Comments

Democrats for Trump? — 51 Comments

1. Its WHICH democrats they ask, the blue collars like him, and libs don’t like blue collar even if they vote democrat most of the time. I guess these would be the members of the put upon shrinking told they are racist middle class now lower middle class than before that the desired policies would hurt just as much as the republican version of the same.

2. The Real Clear Politics average has Trump losing to Hillary by 5.6%.

   It will only gets worse as Donald wears on people and as Hillary roles out her opposition research on him. I can only imagine the negative ads she is preparing right now.

3. Here I am to rain on your parade! LOL.

   I’m still waiting to see the early primary states, but I have not ruled out Trump. Why? Because of small things that I see/hear online, in the news, etc. Maybe that is not enough for you, but it tells me something is different about Trump and his support.

   Here’s a piece from the Atlantic that gives you a bit about what I’m sensing:

   http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/12/trump-may-have-more-support-than-we-think/419370/

   It just really is unknown at this point. Iowa, New Hampshire and those early states will really tell us what kind of commitment Trump has. Until then, deciding that Trump won’t win, that he can’t win against Hillary, etc. is just all speculation.

   If this were a different election, we’d already be talking about Trump being the ‘inevitable’ winner of the primary. You may not like the idea of Trump as the candidate, but you might want to start getting used to the idea.

   Listen to his oldest son…very smart, very well-spoken, rational. This is Trump underneath all of the bombastic stuff. You might not like his circus act, but it gets attention.

   Rubio is way to squishy for me. But if he won the primary, I’d vote for him happily. Same with all the other Republican candidates.

   Hillary is horrible. You also have to remember that the DNC is protecting her like crazy with only a few debates and having them on weekends or near the holidays. It’s because she’s an awful candidate and that will become clear during the presidential race.

4. Trump Rides a Blue-Collar Wave
   Fifty-five percent of his supporters are white working-class.
   http://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-rides-a-blue-collar-wave-1447803248

   from american spectator (chopped up)

   President Jimmy Carter – 60%. Former California Governor Ronald Reagan – 36%. So confident was Carter White House Chief of Staff Hamilton Jordan of the coming year’s presidential election that he boasted: “The American people are not going to elect a seventy-year-old, right-wing, ex-movie actor to be president.”

   Reagan won 50.8% of the vote to Carter’s 41%.

   How could Reagan go from losing a Gallup poll to Carter by 24 points – then winning the actual election by almost 10 points? Answer? The emergence of what would become known to political history as “the Reagan Democrats.”

   The obvious question. Are Reagan Democrats returning to the center of the American political scene – this time known as Trump Democrats?

   Just as Trump is now seen on tape saying he was a Democrat, so too was Reagan cited for the same issue.

   Listening to the tape of Reagan and he sounds like nothing more than a late forties version of Barack Obama – railing against corporations and Republicans.

   one suspects that Donald Trump – [snip]– is in the process of demonstrating just what Ronald Reagan once demonstrated to great effect.

   …having once been a Democrat is in fact nothing but an asset for a potential Republican nominee for president. The kind of asset that produces landslide Republican victories.

   http://spectator.org/articles/63765/are-reagan-democrats-becoming-trump-democrats

5. More links for you…you can decide what you want about the sources. Some are older.

   http://www.infowars.com/democrats-say-they-will-vote-for-trump/

   http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20151216_Is_Trump_sitting_on_secret_support_.html

   http://www.cnbc.com/2015/11/24/voters-would-show-up-if-trump-is-on-2016-ballot.html

   http://spectator.org/articles/63765/are-reagan-democrats-becoming-trump-democrats

6. K-E:

   My point is that RIGHT NOW very many Trump supporters make statements that have no basis in fact at the moment. They merely state as facts things like “Trump is the only one who can beat Hillary,” or “A lot of Democrats support Trump.”

   As facts, these are absurdities and quite simply wrong. They are made-up facts, facts of faith only.

