The Future President, Donald Trump

InfraBlue wrote:

McGentrix wrote:

I dunno Frank. New Jersey is a pretty crappy place and I could see some of them celebrating that NYC finally got a bit of a beat down.

Yeah, but could you see it?

Nah, but I did see a bunch of fanatics in the middle east cheering and it is possible that a New Jersey station aired that footage. It's possible Trump saw that and 15 years pass where that becomes the memory.

There’s never been a US presidential candidate like Donald Trump. Just how unusual has his candidacy been? In poring over some poll data Monday morning, we noticed one number that to us symbolizes the surprising nature of his rise to front-runner status.

That number reflects the percentage of Republican voters who have a favorable opinion of him, as a political person. Right now it’s 69, according to the most recent ABC News/Washington Post poll.

The size of the number itself isn’t what makes it surprising. Sixty-nine percent is pretty good for a favorability rating, but Mr. Trump isn’t the leader in this particular numerical category, according to ABC/Post data. That would be Ben Carson, who’s viewed favorably by 71 percent of Republican voters.

Its singularity lies in the fact that it used to be much lower. In July, Trump was viewed favorably by 57 percent of GOP voters in this same poll series. In May, prior to his announcement that he was going to actually run for president, the corresponding number was ... 23.

That’s right: Trump has tripled his favorability in his party since he started campaigning for the Oval Office. That’s while he’s been insulting rivals and past GOP nominees alike while battling with various news figures and blasting out many statements labeled questionable (at best) by fact-checkers.

By itself, such a rise isn’t completely startling. It happens all the time in presidential politics: An underdog candidate starts out with low favorability, since few people are aware of his or her strengths and faults. The candidate rises in favorability as he or she becomes better known.

But Trump was already famous, due to him being an celebrity over decades. His name recognition was probably close to 100 percent when he jumped in the race.

That means he’s actually changed people’s minds about his political prospects, at least in some parts of the GOP. That doesn’t happen often. As Jonathan Last notes recently in The Weekly Standard, this is one of the ways Trump’s run has “defied the laws of electioneering.”

McGentrix wrote:

InfraBlue wrote:

McGentrix wrote:

I dunno Frank. New Jersey is a pretty crappy place and I could see some of them celebrating that NYC finally got a bit of a beat down.

Yeah, but could you see it?

Nah, but I did see a bunch of fanatics in the middle east cheering and it is possible that a New Jersey station aired that footage. It's possible Trump saw that and 15 years pass where that becomes the memory.

Quite possible! Likely, even...considering all things.

I can see it being possible.

You can see it being possible.

I wonder why Donald Trump cannot see it as being possible...and at least acknowledge that it is possible and that he could possibly be wrong????

His ego is getting in the way.

Like most nightmares, this one probably won’t come true. But the very fact that Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen are running strongly for the American and French presidencies says something disturbing about the health of liberal democracy in the west. In confusing and scary times, voters seem tempted to turn to “strong” nationalistic leaders — western versions of Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

In Washington recently, I found most mainstream political analysts dismissing the idea that Mr Trump could win the Republican nomination, let alone the presidency. This struck me as complacent. If Mr Trump were a normal candidate he would be regarded as favourite for the nomination. He is ahead in the crucial early states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.
Outrageous remarks about Mexicans, Muslims, the disabled and women have not dented his popularity.
Many Democrats chortle that if the Republicans are mad enough to nominate Mr Trump, he would certainly be trounced by Hillary Clinton in the presidential election. But even that cannot be assumed. The most recent national poll on a Trump v Clinton contest had Mr Trump winning by five points.\.
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So what is going on in western politics? The overarching development is a loss of faith in traditional political elites and a search for radical alternatives. Behind that, it seems to me, there are four broad trends: an increase in economic insecurity, a backlash against immigration, a fear of terrorism and the decline of traditional media.

You might not get any real news, Hawk, and all of your "polls" are BS as well, but the rest of the planet is laughing their arses off that Trumpet is even in the picture, let alone has a following.

Oligarchy. Look it up sometime. Elections are theatre for ugly people.

They were laughing at Putin for years.

I'm impressed.

Trump is the best candidate for the current race. He is smart, and is not afraid to reveal what the people need to hear, unlike those other republican and democratic candidates. He knows what's best for this nation, America! Building a wall and preventing refugees from entering ensures a nationalism and patriotism that all too many citizens fear to admit!

Have you ever watched documentaries of those white power groups? Those dudes scare me as much as ISIS, along with motor cycle gangs, such Hell's Angels and the like. All of them seem to have hate in common.

Have you ever watched documentaries of those white power groups? Those dudes scare me as much as ISIS, along with motor cycle gangs, such Hell's Angels and the like. All of them seem to have hate in common.

When Trump supporters and swing voters are told that the Republican candidate is a fascist or latter-day Hitler, it’s easy for them to dismiss those concerns as partisan hyperbole, if for no other reason that they can’t really conceive of them – after all, America has never elected an outright Nazi to the presidency, so that particular threat seems more hypothetical than actual. Not so when talking about patterns of institutional discrimination that, though often overlooked by the media, were demonstrably all-too-real chapters of American history.

Trump’s political power – as well as the power of the right-wing reactionaries who will follow in his footsteps – comes from his ability to create a cult of personality for himself while effectively capitalizing off of America’s latent racism, sexism, and other forms of prejudice. Just because these things don’t make him a neo-Nazi doesn’t mean they wouldn’t be devastating for America.

That’s why we must resist the urge to characterize Trump’s racial demagoguery, cult of personality, and authoritarian policy proposals as fascist or in any other way Hitleresque. By doing this, we deny and potentially empower the brutality, oppression, and violence that has marked so much of America’s political history. Trump is certainly pandering to our nation’s worst instincts, but the sentiments into which he has tapped have been with this country for a long, long time.