Originally published at SkewedNews.net:
Skewed News — It’s time to face the truth: Donald Trump could be our next president.
It’s also time to recognize that he is dangerous.
First, the likelihood of him being elected.
For many months the professional pundit class (the same guys who told us U.S. troops would be greeted as liberators) has assured us that the Trump surge couldn’t and wouldn’t last. That this was the silly season — remember Herman Cain? That after the kids had their fun, the adults would prevail. Jeb, anointed years ago by the Republican establishment. Perhaps Marco Rubio, to appeal to Latinos. Maybe John Kasich, the Ohio governor beloved of political reporters but sadly, not by Republican voters.
They were wrong. Aside from a short-lived challenge by Ben Carson (he turned out to be this year’s Herman Cain), now sinking and almost certainly permanently done in by his on-the-fly approach to foreign policy, The Donald has consistently been #1 in the polls since the beginning of the campaign. Yes, there are flaws in polling, especially for the Iowa caucuses. But only an idiot dismisses the political prospects of the guy who looked most likely to win all along and still does.
Republican Party leaders are finally catching on. “Irritation is giving way to panic as it becomes increasingly plausible that Mr. Trump could be the party’s standard-bearer and imperil the careers of other Republicans,” The New York Times reports. “Many leading Republican officials, strategists and donors now say they fear that Mr. Trump’s nomination would lead to an electoral wipeout, a sweeping defeat that could undo some of the gains Republicans have made in recent congressional, state and local elections.”
Maybe.
Or maybe he’ll win the White House.
The road to the nomination isn’t that hard to imagine. The latest poll has him at 27%. If Marco Rubio Ted Cruz Ben Carson were one candidate, they’d have 49% — but they aren’t, so they don’t. They’re evenly splitting the anti-Trump vote 17% to 16% to 16%. Since all three get more famous with every passing day, none has an incentive to quit. Iowa is a wild card, but Trump will probably win New Hampshire. But here’s what really matters: South Carolina. In recent races, South Carolina has been super — as in Super Tuesday — important to Republicans. Carson has faded there. Trump is favored to win South Carolina.
What about the much-vaunted Republican party leadership? Their man (Jeb!) is polling at 5% and, I expect, will be out of the race within a month or so in order to avoid further embarrassment. With no alternative, the insiders will recognize reality and rally around Trump. They have a history of resisting insurgents, like Arnold Schwarzenegger when he ran for California governor, and embracing them later.
Republican nominee Trump’s prospects depend upon which Democrat he’s facing.
If Trump faces current Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton, polls show that he defeats her and moves into the White House. This election cycle, voters are looking for authenticity. That isn’t Hillary. Also, a Trump vs. Clinton race leaves the liberal and progressive base of the Democratic Party without a candidate. Sure, many would punch a chad for Hillary out of fear. But many others would stay home — and that would hand it to Trump.
In the Democratic race, Hillary supporters constantly say she’s the most electable. But that’s not true if, as is becoming increasingly likely, Donald Trump is the Republican nominee.
“In a new McClatchy-Marist poll, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) leads Republican candidate Donald Trump by a landslide margin of 12 percentage points, 53 to 41. In the McClatchy poll, Sanders also leads former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) by a landslide margin of 10 points, 51 to 41,” reports The Hill. “The huge Sanders advantage over Trump is not new. In the last four match-up polls between them reported by Real Clear Politics, Sanders defeated Trump by margins of 12, 9, 9 and 2 percentage points.”
Sanders beats all the top-tier GOP candidates in head-to-head matchups. “Mr. Sanders led Donald Trump 49 to 41 percent, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas 49 to 39 percent, Dr. Ben Carson 47 to 41 percent and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida 44 to 43 percent, according to the [latest Quinnipiac] poll.
Democrats voting based on electability should vote for Sanders.
Unless the Democratic contest shifts, however, they won’t. The same Quinnipiac poll shows Hillary strengthening and widening her lead over Sanders.
Which is how Trump wins.
Trump — who is a dangerous man.
Even Republicans like Times columnist Ross Douthat are beginning to see the light. In a column titled “Is Trump Fascist?” Douthat concludes: only a little. Trump, he writes, is “closer to the ‘proto-fascist’ zone on the political spectrum than either the average American conservative or his recent predecessors in right-wing populism.”