   What will happen in the future is another story. I happen to think Trump’s support is only among a large minority of Republicans, and that if there were only one or two other candidates Trump would not be the frontrunner. I could be wrong about that; I have no facts to prove or disprove it, but it seems logical to me. I also think he’d lose to Hillary. That is based on facts: the present polls. Of course, as I said in the post, that could change. Or I suppose the pollsters could all be lying. But I don’t think either is true, and what’s more important in terms of my post, there is no evidence that Trump will win or that he will attract Democrats. None.

   You are correct that events will slowly reveal how great his appeal is. And Trump supporters are welcome to hope that the change will be in his favor and will bear out their contentions. But right now, their contentions remain in the realm of myth, although they state them as facts.

   Stating myths as facts annoys me, I must say.

   And imagining that Trump has a different character than the one he has displayed for his entire life strikes me as an odd belief. One of the things most Trump admirers seem to like about him is that what you see is supposed to be what you get. So, he’s actually a very different person, maybe? I don’t buy it and I see no evidence for it. The son is not the father.

7. K-E

   Cruz has the church people in his corner. He will win Iowa.

8. K-E:

   The first link is meaningless; it’s to a poll that asks Democrats in a single state which Republican they would vote for if they HAD to vote for a Republican. About a third of them said Trump. Meaningless; they won’t vote for him (no one said they actually would; that was not the question), and the other candidates combined got more votes, as one might expect. It was also done the first week of September, when a lot of the other candidates were much less well known.

   Your second link just asks the question, but doesn’t answer it in the least.

   Your third link is about voter turnout. Clinton still beats the Republicans. Trump causes more people, including Democrats, to turn out to vote. So what? Clinton beats Trump more readily than she beats the others, and Rubio beats her.

   Your fourth link is complete speculation. Offers no facts to support any contention that Democrats support Trump—just says the writers, etc., can imagine that they might. Well, guess what? I can imagine it too. Doesn’t make it so.

   I repeat: I see no evidence for it, and much evidence against it. That could change, but that’s the way it is and has been so far.

9. In my area of Iowa I see only a few hrc or djt signs, bernie signs are the choice of Iowa’s prairie populist lefties. Cruz and Carson dominate the right side of the equation. Iowa is an oulier when it comes to predicting the general election, but the outcome in Iowa does influence the primaries in NH and SC.

   About Rubio, I see him as similar to Paul Ryan in that he talks the talk but does not walk the walk. The budget busting deal Ryan has shepherded gives the dems everything they could wish for. Perhaps Rubio is made of sterner stuff, but his gang of 8 participation indicts he is way too eager to go along to get along. Yet, compared to hrc he is a knight in shining armor.

10. Here in Cincinnati, I work at a mid sized chemical plant as an engineer. I am hearing lots of comments of support from the union members of all races for trump. Granted, this is just what I am hearing at work, but it is coming from all over the political spectrum here.

11. Ahhh, electability. A year before the election.
    What does it tell us about the electorate that someone, anyone (!) could lose against Hillary in a poll done today? Knowing what we know?
    It tells us (a) that Democratic minds are impossibly difficult to change; (b) Democrats are hideously ignorant; and (c) the Gimme immorality dominates.
    The American public is volunteering to become campesinos in Nicaragua or Venezuela. Gramsci wins.

12. Artfldgr:

    Yes, I had read that Spectator piece. It is speculation.

    As I wrote in one of the comment above this one, there is no evidence that Trump will win or that he will attract Democrats. Yes, he attracts working-class Republicans. And yes, of course he might actually attract Democrats, as well. My point is that right now the evidence goes against it, as I wrote in the post.

    Reagan analogies are misplaced, in my opinion. Trump and Reagan are very dissimilar in their style and in their politics (Reagan was not only very likable and avuncular, but he was very conservative and into conservative principles, and good at stating them).

    I’m not saying Trump won’t appeal to Democrats, or even that he doesn’t appeal to Democrats. But I have seen no evidence of it (although much speculation, and some anecdotal reports such as Alex’s above this), and I’ve seen quite a bit of evidence to the contrary.

