Another factor has been infiltration and influence ops into the Western White Nationalist / Neo Nazi constellation. In terms of true shame, allowing such domestic enemies into the Big Tent is up there. Who ever thought the Anti Western fiends would gear their convergence efforts toward the Right and National Socialists? Earlier in my life I did not consider it, but over the past 10 years I have become far more aware. Suvarov / Rezun was spot on with his “Icebreaker” which depicted Soviet convergence operations with the German Nazis.

In any case, this is an unmitigated disaster and may lead us to become a Russian satellite state.

Sorry. Heard that sentiment before, most especially in 2012 election.

Unless we have some specific objective measurement that says otherwise, the average of the polls is about the best snapshot of what people are thinking right now that we will have. They may be a bit wrong, but I doubt that the 7+ point gap that trump is running behind clinton in the RCP avg is far off.

They voted for Trump because they were frustrated with the current administration, the economy and liked Trump’s message during the primaries. They are all concerned about his gaffes and how the media really seizes on them. They will still vote for him vs Hillary since they are concerned for their children & grandchildren.

I did ask a couple of them about answering pollsters. They would either refuse to reply to them or lie about their candidate of choice. I suspect that there is a “silent majority” that might make the election interesting.

I’ve seen that desire isn’t nearly enough to defeat the establishment. You have to have a certain skill set and knowledge base, and IMO Trump doesn’t.

I expect he’ll lose but even if he somehow wins, the best-case scenario I see is him being run circles around by the establishment (you don’t actually think the establishment will ever agree to border enforcement, do you?). 4 completely wasted years, with the added indignity of being mocked for fecklessness the whole time.

Talk is cheap.

In every presidential election for the rest of our lives, the Republican candidate is going to be relentlessly called “evil”, “racist”, “unhinged”, “dangerous”, and “violent”. One or more pundits will compare the candidate to Hitler in joking-but-not-really-joking sort of way. They’ll claim that the Republican wants to re-legalize slavery. They did it to McCain, and they even did it to the harmless white-bread Romney.

The one thing I’ll say about Trump is that if you come in knowing that the candidate is going to get smeared in all the above ways no matter what he says and how conciliatory and apologetic he is, why not support a candidate who will actually dare to voice concern about Truths That Must Not be Uttered?