Not precisely a surprise, or anything. Barring an airplane accident, or some such, he’s the nominee.
Most polls show him winning against Clinton (and losing against Sanders).
Get used to the idea of President Trump, it is your very possible future. If he improves the economy (quite possible, politicians and central bankers have refused to do all the obvious things to improve it), he could be your President for quite some time.
(I am fundraising to determine how much I’ll write this year. If you value my writing, and want more of it, please consider donating.)
Chucky
My admittedly grim first thought was something like “well, at least I’m aryan enough.”
More seriously, if polls are to be believed, Das Trumpf is taking nearly half of Latino Repub caucus-goers regardless of education level:
http://www.cnn.com/election/primaries/polls/nv/Rep
This maybe fits with something I see in my neck of the IRL woods (>50% hispanic but heavily Repub), that naturalized/citizen and property-owning hispanics frequently do not like illegals much at all. Cutting in line and all that.
I eagerly await to hear the usual suspects in the news tomorrow wonksplain how this is actually a crushing Rubio victory.
Ian Welsh
Clinton is now the presumptive Dem nominee (though it’s certainly not a sure thing), and polls show her losing to Trump.
People natter on about Trump’s high negatives, but Clinton’s negatives are sky high too.
Lisa
Just as I predicted.
Lisa
The Democrat elites will still go fr HRC though as they would rather have Trump in power than Sanders.
BlizzardOfOz
Lisa – likewise, the Rep establishment has been making noise about supporting Hillary if Trump is the nominee. Very telling about our sham “2” party system. Is this what a realignment looks like?
Lisa
Neo-liberal and neo-con the 2 establishment US elite religions.
Some Guy
To echo what Blizzard said, I think if it is Clinton – Trump (still a ways from settled IMO), the neocons will all go to Clinton (Neocon expert Glenn Greenwald has been predicting and tracking this).
Even assuming that matchup happens, and the support of the neocons puts Clinton over the top for the presidency, it will be a pyrrhic victory, in the same manner that even if Clinton wins the Dem. nomination, it will be pyrrhic with respect to all the masks that had to be taken off (e.g. Krugman) so blatantly that they will be hard to put back on and in the sense that victory will come at the expense of (further) alienating the party’s core/critical supporters.
In another sense, that result would be a tactical retreat for the establishment. Unable to still control two parties, they would consolidate their forces into the party that seems most pliable. Rome can be sacked but Constantinople remains unbowed (or at least, not fully bowed).
On the plus side, the neocon alliance party’s policies are so destructive (step 1: install a no-fly zone in Syria … by shooting down Russian aircraft???, step 2: more ‘free’ trade, etc.) that I can’t see them matching the Eastern Empire for longevity
Lisa
Some Guy : “step 1: install a no-fly zone in Syria … by shooting down Russian aircraft”
Step 2: boom…..
V. Arnold
But, but; Russia already has a defacto no fly zone in Syria. Nobody flies without Russian permission.
The U.S. has a genuine dilemma, and I am certain the U.S. will make the wrong decision; especially under Clinton.
I think, in my 70 years, this is the first time there are no, as in zero, qualified candidates running for president. At least as defined by the two ruling parties…
Bloody remarkable really.
V. Arnold
Oh shit!
“At least as defined by the two ruling parties…”
No, no, no; as defined by me.
Argh…bloody hell…
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
I was born in 1963, which makes me just barely old enough to remember “Democrats for Nixon” commercials in 1972.
I, too, have wondered if a Trump nomination might cause a significant faction of the GOP Establishment to decide that they would prefer to forfeit the White House, but keep control of their party, as a significant faction of the Democratic Establishment did in 1972.
After all, even if Clinton wins, the GOP would retain control of a majority of the state governments, the gerrymandered Federal House, and probably the Federal Senate as well.
Actually, I hope the GOP Establishment does that. I do not want President White Trash With Money. (BTW, I’m white, if anyone is wondering.)
V. Arnold
IBWP
LMFAO; as if there was any doubt…
shh
As my v. smart partner has observed: the “presidential election” (teehee) is really a reality sit-com and Alex Baldwin is playing Trumps.
This is the long result of stupid people idolizing vapid ones. Well documented, totally understood and, paradoxically, wholly unexcogitable. Perhaps I mean intractable?
But why focus on the 2016 debacle? 2020 will be much worse considering the lack of intelligent solutions to more pressing problems than NATO’s sabre rattling adventurism which, after all is merely the death rattle of a dying paradigm.
You ain’t seen nothing yet.
sanctimonious purist
Where are you getting the match-up data? RCP says Clinton beats Trump http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_clinton-5491.html
Anyway, it’s early and I think there very well could be Republicans for Clinton forming. Which, of course, makes the whole thing sort of ridiculous.
Jill Stein it is.
Peter VE
“Barring an airplane accident, …”
Jaime Roldós Aguilera
Omar Torrijos
EmilianoZ
My arm and heels are already sore from practicing the new Trump salute.