13. Frog:

    I agree that it is very distressing and disturbing that Hillary does so well against virtually all of them.

    Or against almost anyone, really. Her support is definitely wide. Her supporters may not think she’s 100% wonderful, but I don’t see most of them ever deserting her.

14. I actually wholeheartedly agree with you. I see Clinton-Rubio much like a Kennedy-Nixon election. He’s not my top choice either, but I think he’s a great alternative to Bush, and someone who can cut a swath through Republicans, Independents, and get a few Democrats who will vote for Hillary if it’s Trump, Cruz, or Bush. I also think think presidential elections are more about charisma, than actual policy. (A point I’m pretty sure you’ve discussed here.) Rubio has the charisma that’s been lacking in all recent Republican nominees since Reagan. With a fairly conservative senate and house, I think he can do a lot of good things. One thing we need to accept is that we’re not going to deport 11 million people. I don’t like it, but it won’t happen.

15. Off topic, but worth considering with regard to Trump’s potential appeal and electability:

    In WSJ this past May — “Who Will Be the Swing Voters in 2016? Poll data suggests single white women and Hispanic voters could play key roles in presidential election.”

    Then there’s this at The Federalist from August:

    Multiple polls show Trump does better among men than women. For instance, a Fox News poll finds that among likely Republican primary voters, 23 percent of men want Trump as the GOP nominee compared to 13 percent of women. CNN/ORC finds nearly identical numbers.

    Among all Americans, CNN/ORC finds men (39 percent) are 12 points more likely than women (27 percent) to have a favorable view of Trump overall (YouGov and PPP find a similar gender gap). Trump’s GOP competitors have a narrower gender gap, of 5 to 7 points. …

    An ABC/WashPo poll finds that Trump’s unfavorability ratings among Latinos have soared from 60 percent to 81 percent since May. YouGov and CNN/ORC find similar results. Furthermore, white Americans (38 percent) are almost twice as supportive of Trump as Hispanics (20 percent).

16. A few months ago I asked a relative of mine, an avowed socialist and supporter of Bernie Sanders, which of the GOP candidates he would most fear in opposition. After a moment’s thought he said, “Rubio”. The polls agree. That makes Rubio my favorite, despite some differences I may have with him. In 2016, winning has to be everything. How can anyone here disagree?

17. Ann:

    Actually, I seem to recall from a poll that ALL the Republican candidates except Carson do better with men than women. After all, Republicans do better with men than women.

18. “So, asserting he will do well against Clinton appears to be an article of faith, unsupported by anything but personal conviction” neo

    The more Islamic jihadist attacks, the greater will the support for Trump grow. As it is a cast iron certainty that there will be more attacks, faith has nothing to do with that assertion.

    And that reality will be the reason why Trump, if nominated and if genuine about his desire to be President and not a democrat ‘Trojan horse’, will not hesitate to repeatedly expose the truth about Hillary. In a public atmosphere of palpable fear, arguably, Trump, despite his bombast, will crush Hillary.

    Rubio certainly has charisma and I think the polls (at this time) are accurate as to how he stacks up against Hillary.

    That said, re: “Rubio is far far more conservative than Hillary”

    Really? Truly? Just like Paul Ryan, right? Rubio is another ‘Lucy’ to conservative’s ‘Charlie Brown’. Given the opportunity, he’ll choose self-interest before principle every time.

19. FWIW, my (politically) brain-dead daughter who lives in Manhattan can no longer stomach Hillary. That’s so anecdotal it’s not even one tiny data point, but it gives me a tiny bit of hope.

20. Yes, Neo, that’s true. But Trump’s gender gap is the widest and so less able to be closed.

    And maybe Rubio’s the one to do that — according to a Fox News November poll:

    Rubio not only commands the widest margin against Clinton, he’s the only one who hits the 50 percent mark. Rubio’s margin comes entirely from men, who go for him over Clinton by 17 points. The two are tied among women voters.

