You’re absolutely right that he’s not going to, but I think it still explains sufficiently why people would vote for him.
They’re desperate for something to actually change in a positive way, and they’re probably not thinking very rationally about it but they recognize that anybody who’s enmeshed in the existing system and thrives on it isn’t going to change it, and they have all the leaders of the Republican party telling them that this guy is an outsider and not part of the system.
In that sense, the pundits who are saying that all the Sanders voters and the Trump voters represent the same thing are correct. They both are being fed by the average person’s clear gut sense that the general public is being thoroughly fucked over by the current system, and that the main leaders within each party aren’t going to try anything which might rattle the system as a whole.
I’ll personally argue that the Sanders voters have picked a relatively sensible response to that, and that the Trump voters have a horribly delusional sense both of what the causes of the problems are and what their candidate is, but I think that gut feeling is the same on both sides.
I agree with much of your take, and that’s why I go to pains to tell people that Trump is conning them. I understand why many want to like him, but he’s clearly going to disappoint them. Because his brand is fraud.
Contrasted to Elon Musk, Jeff Beezos, or hell even Steve Ballmer. I think any of them could have mounted much the same populist support as Trump has (minus the racism/sexism, natch), but with much more individual credibility.
Ugh. No. I mean, less racism, but still the same rich dudes who think they hung the moon and can fix our world, if only we’d unleash our productive capacity through deregulation. How about we have a moratorium on rich people running for office. You make over $200,000 a year, no running for office for you.
No, but I’m sure you knew that. I do realize that people with money can have political platforms I agree with, for sure. But all too often, the rich act as a class, working against the rest of us. They already have an larger impact on how society functions, just by their wealth. Politics should be the domain of balancing interest in a meaningful way and if people with $$$$ dominate, then the rest of us are sort of screwed.
Good. They shouldn’t. they should do their jobs and stop trying to make a mint off their positions. If they can’t live off that much money, they’re doing it wrong.
A NYT report on new GOP attacks in Florida on Drumpf campaign.
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Four different groups have reserved at least $10 million in airtime in Florida so far, according to trackers of media spending. That number is expected to grow, but television stations in Florida are already awash in such ads.
Two from the American Future Fund, which has spent $2 million so far in Florida and Illinois, show decorated veterans assailing Mr. Trump as a poseur on military matters. Michael Waltz, a retired Special Forces colonel, blisteringly calls Mr. Trump a draft dodger and, effectively, a coward. “Donald Trump hasn’t served this country a day in his life,” he says. “Don’t let Trump fool you.”
And a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, Tom Hanton, bluntly questions Mr. Trump’s toughness: “Trump would not have survived the P.O.W. experience. He would have been probably the first one to fold.” …
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DENVER — Donald J. Trump’s harsh campaign rhetoric against Mexican immigrants has helped him win a substantial delegate lead in the Republican primary, but it is also mobilizing a different set of likely voters — six of them alone in the family of Hortensia Villegas.
A legal immigrant from Mexico, Ms. Villegas is a mother of two who has been living in the United States for nearly a decade but never felt compelled to become a citizen. But as Mr. Trump has surged toward the Republican nomination, Ms. Villegas — along with her sister, her parents and her husband’s parents — has joined a rush by many Latino immigrants to naturalize in time to vote in November.
“I want to vote so Donald Trump won’t win,” said Ms. Villegas, 32, one of several hundred legal residents, mostly Mexicans, who crowded one recent Saturday into a Denver union hall. Volunteers helped them fill out applications for citizenship, which this year are taking about five months for federal officials to approve.
Mr. Trump’s ascendance has begun to cause serious unease in Japan. Even if his run ends short of the White House, the worry is that an election dominated by such talk could leave the United States more closed to trade and less willing to defend its allies.
“My friends in the Foreign Ministry are in a state of panic,” said Kiichi Fujiwara, an expert on international politics at the University of Tokyo. “This is the first time in a long time that we’ve seen straightforward protectionism from an American presidential candidate.”
Major Japanese newspapers published critical editorials a day after Mr. Trump’s sweeping victories in the Super Tuesday primaries last week.
