We may be just this screwed: Donald Trump has an easier path to victory than you think

As the 2016 presidential primaries got underway, there seemed to be several incontrovertible truths: Hillary Clinton’s nomination was inevitable, and Donald Trump stood no chance. Yet, here we are six months before the election, and Trump has seized the Republican nomination while Clinton is still working to box out Bernie Sanders’ insurgency (without losing his voters, who it turns out, may peel off after all).

Historically speaking, it is rare that a party that completed two terms in the Oval Office manages to win a third. Granted, Obama has been a transformational president, and his popularity remains high. However, the problem facing Hillary is that she’s not only going to be held to account for the failures and shortcomings of the Obama administration, but also of her husband’s tenure in office.

Consider: Despite Hillary Clinton’s unparalleled credentials, her historic potential as the first female POTUS, her early and nearly insurmountable delegate lead, and the near-unanimous and robust support from the Democratic Party establishment throughout—she is having trouble “closing the deal” for the nomination.

Historically speaking, it is rare that a party that completed two terms in the Oval Office manages to win a third.

And when that rare third term in a row is won... since FDR won his, there's only been one -- G.H.W. Bush. Between 1961 and 2001, we had eight presidents (assassinated, incompetent, paranoid, doofus, traitorous incompetent, the great one, charisma-free career bureaucrat, pathologically self-centered sociopath), and since 1993 we've been on the eight-year plan (pathologically self-centered sociopath, well-intentioned but gullible dyslexic, foreign-born muzzie/traitor), which is actually unusual in US POTUS history.

Granted, Obama has been a transformational president, and his popularity remains high. However, the problem facing Hillary is that she’s not only going to be held to account for the failures and shortcomings of the Obama administration, but also of her husband’s tenure in office.

Failures and shortcomings? I thought Obama was transformational and very popular. So was Billy Bob back in the good old days, right? Hillary should have this locked up!

Liberals' cognitive dissonance never ceases to amaze me.

Having Trump as an opponent - well, I don't know, most of the liberals I knew wanted Cruz as their opponent Most liberals wanted a Rubio or Cruz to be the nominee, don't doubt it for a minute. Guys like that are very traditional GOP candidates, and would be helpless human piñatas for Hillary and the liberal media. I for one never take seriously the idea that a particular Republican candidate is "Hillary's worst nightmare." Liberals aren't frightened easily, really hardly at all. They're very confident in their ability to intimidate Republicans, and with good reason. Trump flips the script, at least, and embraces the things they use to intimidate. It's worth a shot.

While I have a visceral skepticism of analyses coming from professors of Sociology, this was a surprisingly enjoyable article, and I thank you for posting it. The author is thinking about the right things, IMHO, it's just that there are a few highly questionable premises preventing him from taking it to a more objective level.

Accusations of misogyny, for instance, are often heard in the context of a fundamentally anti-white, anti-Christian culture war—a zero-sum campaign waged against ordinary hard-working Americans by condescending and politically correct liberal elites.

It isn't just misogyny, the big one is racism, and there seems to be an institutional blind spot on the part of liberal commentators that prevents them from recognizing how profoundly offensive the three-pronged attack on middle-class values has been from politicians such as 0bama and his band of race-baiters, complicit media that do not consider opposition to be valid and refuse to present it objectively, and the academic elitists who came up with it in the first place. Nor is it only the white targets of this campaign who find it offensive, since the historical and honorable civil rights struggle has now been relegated to the status of toilet access for sexual degenerates.

The author won't admit it, but I think he can see it: the problem is that the war on the middle class has generated a tidal wave of resentment whose expression in the media is impermissible and hence invisible to those who derive all of their political data therefrom. Trump's appeal is a huge mystery and will remain so to people who systematically delegitimize it sources. They can't see it through the blindfold of ideology and are too fond of that blindfold to remove it.

One topic that doesn't seem to garner much attention is the relative ability of the two main candidates simply to communicate, but it's one reason Hillary is not only perceived as a bad candidate, but actually is. She cannot be trusted even by her political allies. She is noncommittal, deliberately ambiguous, and historically deceitful, which is precisely the behavior one expects from a criminal trying not to get caught. CrookedHillary looks like a crook on the podium and she is, and the voters have noticed. And what this obvious mendacity has managed to do is write Trump a free pass: he could recite Jabberwocky and the voters would still be happier with that than someone whose every word comes across as carefully parsed criminal testimony full of technicalities and double meanings.

The brutal truth is that CrookedHillary is a terrible candidate because she's a terrible person. Were the author to begin with that premise the current poll numbers might not be quite such a mystery to him.

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