21. People (including some of the commenters here) appear to believe that Trump will do well among Democrats because he does well among white working class voters. The problem is, white working class voters haven’t been Democrats for a long time.

22. If you like Ryan, you like Rubio. Cut from the same cloth. What’s not to like, right?
    Meanwhile, Fiorina doesn’t even get a mention.
    It’s all Hollywood now.

23. Frog:

    Apparently you didn’t read my post.

    Fiorina got a mention, if you actually read the post. And Cruz is my favorite at the moment, as I said. I am pointing out something about Rubio that makes me consider him.

    I would vote for Ryan, too, by the way (who is actually a different person than Rubio, with different pros and cons) if I thought he was the only candidate who could beat Hillary Clinton. He’s not running though. And he wouldn’t be my favored candidate, either.

24. Frog, Fiorina is my favored candidate, I just don’t see any reason to bring her up. Her time in the sun is finished. I think she’d be a great candidate, and a great president. She just hasn’t ever gained any traction.

25. Neo: Re Carly, I meant in the comments.
    Tom: thanks for mentioning her!
    Passage of the budget bill shows that Ryan never meant what he said in 2012 and earlier about managing the budget.
    He’s a snake.

26. The problem with Trump is not his personality nor his policies.

    They couldn’t possibly be whackier than Barry’s.

    The problem is what hay HRC is going to have trolling the endless video legacy of Donald Trump.

    To give you an idea of how this is playing out, HRC brain squad only hit the panic button when they realized what I saw months ago: Cruz will be cruising to the nomination. The Big Ticket in the primaries — delegate wise — is skewed to the South.

    Rubio is not ready.

    His purported strong showing versus HRC is strictly due to the Latino effect… and his contamination by the Gang of Eight.

    Rubio is going to run out of gas. Jeb has sucked all of the oxygen out of his coffers. He, Rubio, is not getting the TIMELY big monies that he needs to come after Ted Cruz.

    Cruz has the plurality of 1st and 2nd place picks in Iowa — it is claimed.

    The more he is known, the more he gains acceptance and respect.

    I wouldn’t be crying tears if Trump gets the nomination — but I deem it simply too risky. HRC is too well prepared to gut his image.

    HRC is NOT at all prepared to deal with Cruz — hence the panic leaking out of her brain trust.

    &&&

    One also has to be wary about national stats. They are now meaningless in our Gerrymandered electoral vote.

    The Democrat nominee is going to gain astounding leads in California and New York. They will not kick the electoral vote any higher.

    I will credit Trump with carrying a message that is geared towards the swing states.

    Stuff like the Ford Motor investment in Mexico.

    Cruz has wisely let Donald be Donald — and has practiced Ronnie’s dictum — the eleventh Commandment.

    Place your bets — your effort — your funding on Ted Cruz.

    He’s the Natural.

27. Hillary Clinton is a good candidate under these circumstances:

    IF she is not indicted for the e-mail server business.
    IF there are no other terrorist attacks in the U.S. or Europe.
    IF there are no waves of “migrants” coming to the U.S. or Europe, or other incidents with “refugees.”
    IF she does not appear much in public.

    All that is hard to count on for the next eleven months or so.

    I don’t think Rubio can pull it off, so right now it looks like either Cruz or Trump will be the nominee.

28. Neo, ask your blue collar patients about trump. After they hem and haw say “trump is growing on me”. You will be shocked at his support. Union households, trades, and low level corporate types admit they will vote for him. Another data point is I was listening to a group of 30some woman graduates of seven sister schools discuss Hillary. They all admitted that they wil not vote for her while voting democrat down ticket. They hate her with a white hot passion. Each thought they were the only one in the group who felt that way.

29. I think that Hillary Clinton is going to prove to be a terrible candidate. She has been protected and kept out of the public eye for a good reason. She has no political talent. She just doesn’t. I’m not the first to say this, but she is not a talented politician. She is the wife of a talented politician, and that isn’t the same. She loses popularity every time she is in the news. How’s that going to play out once the general election gets going and the press actually starts covering her on a day-to-day basis?