Random Commenter
Most polls have Trump beating Clinton?
http://www.factcheck.org/2016/02/trump-vs-clinton/
What?
cybrestrike
Trump will be the nominee. And he probably won himself the presidency. The Establishment is so bloody clueless about the anger of the general public of how messed up everything is for people outside of the Establishment. I can only imagine their shock at the rise of Trump.
We are so screwed.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
From Feb. 8, Gene Lyons on Donald Trump.
http://www.battlecreekenquirer.com/story/opinion/columnists/2016/02/08/gene-lyons-trumps-woman-problem/80013782/
“The accent, gestures and exaggerated mugging all come easy. You’ve just got to imagine a chimpanzee with a trust fund. See, if he hadn’t inherited a couple of hundred million bucks from his old man, Trump would have ended up cheating used car buyers and standing around on New York street corners patting his groin and hooting at passing women with the other primates.
“Hey baby, I got a piece of candy for you. Right here in my pants.”
Like that.” 😆
A1
The post above is just plain nonsense. If I had wheels I’d be a wheel barrow.
Trump is not stupid. Bully – yes. You would have to be a bully to go face to face with Jeb Bush is S Carolina and say the Iraq war was not a good idea etc. But stupid no not at all.
Kim Kaufman
At some point it would be good to start asking the candidates who they would want in their cabinets. That would tell us more about what Trump would do. Same with the other two (Hillary and Bernie).
Thepanzer
Side topic. Both Wapo and NBC are reporting Obama is considering the republican governor of Nevada as the Scalia replacement. Wut??? Seriously, the centrist sleaze gets a Supreme Court opening and even considers a sitting republican politician as the fill? If this doesn’t finally break the obots brains nothing can. So when republicans are in the White House we get republican justices, and when we have democratic presidents we also get republican justices. This isn’t 11 dimensional chess, it’s a dumpster fire masquerading as political expediency.
ekstase
Well, if Sanders takes the nomination this is good news, right? The other option? Is cataclysmic sad a thing?
Also, I think there are more good and kind people in America than one might suspect from watching our media. And I think we owe a lot of credit to people who grow up in a bullying culture, yet refuse to become one. You just have to believe that people at the lowest level of behavior are not your superiors–I think there’s some light that comes through to you the more you remind yourself of that fact. And you start to see who else sees this–who’s really awake, and who’s just faking it. And that last bit is also the fun part.
Starveling
I’m a Sanders man, but darn it, if Clinton gets the nod- I’m hopping on the Trump train to see the powers that be tremble a bit. The man is a bombast, but I quite get a kick out of him rattling the sacred cows of the corrupt.
I’ll take a nationalist populist Caesarism if I cannot have the far more positive, inclusive populist democracy. Beats the stuffing out of business as usual and the Davos class.
S Brennan
Ian, “Barring an airplane accident, or some such, he’s the nominee.” neat line.
Excerpted from a post of mine on FBook:
“The DNC, RNC & Media have tried to stop Trump, they have failed because, for whatever reason, Trump understands the alienation of working class folks. Every attempt to bash Trump relies on a Palace of Versailles haughtiness and snobbery. And the peasants have heard enough of that type of “let them eat cake” bullshit.
I will probably see a dozen posts today that mock anybody who agrees with Trump on letting the Russians clean-up Obama/Hillary’s mess in Syria, abandoning “regime change” as foreign policy, engaging with the Russians instead of girding our loins for a cold war…or WWIII, restoring Glass-Steagall, maintaining/enlarging SSI & Medicare, using mercantile policy to restore USA’s industrial base and a cessation of unlimited immigration which has doubled the US population IN MY LIFETIME, in spite of a negative birthrate for those who been in the US for two..count ’em, two generations.
Is Trump a jerk, yeah sure, he wears it on his sleeve, so is everybody who wants to be president, big deal, next. I am not impressed by people who can hide their venality well.”
S Brennan
To the person above who asked about who might be in Trump’s cabinet, my FBook post from a couple weeks back.
“Happy Fat Tuesday all;
Some food for thought for those who are sick of all the empty calories offered by the media and are just trying to work through how the candidates stand on major issues.
Perhaps you should save this article for Lent, as it’s protein, low on the saturated fats buried in the media’s deep fried crust of horse race batter and without any of the syrupy coating of celebrity gossip…and not even a light dusting of reductio ad hitlerum.
BTW, if you don’t know who Gen. Michael Flynn is, you ought to make an effort to find out. Had Obama/Hillary paid attention to him, instead of their high level donors, they would not look like foreign policy buffoons now.”
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-wp-blm-declassified-trump-dd5252a0-c909-11e5-b9ab-26591104bb19-20160201-story.html
dfc
This isn’t 11 dimensional chess, it’s a dumpster fire masquerading as political expediency.
Tsk tsk, it just isn’t possible to evaluate the merits of this decision in the here and now, you just need to sit tight and wait for posterity to make its judgment…
…sometime after the heat death of the Universe.
dfc
This isn’t 11 dimensional chess, it’s a dumpster fire masquerading as political expediency.
Tsk tsk, it just isn’t possible to evaluate the merits of this decision in the here and now, you just need to sit tight and wait for posterity to make its judgment…
…sometime after the heat death of the Universe.
.