Posted on 08/29/2016 10:48:56 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Trump’s voters (and many are staying mum) are well aware of his flaws and might carry him to victory anyway.
For what it is worth: Nothing is ever certain, and much could go wrong, but my money remains on a Trump victory. Why?
1) It feels a whole lot like Reagan in ’80 and Newt in ’94.
Reagan was disliked by the establishment (who liked Baker or Bush), viewed with suspicion by professional conservatives (they liked Phil Crane, not a divorced, former Democrat, big-spending governor), and regarded with condescension by the media and the Left (who saw him as stupid and as a dangerous cowboy). Those camps could not fathom the breadth and depth of his popular momentum. Ditto the GOP’s taking the House in ’94 — I was on CNN five weeks prior to that election and produced outright guffaws and rolled eyes from everyone when I said that the GOP would win not only the Senate but also the House.
The signs were all there, but because the idea seemed so preposterous, many analysts couldn’t see them. More recently, Matt Bevin was left for dead by most of the smart money in his race for Kentucky governor, and Brexit was “sure” not to pass. Trump is an extension of that zeitgeist for many — a long-awaited reclaiming of control of their lives, their country, their self-identity.
2) Who are you going to believe, polls or your lying eyes? I started asking people in the spring whom they were voting for. A surprisingly large percentage of not-supposed-to-be-a-Trump-supporter types turned out to be exactly that. That includes rich and highly educated people, women, blacks, Hispanics, and Muslims. A bunch of anecdotes, but interesting. Everyone keeps saying this election is about Trump. But I have come to believe it really is about his supporters, who to a person are deeply versed in all his flaws and faults and support him regardless. For them, this is about one or more of the following: deep antipathy for Hillary and all she represents and would do; disappointment with a broken system they feel has ignored them and in some cases harmed them for years; a desire to reclaim the country and their own lives and personhood. They genuinely love and worry about their country, and they want to feel proud again to be an American.
3) If what got incinerated was a phoenix, don’t bet against it rising. If you’ve seen someone succeed at something five or six or nine times, how smart is it to bet they won’t do it the tenth time? How many times was seemingly everyone sure that Trump was finished — only to see him come back stronger than before? Many of us missed, time and again, the meta messages Trump was sending that galvanize his support, and many miss it still.
4) Enter the stages of grief. For two-thirds of GOP voters, Trump wasn’t just another candidate — he was the one potentially viable candidate they feared. So with Trump triumphant, enter the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and, finally, acceptance – each person cycling through at his or her own pace. You can tell that many are at the nadir of depression by the way those who are the most depressed about Trump interpret him. Having a predisposition, as understandable as it might be, can hinder our understanding of what is happening. If someone starts with the assumption that Trump is ignorant, stupid, or dangerous, it rules out considering the possibility that comments such as “founders of ISIS” could simply be brilliant hyperbole. In contrast, allowing the idea that Trump is actually as smart as his overall track record, even discounted, indicates, permits the perspective that his repeated “gaffes” are a purposeful and calculated strategy to garner millions of dollars in free media, wherein his larger point gets made for him, over and over. That’s no mean feat in a media environment stacked in favor of the Left and Democrats and against conservatives and any GOP nominee.
5) It’s still summer. I have found that many folks who are normally GOP voters but who are unhappy about Trump largely fall into two camps. The first are those who object because Trump isn’t solidly, reliably conservative on their priority issues. The second are those who, at bottom, find Trump personally objectionable, as does almost everyone they know, so they feel that the prospect of supporting him would violate the way they see themselves and wish to have others think of them. These are real concerns that even many Trump supporters say they have worked through. But if people are hitting despair in August, that means they have September and October to move to acceptance. Why would they? Because Hillary’s presidency and all it implies will become so much more real.
Given the choice between someone who will get pretty much every policy decision wrong and someone who might get some of them right, more and more people who now can’t see voting for Trump will decide that on the “lesser of two evils” spectrum, they will be a Trump voter, even if they are not a Trump supporter. One cannot discount the barrage of negative ads that will come against Trump. And who knows what new revelations will shift the ground yet again? But particularly with more and more Clinton pay-to-play revelations, if by early October the social opprobrium shifts from “how could I possibly support him?” to “how could I possibly enable her?” then Republicans will win the presidency.
How could it? He didn’t say anything.
He posted the article...You sent your response to him...That’s all...
Additional reasons why Illary will have a difficult time winning:
1) No one can stand her. Those who vote for her do so for strictly ideological reasons. EVERYONE knows that she is incredibly corrupt and the very definition of a liar. At least Jimmy Carter was (at the time) not hated by everyone (”he’s a nice guy, just incompetent”).
2) Illary is coming after 2 terms of not merely an incompetent President of the same party, but someone viewed as being actively anti-American by a large percentage of the population - and Illary hasn’t criticized Obama at all.
3) The economy just SUCKS, and she’s proposed nothing to get it moving again except more taxes, more regulations and more wealth redistribution. Trump, OTOH, has promised less taxes, less regulations, better trade agreements and an immigration policy both intended to benefit the American worker, and he will remove the chains from the entire energy industry (which will help correct our huge balance of payments deficit and employ hundreds of thousands in very high-paying jobs.