    I’m just wondering what sort of opposition research Hillary Clinton could possibly have that Trump’s Republican opponents haven’t deployed trying unsuccessfully to derail his primary candidacy. Trump has struck devastating blows (some very much under the belt) against every candidate who has crossed him. He’s not going to hold back against Hillary Clinton. She’s going to take a lot of hard hits and keep her cool, and that’s not her strength. Her strength is in quietly building up money and support behind the scenes. That won’t be possible in the sort of general campaign that Trump is going to wage.

    Plus, there’s already cracks showing in the Democratic coalition. Unions endorsing Trump? That alone should make Hillary’s blood run cold.

    This election may prove to be much like Bush vs Kerry. GWB’s popularity was already in deep decline when he was up for reelection, but John Kerry was such an abysmal candidate that the country held their nose and voted for Bush anyway. Hillary Clinton may well prove a worse candidate than John Kerry and that might be what it takes for Trump to win the election.

30. A love fest:

    “He is a very outstanding man, unquestionably talented,” Putin told journalists after his annual press conference in Moscow.

    and

    “It is always a great honor to be so nicely complimented by a man so highly respected within his own country and beyond,” the GOP presidential front-runner told supporters at a rally in Columbus, Ohio.

    One thug to another.

31. Trump is the best thing to happen to the Republican Party since Ronald Reagan. Reagan was hated by a lot of Republicans too, and he needed and got the “Reagan Democrats” to get his landslides. As it will be with President Trump.

32. Trump scores with non-college educated whites. He taps into the Tea Party folk who have been betrayed twice by the GOP. He taps into the UAW members watching their jobs go to Mexico. He definitely hit a huge nerve attacking illegal immigration. Who else has brought victims of illegal immigration onto the stage to tell their stories at a campaign rally? He had the father of a promising young African-American on stage describing how an illegal immigrant had shot his son in the head, blowing away the hand that was trying to shield his face, in their driveway. Our $100/day heroin addict relative, a young college kid, got his $10 hits from an illegal immigrant. A lot of folk have shared those experiences and they want a wall, not a fence, and they want illegals gone.

    I doubt that any other GOP candidate can attract black voters as Trump can. He can’t be tagged as a regular GOP politician, as Romney was. Blacks don’t like illegals, either.

    Islam is another big issue in this campaign. Trump was out in front saying “no more Muslims until we figure out what is going on”. That is where the public was. It was not where the PC candidates – the rest of the field -were. Trump’s numbers went up.

    I saw a cartoon today asking why Trump can get Mexico to pay for the wall. The response was he has already gotten the media to finance his campaign.

    Much as us college educated intellectuals may despise his braggadocio and crude insults, he knows what he is doing and how to there. He ain’t the dummy you wish he was.

33. Dear god.

    Basic Mathematics. Please, basic Mathematics.

    Trump can have a higher appeal for Democrats and make it worse against Clinton. Both things are not inconsistent.

    What polls measure, when we talk about the candidate X, in the sum of the number of people where the condition “Appealing for candidate X > Appealing for opposite candidate” is fulfilled. Votes are a binary function, 0 o 1, democrat or republican, but appealing is not. Appealing could be defined as a continuous function from 0 to 1.

    You can vote democrat because you love Clinton and hate the republican candidate. Or you can vote democrat because you like slightly more the democrat candidate than the republican one. Both cases would produce the same outcome when it comes to votes. Trump can be liked by many democrats, but not enough to vote for him. If you integrate the appealing function through the space of voters, Trump could have advantage. But that’s irrelevant, since elections day, what you integrate is not appealing function, but binary vote function.

    Seriously, guys, you need a better education there in US. But a better education in Calculus and Algebra, not in gender theory.

