That isn’t how America, traditionally, works. At least not ideally.
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Now that’s a Voter ID system I can get behind!
Of course they would be exempt from it since they are “pure”
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The Trump’s pivot is so HUGE that it goes 360 degrees.
The question is whether or not Trump’s positions will stay here or if he keeps spinning around until the election.
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If he spins enough to generate electricity, at least he’d finally be doing something productive.
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You DID see his…performance at the KKK rally GOP convention, right? Because those ravings were not done by even a relatively intelligent/savvy person.
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Yeah! Let’s go! Loyalty oaths! We can all swear fealty to Great Leader Trump! We shall examine the DNA of all immigrants in case there is any contamination to our perfect Americans! And we’ll all go out on Sunday and pick strawberries and put a new roof on my neighbor’s house because we kicked out all the Mexicans. Yeah, sounds perfect.
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"Loyalty oaths will prevent wrongdoing," says gentleman who broke wedding vows he swore on at least two occasions.
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America, where we have ideals, and we have traditions, we just have a hard time putting the two together in a way that works…
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Fifth-generation American here. I am certain that whatever the test for Trump’s definition of an “acceptable” ideology is, I would fail it.
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I’m going to guess that remarkably few of his enthusiasts realize that ‘ideological certification’ is the dreaded ‘political correctness’ with actual state force behind it…
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Removal of political opponents? Hmmm. That sounds vaguely familiar.
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Yeah, Billy West has been tweeting a lot of Drumpf quotes in Zapp’s voice as well.
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From what I understand that’s not actually true. The current “narrowing” in the polls (Clinton is still ahead) is largely a result of Clinton’s numbers going down. Trump’s approval and polling numbers haven’t actually gone up or at all. And many of the polls coming out in the last week or so, driving the narrative of a tight race, are polls that have already had a big house effect for Trump. Its certainly closer than it was, but its a bit more complicated than Trump gaining in the polls.
Trump’s been quiet, and we’re well off the conventions and their associated “bounce”. So it doesn’t have me too worried. There’s a whole 2 months of hard campaigning, including the debates ahead. And Trump just doubled down on the thing that’s been driving off a fair bit of the demographics he doesn’t already have locked down.
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That’s an excellent point, thank you. It definitely also drives home my feeling that Hillary desperately needs to stop using the “let Trump destroy himself” strategy and actually give people reasons to vote for HER, not against Trump.
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I still say that either side could have put up just about anyone else and expected bigger numbers.
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We should be coming to that. The conventions were a month or more earlier than usual this year, and August was expected to be a fairly quiet month as a result. The 2+ weeks of August ramp up spread over 4 weeks instead.
But Trump still doesn’t have an appropriate campaign apparatus. He’s doesn’t have a lot of people in most states, and the ones he has are often laughable or disconnected from local political factors or communities. He’s lagging in money raised. Isn’t spending much. And when he’s spending its often in completely inappropriate places, states that have reliably gone republican for like 50 years. And so an and so forth. The Clintons are regarded as excellent campaigners, and a huge chunk of Hillary’s current staff came out of Obama’s campaigns (you know like the one that beat Hillary last time). I don’t think, especially once you get to the debates, that Trump’s organization really has the capability to increase their numbers any more. Or counter or prevent the next disaster. I haven’t read up on the numbers today. But last I checked Clinton was still up on Trump (especially in more accurate state polls) by more than Obama beat Romney by last time. And Obama had a decisive win. That’s a BIG hill to climb over, even as much as the press like to horse race it.
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But she should really be winning all 50 states against Trump. Romney was a poor candidate. Trump is someone that nobody with a functioning brain should even be considering.
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While I definitely think she’s running too much on “not Trump” there are very good reasons why Trump is doing better than similar candidates. For one the right is far more extreme, and has been for over a decade, than it was in that past. Despite being an unprecedented racist idiot, his positions aren’t really all that extreme compared to the rest of your headline Republicans. They’re insane, and presented with an abnormal amount of out and out jingoism. But what he’s saying about immigration isn’t too far off the GOP party line.
But the big one is polarization. Americans do not, as a rule, vote across party lines anymore. People don’t split the ballot. Huge numbers of Americans will vote for the guy because he’s the republican regardless of his policies or who he is. Because voting for anyone else is un 'merican.
Add to that the fact that Hillary is the right wing’s personal bogey man. Perhaps the least likely prominent politician to draw support from the other party. And the breakdown of support for each party. There’s a slight numerical advantage for the left in the general population, and increasingly in the electorate. But it sits about 48% to 48%. And you’ve got a built in level of rigid support for each side that’s next to impossible to over come.
Clinton has sat close to or at that 48% in the polling average since the conventions. Trump has been well below it. He can’t even muster the minimum to be expected of (insert GOP candidate here). His peak is parity, his “rising in the polls” is still coming in at less than expected support from his own party.
Clinton’s issue is largely one of not locking down all those extra people floating around. Or doing so reliably. Some of them you can’t win over, some of them are likely to end up voting for her in the end. But I don’t think “not Trump” is the sort of compelling narrative that does that. Nor does it do much to effect the 3rd party support that seems to be a bigger drain on her numbers that Trump’s.
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There are some states that nobody would ever expect to deviate from their traditional Republican voting history. Both South and North Carolina have been solidly Republican states for decades, for example, and Trump’s only up 3% – that’s how much he’s angered the African American population there.
But then you’ve got Idaho and Utah, which are so solidly GOP states that there’s no reason to think they’d remotely go for Hillary. Sure enough he’s up 16% there.
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