I am nodding at several of Claig's remarks here. I do not share the breathless optimism, but there are some serious insights.
Trump intends to bring in millions of voters who have never voted before, people who had given up on the rigged system.
I think this has already happened to some extent. I suspect many voters who never voted before in primaries voted this time. It is interesting to note that Cruz, though now an also ran, was the second place finisher. He is a completely repugnant, unreconstructed Know Nothing and rabidly right wing nutjob, and he ran a close race.
It's important to remember that the end result of the primaries in terms of delegate count is not necessarily a reflection of the raw numbers who voted for the candidates. Some states are caucuses, some allocate delegates proportionally according to the votes cast, and some are winner take all states. The winner take all states tend to skew the picture because a candidate who gets 51% of the vote gets 100% of the delegates. However, there has been a lopsided aspect to many of the victories that indicates real feeling on the part of voters.
The same can be said of Bernie Sanders' victories. Voters are turning against 'politics as usual' here. I wonder if many of the Bernie voters will still be around in November to support Hillary. This is the big question for the Democrats.
It would be interesting to see if there are states where Trump and Sanders both won big, and what the outcomes there will be in November.
Trump is not a traditional conservative, as Newt Gingrich said on Fox last night. Newt said "he is a businessman, who is anti political correctness, anti bureaucracy and anti free trade deals" and anti foreign entanglement and that is as good as it gets for now
Gingrich is a shill is being used by the GOP HQ organisation to backtrack as fast as it can, and to try to create an impression that the GOP is hep to the new reality and always was. His remarks must be seen in the context of a party swallowing humble pie and trying to put the bravest possible face on things. 'Trump is not a traditional conservative' scores very high on the BSometer. Trump really is not a conservative at all. He's an opportunist.
He massages the bruised egos of powerless white males; 'Make America Great Again' appeals very personally to those whose personal identity is wrapped up in the image of American greatness they learned in elementary school social studies class. That formative experience took place in the context of the Cold War, so socialism even the American variety and definitely communism are not options for them. The people who vote for Trump are I suspect people who have never applied for passports with the intention of travelling abroad and broadening their horizons. Hence Trump's profession of love for 'the poorly educated.'
The Bushes are frightened of Trump. Trump said in a live debate that George W Bush knew that there weren't any weapons of mass distruction and that he lied. Trump has also said that he wants the 28 redacted pages of the 911 report opened up and he wants to possibly reopen the investigation into what went on on 911. The Bushes don't know how far Trump will go and what he will do. That is one reason why one faction of the senior Establishment of the Republican party is so frightened of Trump.
This rhetoric has a huge appeal for the hacked off who found themselves facing foreclosure after their years of support for the Bush wars, or who came home from war to minimum wage jobs in Walmart. It also appeals to those working three or four jobs, unionised and outside of unions, who are very squeezed and who see headlines telling of 1% of the population controlling their fate.
The Establishment is stunned that people who would be traditionally willing to vote for whatever candidate they threw at them have broken rank, and are now an unknown force that can't be taken for granted. Therefore to a certain extent, I think Trump may have climbed aboard the tiger's back. This is not unprecedented in the GOP certainly the party did the same when it encouraged the rise of the Tea Party, hoping to be able to control it. It should now be clear that this thing has a momentum of its own it's Pandora's box really -- but I don't know if Trump can appreciate that.
"The party of Lincoln is in ruins. A minority of its primary voters have torched its founders’ legacy by voting for a man who combines old-school Democratic ideology, a bizarre form of hyper-violent isolationism, fringe conspiracy theories, and serial lies" National Review
The NR is partly correct here.
Trump in some ways hearkens back to nineteenth and even eighteenth century figures. Andrew Jackson perhaps, the uncouth, dyslexic, plain talking outsider -- there are articles to that effect. A lot of this sort of talk is hot air that may be designed to place Trump in a respectable (historical) perspective and thus declaw him. The articles cloak the sentiments he brays in respectability. They gloss over the modern context of the phenomenon and seek to ignore the emotion that is present. Trump and his themes didn't arise in a vacuum. The ugliness in the American tradition needs more recent dots to join up, imo. The dots will not be supplied by the National Review.