34. Yann:

    I wonder whether you even read my post. Because I am not relying on national polls against Clinton to say that Trump does worse among Democrats than the others. I am relying on this, which I explained in my post:

    About a month ago I spent a lot of time trying to find a poll measuring Trump’s support among Democrats and Independents vs. the support from that same group towards the other Republican candidates. I found only one poll back then, and I noticed that in it Trump did worse than most of the other Republican candidates with Democrats and Independents. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to locate it again to check it out and write about it in more detail, and I haven’t found another since then that even discusses the issue. Looking for one is somewhat labor-intensive, because it requires delving deep into the actual questions asked and the breakdown of the answers; for example, this poll might contain the information but I can only find a lengthy report rather than the full results, and the shorter but fairly comprehensive report doesn’t even discuss it.

    Let me reiterate: the poll I saw directly measured the support of Democrats and of Independents for each candidate, and Trump did not do well. I’m going to have to try harder to find that poll again.

35. Ann Says:
    December 17th, 2015 at 10:30 pm

    A love fest:

    “He is a very outstanding man, unquestionably talented,” Putin told journalists after his annual press conference in Moscow.

    One [ BS artitst ] to another.

    FIFY.

    Say what you will Trump is un-thuggish — attested to by his employees and rivals.

    For those west of the Hudson River: Donald is a dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker.

    Over-the-top damnation and praise is typical New York speak.

    Example: I call a South Park Avenue office address to volunteer my time and energy when I’m in the big city.

    With no further ado, I begin to receive four letter and seven letter insults — since I was calling 7,000 miles west of the Hudson.

    Such expressions of ‘comradery’ came trippingly to his tongue, with no pre-amble required.

    I visit the Empire State Building. Every consessionaire is the most surly, stuck up, snob. The mind reels at the discourtesy and the rotten trifles proffered to the new and unsuspecting.

    ( Candy Nazis ? )

    Brash comments and assertions by Trump are most unlikely to ever evolve into bizarro edicts.

    Whereas, mellow psychopath Barry Soetoro has the knife in your back, your side and at your throat — and is deemed a most tractable fellow.

    A better term of art would be tract-full — as he is ideologue from cover to cover.

    BTW, Barry is much into talking — not reading.

    Which entirely explains why he skips his own essential meetings: just too much brain stuffing.

    Why bother?

    He already knows everything better than everybody else.

36. Neo.

    Nope.

    The polls you name shows the support for each candidate, which lacks information about preferences.

    Let me make an example: do you support Hillary Clinton?. I don’t think so. However, if you had to measure your appealing for Hillary Clinton, Obama and Bernie Sanders, would all of them score at the same level?. I don’t think so neither. Probably Obama and Sanders would score even lower than Clinton.

    Candidate support measures the number of people whose support for a candidate exceeds a minimum level. If a republican have some appealing among a nice percentage of democrats, but this appealing is not enough to exceed this level, his support will be low. On the contrary, if a republican candidate has no general appealing among democrats, but he has high level of appealing among specific democrat subgroups, he can gain democrat votes. Election day, that what matters.

    The reason is that appealing among voters has not the same statistic deviation for all candidates. Since your vote is binary (democrat or republican, you can’t vote 0.2 for republicans, 0.8 for democrats, for example), that benefits candidates with a high appealing inside specific groups.

    One example: Ben Carson. Why liberal media has performed such a character assassination, until sinking his political career? Because he was really dangerous. He could have had a high appealing inside some democrat fishing areas, like black voters, specially against Clinton.

37. TV network polls and Q-pac?

    There’s a model of objectivity for you.

    And, of course, Rubio would win.

    Sure.

38. Neo,

    Keep in mind that the activist alt-Right is undertaking a long march. Their proximate goal is to displace mainstream conservatives and the GOP establishment like the activist Left has accomplished with liberals and the Democrats.

    Would they like to defeat Clinton and the Democrats in upcoming elections? Sure, that’s on the wish list.

    But all things in their time and place, and first things first. And the first thing on the alt-Right’s to-do list is to purge, re-educate, and re-make the Right and the GOP.