4) Illary is, well, ILL.
5) Trump hasn’t started to advertise in a big way - yet. She’s spent about $200 million and that, combined with her “convention bump” has given her...a lead of a couple of points, at best.
6) Julian Assange isn’t through with her yet.
7) She’s not Black - so a lot fewer Blacks will show up at the polls, and of those that do, she’ll get a lesser percentage.
A hundred bucks on Trump will win you $350 in Vegas.
Agree with the analysis.
I think too that Trump’s overtures to the black community - “what have you got to loose?” will earn dividends on election day.
When it gets right down to it, I think more folks than not will be willing to “take a chance” with Trump - rather than going for the sure-thing nothing-burger, which is HRC.
I still do not understand why people like Ryan or McCain are so popular. The way people vote makes me squirm.
While democrats seem to have a solid support for their message, on the GOP side there seem to be no such sanction for GOPe who wander off message on national security and economy
His sharp use of the language has tempted me to quit drinking.
Yes but none of these scandals seem to hurt her. She is being funded by Saudi groups who want her to talk nice about the Kingdom. Voters don’t seem to care.
Do those 25% really care what Peter King or Paul Ryan and other dissenters think? Asking the question because I am not sure.
Some good points. The perception we get outside of this contest, here in Canada that is, is what the phony numbers tell us. So we all think the US economy is on recovery mode and unemployment has been driven down to 5%. So my question is do Americans believe the numbers or how things really “feel” to be so for them personally?
I suspect a much more malevolent motive for the Saudi money and the Muslim handler.
“If we loose the court, we are doomed.”
We have already lost the court, the question is whether Trump can win and bring it back.
Voters are unaware of almost everything.
Let’s hope all the points you list materialize, but I don’t have faith in the American people.
Some of this faith in Ryan-o and McPain could just simply be the ineptitude of the American Republican voters.
Well, some of them are the establishment and their sycophants who know their gravy train is tied to the system as it is... for them they will do anything to keep the system from changing, and have no qualms seeing Hillary in the White House to do it... basically these are everyone who is an R and has stated they will vote for Hillary.. among many others.
The rest are people just working through their sour grapes because they supported someone else, or they do have reservations because Trump’s brash style isn’t to their liking.. the overwhelming majority of these will end up supporting Trump in the end.
I would agree with you except for the dim fraud. They just wait to see how many votes Trump gest then find boxes of votes in the trunk of a car. Happened before, will happen again.
I just hope the election is such a blowout for Trump that all the libs heads explode.
I agree with many of the comments in this thread. I’ve been saying for a long time any time the press and politicians start hitting Trump harder, it’s because he is gaining ground. Like the old saying, when you’re taking the most fire, you’re directly over the target.
Sam - American voters mostly know only what they see on the 5:00 news. And that’s usually on the big 3, ABC, CBS and NBC. All owned and operated by democrats, donated to democrats, and all have close ties to Democrats in government, and all protecting Hillary. they don’t know or know very little about Hillary’s emails, Benghazi actions, lies, health, any of it. The press is hiding it all.
This is usually referred to as “low information voters”. Most people don’t bother to get online and dig up what is actually happening, they see the 5 o’clock news and think they know all they need to know, and for the most part, refuse to believe they are being lied to, because the so called news is telling them exactly what they want to hear. They have also bene brainwashed their entire lives to believe the news is the last word, journalists are inherently honest and have some sort of built in imperative to tell the truth. It seems appalling and outrageous to them that a reported would actually lie, or even bend the truth.
So most Americans have no idea what is really going on, they know almost nothing about the candidates, and all they know about Trump is what the so called news is spoon feeding them. Most actually believe Trump is a racist and bigot, they don’t know he fought City Hall in Palm Beach FL, to get restrictions removed so he could build his golf course and allow blacks and Jews to have memberships too. They know nothing about the Jesse Jackson video I just saw in another thread praising Trump for his efforts to help blacks in the 90’s. They don’t know he was one of the first executives to hire female executives, or that a female executive was 2nd in command when Trump Tower was built.
The news is telling them none of this, they only repeat all the latest lies Hillary is pushing. As for Hillary saying she will raise taxes, they actually cheered. They cheered when she said she would raise taxes on the middle class. The cheer when she says she will expand Obamacare, because they don’t know it’s already bankrupted over half the exchanges and all the big insurance companies are pulling out, they’re losing BIG money.
People here know almost nothing about either candidate, because the traditional press, where they get 90% of their “news” is not reporting it, and are not trying to dig into the pros and cons of both candidates and simply let us decide, which s what they should actually be doing.
So the short answer is no, voters don’t know about Hillary’s commitment to higher taxes, which she will have no choice about. You can’t give people free college education without the taxpayers picking up the bill. That means more taxes. They don’t know it, they don’t look it up, and they don’t think about it. The only way to expand Obamacare will mean increased taxes. they don’t know it and don’t try to find out.
Low information voters.
Dear Washington,
America is coming,
and they’re bringing Donald J Trump.
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