“Trump may indeed be a little fascistic, but that sinister resemblance is just one part of his reality-television meets WWE-heel-turn campaign style,” Douthat slightly reassures us.
I disagree.
History shows us that, more often than not, we are wise to take politicians at their word. Liberals who projected fantasies upon Bill Clinton and Barack Obama that both men were secret progressives who pretended to be corporate centrists to get elected were disappointed. Germans who thought there was no way Hitler could possibly mean that Final Solution stuff allowed it to come to pass.
We don’t have that clairvoyant character from Stephen King’s “The Dead Zone” to read Donald Trump’s mind. All we know is what he says.
What he says is terrifying.
Trump’s policies (which, truth be told, are Carsonishly invented on the fly) are frightening enough: the mass deportation of all 11 million people in the United States illegally, closing mosques, assassinating exiled NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and forcing Muslims to register with the police — the same as the Nazis did to Jews in 1936. (To be fair, he kind of backed off from the registry. But what kind of person comes up with such an idea in the first place?)
Even more worrisome is Trump’s temperament.
Is he completely unhinged? Or merely psychologically undisciplined? Either way, voters across the political spectrum ought to ensure that someone with such outlandish ideas, expressed wildly and glibly, never become commander-in-chief of the most powerful armed forces in the world.
Just a couple days ago, for example, Trump said he wants to murder not just members of ISIS, but their families too. “When you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families,” he said on FoxNews. “They care about their lives, don’t kid yourselves. But they say they don’t care about their lives. But you have to take out their families.”
This is crazy. It’s also fascist. The Nazis murdered the families of resistance fighters. And it’s expressed with so much idiotic certainty.
If Trump gets elected, we’ll be lucky if he doesn’t start World War III his first week in office.
Yes, it could happen here.
8 Comments.
The Nazis murdered the families of resistance fighters.
Which was a centerpiece of their counter-insurgency doctrine (practiced in the East rather than in the West of course). Another was proactive killing of people who might organize effective resistance: i.e. when a village is taken, execute the mayor, priest, and doctor.
I never understood why the obvious link to the fascist toolbox isn’t made whenever counter-insurgency is mentioned in the U.S. media, usually while openly exulting the benefits of death squads (i.e. the Salvadorian option.
The Trump appears merely as the logical next step: deliberately and openly advocating for what has been practiced (or at least instigated and then looked the other way) for decades. But it is certainly an important next step. After all, “collateral damage” by remotely controlled missiles as opposed to murder by suicide bombing are routinely depicted as oh so different and morally not at all equivalent because of supposed (lack of) intention. So Ted’s piece hits close to home…
What’s terrifying is that there are 11 million people here illegally.
Or that so many like Sanders’ ideas. And even if I did I couldn’t support such a spineless and uninspiring ‘man’ as a leader. Idea people are advisers.
What I think is happening with Trump is that he has seen so much success in his tough talk and going beyond the bipartisan imposed boundaries of ideas that he believes erroneously that going further will help him. It’s been more than disappointing. I could get over the Snowden thing because that’s just theatre. Snowden is safe in Russia. But this registry thing…from a moral and coincidentally popular standpoint I think he’d be much better off going a little more libertarian. He’s a successful capitalist. He’s got no business becoming a National Socialist.
Like Ted said, you can argue about whether Trump really espouses the things he says – or if he’s pandering to his supporters, but either way, it shows that he’s tapped into a large group of people who are “our bad side”.
For the most part, his supporters are people who want to roll back the “progress” we’ve made, and institute repressive laws and standards that fit in with beliefs they feel – a lot of it racism and intolerance mixed in with this. Some people might say that many of his supporters are the “old guard” and faced with the world today, they want to go back to the “old, better times”. In any case, the idea of Trump becoming president is sickening and dangerous because he obviously has a “fire-em” mentality – fire the illegal immigrants, the families of terrorists, moochers, losers, etc., i.e., get rid of them. The GOP has become a party filled with all sorts of angry, intolerant, greedy, spiteful people led by grifters and carnival barkers seeking to “make America great again”, which, in this case, appears to be a fascist state led by a vigilante and yee-haw wild-west mentality. The world is no longer the place it was after WWII, with Europe beaten down, and the US able to trample its way across it as it pleased – instead, this will destroy us, if the climate change doesn’t do this first.