39. Eric:

    Oh, I’m well aware of it. I’ve been fighting that idea for many years, for the simple reason that it’s too late for that, they’ve run out of time. And that’s because the left will take steps to solidify their own position and entrench it deeply and widely if they are allowed to win again. It may have already happened. The activist right—with which I’ve been familiar for years—is going to lose the long game if it doesn’t play the short one right.

40. Yann:

    You haven’t a clue what poll I named, since in that excerpt I re-quoted in my comment to you, I was unable to find the poll and properly describe what it referenced. It was very detailed. I looked for it again and still cannot find it, however. But some of the polls I’ve seen ask respondents about their second choices, for example. If I recall correctly, Cruz is the most popular second choice.

    However, most polls don’t measure what you’re describing. So I suppose anyone is free to speculate about the possibilities, but that is just more speculation. Polls measure what they measure, and I’ve been reporting on that—but of course polls are hardly perfect.

41. Thought I’d add this new link to the debate, since no one liked any of the ones I posted yesterday.

    http://www.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/187859/trump-image-didn-hit-muslim-ban-proposal.aspx

    I’m interested to see more polls like this. 10 point leap for Democrats? Hm. Will this be a trend? Was this a fluke?

    So fascinating.

42. Just found over at Powerline — Trump piles on Scalia; supports racial preferences

    Maybe Democrats will vote for one of their own.

43. Neo,

    GK Chesterson. The alt-Right holds that mainstream conservatives and GOPe are at best an ineffective check on the Left and worse, are effectively enablers, so the long game requires evaluating them as a ‘fifth column’ then displacing them.

    As far as gains made by the Left during the alt-Right insurgency, their activist mindset means that they believe that once they’ve displaced the ineffective (or worse) mainstream conservatives and GOPe, they’ll have the ways and means to compete effectively against the Left – on the alt-Right’s terms.

    As a former counter-Left activist whose team won, I can’t say their belief is wrong.

    In my experience, achieving change against a leftist dominance that appears unassailable to non-activists is attainable for activists. Not readily attainable – after all, it’s caustic competition versus zealous competent opponents who hold the upper hand – but change is attainable when the game is played as needed to win. The activist game is the people’s game, available to anyone to advocate any cause, not the Left’s game.

    Is there a point where Left activist progress, if unchecked, will become unassailable? Maybe. I don’t know. But I do know your priority for the 2016 election is not the alt-Right’s priority. They’re not playing the same game as you; if anything, they’re playing against you.

44. Oops. GK Chesterton.

45. Eric:

    Oh, I know. They are not only playing against me now, they were playing against me in 2012 and 2008. Maybe before that, but in 2004 I wasn’t all that aware of these things.

    I think we have either passed the point of no return or are teetering on the brink. And if I recall your story of activism, it was on one particular issue. I have no doubt the activist right can do that here and there, but they have no ability to stem the tide that is threatening to engulf us right now. We need to hold our finger in the dike and buy time, and if the activist right wants to continue to be activist while all that’s happening, they certainly are welcome to do so. But tearing down the entire structure and allowing the left to build an impregnable fortress doesn’t sound like a good tactic or strategy to me.

46. @Neo

    Exactly, now you’re right: speculating about the possibilities is just that speculating and nothing more (as Poe would say). And if you say that stating or even suggesting that there’s sympathy for Trump among Democrats is speculating without any serious foundation, you’d be absolutely right.

    If you states that even if Trump had some support, he doesn’t have the kind of support among Democrats that would allow him to get votes (as Carson would have had, for example), you’d be right too.

    And I’m sorry for being annoying, but I really hate when people is not precise in their statements. When I argue with leftists, I use to be VERY precise in my statements (which in my experience uses to drive them mad, since leftists often see themselves as elite, and they barely handle the feeling of sounding like the hick in the debate). I consider that a political debate without precise terms is like a technical blueprint with approximate numbers.

47. Yann:

    You write, “And if you say that stating or even suggesting that there’s sympathy for Trump among Democrats is speculating without any serious foundation, you’d be absolutely right.”