The cloak of Lincoln sits uneasily on the party of Richard Nixon, Nixon being the cynical author of the Southern Strategy, the candidate of the 'silent majority'. There is a lot of Nixon and Lee Atwater in Trump, in the domestic approach anyway, though the bile is not directed at African Americans and it is not veiled in any way. Here, the scapegoats are hispanics and Muslims. Again, it's the openness of the ugliness that stands out. The ugliness itself is nothing new.
Trump is a bullshitter to some extent and his grasp on policy is not all that great, but his core direction is clear
I think that is true. He is the master of personal branding after all.
He has melded his brand tough, maverick, crude, crass, macho with a rich seam of discontent that was ready to explode. Clearly voters have identified with what he is selling, and also with how he is presenting himself. Clearly many voters, around here anyway, are closet Trump supporters, but there are places where Sanders supporters are closeted too. There are many people who do not feel represented by the likes of the Bush family or Mitt Romney. Or Hillary Clinton for that matter. They hear the deafening sucking sound of jobs going to China and they are not apologising to anyone for being crude and rude and angry.
Trump is not about "white power". Trump has black pastors who have endorsed him, Ben Carson who has endorsed him, Mike Tyosn who has endorsed him, I think Don King likes him etc etc and the African-American Stump for Trump sisters are his biggest fans.
The "white power" smears are part of the left wing tactic, along with the protests, to try and paint Trump as a violent racist. Registered Democrats like Geraldo who have known Trump for years say that he is nothing like that and Trump was friends with Hillary and donated to Democrats for years.
I don't fully agree he is not a white power demagogue. He tripped badly over the KKK incident. Yes he has fans among African American voters, many of whom share a strong sense of national pride. However, 'left-behind-whites' are the sort of people white power groups appeal to and they are the people Donald Trump appeals to also.
The 'old school Democrat' thing comes in here. Old school Democrats were racists (think George Wallace). I don't think Trump respects or values anything but money and machismo. I think this resonates among people who are misogynists who think 'social issues' means women not knowing their place, and who like to identify with a rich, white man who doesn't take orders from anyone. There are plenty of poorly educated white men in the US who resent having a black female boss whom they may suspect only got into university because of affirmative action.
I don't think he cares one way or another about abortion, gay rights, or any other social issue. I think the religious right may well stay home in November unless he finds some way to convince that bloc he really is a conservative. He isn't relying on financial contributions from any particular religious right interest group so he can be his own man in these areas.
Wrt foreign policy, I personally question the value of NATO against middle eastern terror and turmoil. I do not think its remit extends that far for starters, and secondly it is not the subtle force that a struggle against terror requires. It was conceived and remains a 'defensive' force whose raison d'etre was the Soviet Union. I question whether a threat from the Russian Federation exists. I have a suspicion that that is mainly hype. I know the defense industry likes to see tanks and missile launching systems and sophisticated early detection systems rolling off the assembly lines, but I question the value for money involved. Russia has nothing to gain from unfriendliness towards Europe and Europe has nothing to gain from mutual antagonism.
I actually think that despite all the whining from Washington, the Obama administration was relieved to see the Russian intervention in Syria. Russia effectively did the job NATO might be doing and the job the US won't do because it would involve the prospect of American casualties. Russia isn't shy of associating with the likes of Assad.
I would sooner chew off my right arm than vote Republican, and would not vote for Trump, but I am not sure if I would vote for Hillary Clinton either. I think she was a disaster as Sec of State and not because the US Embassy in Libya was left vulnerable and was attacked. The State Department under her watch incited revolution in the middle east that it had no hope whatsoever of managing. There was a strange mix of American hubris and a Disneyesque version of 'how foreign affairs work' at play under her leadership, and a very troubling lack of attention to detail -- imo if you want to start revolutions you need to plan on finishing them. What happened was massive destabilisation all over North Africa and the ME and ISIS stepped into the vacuum created by the rhetoric of the US. The word of the US is worth nothing in that region since they abandoned Mubarak, who had been a staunch ally.
The EU -- his comments on Brexit are meant for a domestic audience. They are designed to focus voter attention on immigration and the message is that immigration has been disastrous for Europeans and the same goes for America.