solidly put an anchor around the neck of our party, and we’ll sink because of it,” one Iowa Republican said. The right’s leading writers—George Will, Charles Krauthammer, Michael Barone—have excoriated Trump, to seemingly no avail. Trump doesn’t need them; he has his own cheering section in the likes of Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and Breitbart.com. Trump’s rise has highlighted the distance between the Republican establishment that favors cutting Social Security, increasing immigration, and expanding free trade, and the party base that, like Trump, wants the opposite.

They're all a bunch of dittoheads and I want nothing to do with them.