    In the post I wrote:

    …if you look at all the polls, Trump is not appealing to Democrats, and is doing worse than the other Republican candidates against Clinton. He also has the highest unfavorables…

    So, asserting he will do well against Clinton appears to be an article of faith, unsupported by anything but personal conviction…

    In other words, it is “speculation without any serious foundation.”

48. Neo, nope.

    Speculating would be making any statement about the general sympathy or leaning towards Trumps among Democrats, for which there’s not information enough. It is perfectly possible that many Democrats have some leaning towards him since his policies are not fully conservative, as it is perfectly possible that they do not. Polls don’t use to check it, since it is irrelevant for the final outcome.

    I understand that the English meaning of “speculate” involves a conjecture and a statement for which there’s no information enough.

    When the available information suggests a most likely outcome, “speculate” is not the right term. You can not speculate about Earth being flat or about blacks voting mostly GOP.

    What polls do actually show is that Trumps would likely make worse against Clinton than the other candidates, so suggesting he would do better is not “speculation without any serious foundation”, but betting against the odds.

49. Yann:

    My point is that (a) we have no evidence so far that Trump would do better than other candidates against Clinton and quite a bit of evidence that he would do worse (b) but we also don’t have much information at all about how he does with Democrats, and (c) we have no information about how he will do in the future.

    So yes, people who say he has great appeal with Democrats are either “speculating” or “betting against the odds.” Perhaps our disagreement is over how unlikely it is that Trump would do well with Democrats, and/or what the exact meaning of the word “speculating” is?

    I certainly think it’s possible he could do well with Democrats ultimately, but highly unlikely, and the evidence now doesn’t point to it. So are those who say he would do well with them “speculating”? It seems to depend on whether you believe “speculating” only applies to a situation where there is at least some evidence for it, but the evidence is incomplete or inconclusive. In the case of Trump and the Democrats, people report anecdotal evidence for it, which I consider mild but very incomplete and inconclusive, and therefore I use the term “speculating” to describe what they are doing. Since the word “guess” is also offered as a synonym for “speculate,” I think the word is a fairly good one to describe the situation.

50. Neo,

    What I say is that is quite likely that Trump makes worse against Clinton than other candidates. That is what polls measure and that is what they show. They is no speculation here since there’s information enough. Of course, polls could be wrong, but this is unlikely.

    HOWEVER,

    This is not necessarily a measure of the general appealing of Trump among Democrats, or among center-left Democrats, that could be the ones who could like him. For example: many republicans liked Ross Perot, but he almost got no votes. General sympathy and vote intention can or can not concur. Indeed, you can be a perfect example of it. It’s crystal clear that you dislike Trump. However, if finally he was the republican candidate, you still would vote for him before allowing another Democrat legislature, wouldn’t you?

51. Will Trump do well with Democrats?

    That is an interesting question. Over the last two decades, the Democrats have focussed on minorities, women and illegal immigrants. They have ignored their blue collar base. In fact, they have worked against that base in their war on coal. That base is like an avalanche. Give it a trigger and it will pour to the other side. Reagan hit the trigger.

    Trump could hit that that trigger again. Be surprised about where he draws support. These two ladies are on his side. What is interesting is how he connects with them and the crowd.

    Last time I saw anything approaching that on the GOP side was Sarah Palin, running as John McCain’s running mate, when she was drawing far larger crowds than he was. But the media can’t destroy Trump in the way they destroyed Palin. He owns them.

    When Trump talks about China, Japan and Mexico stealing our jobs, and Ford building a plant in Mexico, he is going after the Democrat’s blue collar base. They ignored it so he’s going to grab it.

    While everyone else plays tic-tac-toe, Trump plays chess.

    Something else to note, as Sundance points out. Trump always owns the downside. Case in point: Putin says nice things about Trump. Media attacks. Trump responds: He praised me. I didn’t praise him. He is polling far better than Obama, and we need to work with Russia to defeat ISIS. Media is flummoxed.

HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>