I still can’t see Trump taking it. He’s only got 27% of 50% of the electorate. His followers are all fired up, they’ll go to the polls in higher percentages than those who are shrugging and saying, “might as well be Jeb” So my money is on Trump for the nomination, but with far less than 50% of the GOP vote.
For the election itself, the swing voters won’t be voting for him. The few GOP out there who can can count to 21 with their pants on won’t be voting for him. The party ditto-heads will of course vote for whoever is on the ballot – but that’s not going to add up to enough to put him in the white house. Nor will he have Jeb helping out with the Florida vote. The RNC are scared for just the reasons Ted mentioned, so no hope from that quarter either.
Barring a *real* scandal, our next president will be decided in the primaries, that being whoever takes the dem nod.
I’ve often suggested we need a ‘none of the above’ option on the ballot. This is shaping up to be one of those races.
I too wish there was a “None of the above option.” The polls are as reported above are not accurate. Many of Sander’s supporters claim they will vote but history proves that many are in the category of “least likely to vote.”
Hillary has made a major mistake from Day-1. Obama does not have strong approval ratings, and Hillary has not taken an aggressive stance in offering alternatives to fight domestic terrorism and to deal with the situation in the Mid East. There are those that dis her because of her age and yes, she’s a woman and we’re at war. All the more reason for Clintonr to convince the American public why (besides for moral reasons) the US should accept the 68,000 plus immigrants and migrants from the Mid East, Obama has stated in writing he will accommodate and provide for economically.
I have not heard of any American Mosques willing to house, feed, and find jobs for a significant number of immigrants. Churches across the US stepped up to help the South Viet Namese boat people. Many slept in shifts on mats, 22 and more to a 2-bedroom house to save aid $$. Even then there were fights over jobs with old timers.
Perhaps Trump’s popularity reflects what many Americans want to hear. While there are Muslims who have made significant contributions to Western society, how can we ensure we won’t run into any of the problems in Europe where some immigrants have taken advantage of state benefits, have very large families they can’t afford, and demand changes to their new country’s laws to accommodate their religious beliefs? There’s a petition signed by the required 599,999 in front of Pres Obama to make 3 important Muslim religious days national holidays.
> how can we ensure we won’t run into any of the problems … have very large families they can’t afford, and demand changes to their new country’s laws to accommodate their religious beliefs?
Probably the same way that we handle Christians who have very large families they can’t afford, and demand changes to their country’s laws to accommodate their religious beliefs.
Islam is not the problem – religious intolerance is the problem. You are just as guilty as “they” are.
CrazyH, there’s this one big problem with your worldview.
Islam is incompatible and antithetical to Western Civilization.
They don’t want your tolerance. And they won’t return it. They want domination. They sow discord wherever they go. I suppose you’d be one to say “Islam is a religion of peace.” You love them so much, then invite them to live next door to you.
It was men in a Christian nation that came up with the First Amendment. It was Christians that learned tolerance of other faiths. Yeah, religious intolerance is the problem. Islamic religious intolerance.
> It was men in a Christian nation that came up with the First Amendment.
Your ignorance of US History is nothing short of astounding. Franklin and Jefferson were deists, Adams was a Unitarian. The British Empire had a state religion, the founders rebelled against them and created a SECULAR nation. The First Amendment was written in that nation, eleven years after its founding.
> It was Christians that learned tolerance of other faiths.
Likewise your ignorance of religious history. From the Crusades to the Inquisitions to the Iraq war, Christianity has always stood for extreme intolerance of everyone else on the planet.
> They want domination.
Likewise your ignorance of Middle Eastern history. They don’t want to dominate us, they want us to stop dominating them.
“We” have been attacking “them” around for nearly a thousand years. In this millennium alone, “we” have been responsible for the deaths of over a million of “them.” “We” have supported genocide in Iraq and Palestine. “We” backed Hussein and the House of al Saud. “We” kicked over the democratically elected government of Iran and put the Shah back in power.
Yeah, that’s some cool tolerance you’ve got there.
The ignorance and bigotry you are espousing is precisely what got us into this mess in the first place. The only way out is to stop it on “both” sides. We are the aggressors, we are the more powerful, and you seem to think we’re more civilized. Doesn’t that mean that the onus is on us to show the way to peace?