EDITOR'S NOTE: This story has been updated to more precisely describe White House press secretary Sean Spicer's location late Tuesday night in the minutes before he briefed reporters. Spicer huddled with his staff among bushes near television sets on the White House grounds, not "in the bushes," as the story originally stated.
D knows how big a fan I am of my Replace-Trump-With-Cats Chrome extension, so when we found this flyer in our mailbox, he helped me out a bit.
* a subjective term
Donald Trump, a person who will never be president, has nevertheless been the nexus of the American media's coverage of the 2016 presidential campaign season.
- Gawker, September 2015 (image above)
If you're waiting for Donald Trump to pivot to become "presidential" - a candidate who will stay on message and, objectively speaking, not hurt his own campaign - then I have one word for you. Stop. Really. Because it just isn't going to happen.
First off, Donald Trump is never going to be the president of the United States. Whether you like him, simply find him amusing, or like most Americans, feel something between mild irritation and absolute hatred for the real estate mogul-turned-reality TV star, you probably know that his brand of fiery, accusatory, blowhard rhetoric doesn’t play well with voters.
Under “President Trump,” America would degenerate to its ugliest, darkest days. He would single-handedly destroy its reputation and the 240-year-old principles on which it stands. And that is precisely why Donald Trump cannot, will not, be elected president.
[A] new examination of the demographics and projected voting patterns in some of the key Rust Belt states underscores just how unlikely [Trump's winning the general election] really is. To succeed, this analysis finds, Trump would likely have to improve on Mitt Romney’s advantage over Barack Obama among blue collar whites by double digit margins, which is an astronomically high bar — in almost all of these states.
- The Washington Post, March 2016
The irony, of course, is that Trump has more in common with the elites who will lie down on the tracks to stop his candidacy than with the voters who profess to love him. If this is a game, Trump is not supposed to be on the field – he's supposed to be in the owners' box, deciding who gets to play. National politics is like smashmouth football, and Trump was not built to be a player. There's a reason why you never see the owners on the gridiron.
It is to the eternal discredit of the Republican Party’s that they have embarrassed the country by nominating a man like Donald Trump. But he’s not going to win in November, because he doesn’t have the votes. No matter what the angry white GOP primary voters think, America as a whole – this complex, multiracial, Information Age, economically resilient, World’s Greatest Democracy of a country – is not going to elect an angry orange clown. Donald Trump might do a lot of damage to America’s political culture, but he will never be president.
"What kind of a man does that? Root for people to get thrown out on the street? Root for people to lose their jobs? Root for people to lose their pensions? Root for two little girls in Clark County, Nevada, to end up living in a van? What kind of a man does that? I'll tell you exactly what kind – a man who cares about no one but himself. A small, insecure moneygrubber who doesn’t care who gets hurt, so long as he makes some money off it. What kind of man does that? A man who will never be President of the United States."
- Sen. Elizabeth Warren, May 2016
Issues matter, plans for the country matter, ability to govern matters – and none of those things are strengths of Donald Trump. He is first and foremost a man with a tremendous ego that needs to be fed, not a man of serious ideas or well thought out positions that go beyond sound bites. His bluster and unvarnished rhetoric have gotten him farther than I would have thought but, at the end of the day, the American people will not buy what he is selling.
Before one more straight-faced political story is written about the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump, the obvious begs to be stated: The man has absolutely no chance of winning. Zero. Nada. Write it down. Take it to the bank. Bet the farm. This preening self-parody of an egomaniac will never, ever be elected president of the United States.
And here's the bedrock obstacle to Trump's success: There are simply not enough struggling, resentful, xenophobic white people in the US to constitute a national majority sufficient to win a presidential election. Bottom line: The strongman approach is inherently self-limiting. It flourishes in the bizarro environs of a modern Republican primary, but there is no evidence at all, and much to the contrary, that it could be used to assemble a national majority. Yet it is the only approach in Trump's toolbox. That is why he will never be president.
So, could Trump win? We confront two stubborn facts: first, that nobody remotely like Trump has won a major-party nomination in the modern era. And second, as is always a problem in analysis of presidential campaigns, we don’t have all that many data points, so unprecedented events can occur with some regularity. For my money, that adds up to Trump’s chances being higher than 0 but (considerably) less than 20 percent. There are lots of undecideds, and Clinton's polling leads are somewhat thin in swing states. Nonetheless, Clinton is probably going to win, and she could win by a big margin.
- Nate Silver, November 2015 / November 2016
Americans have never chosen someone like [Donald Trump] to lead one of their two major parties. And now that he’s the presumptive nominee, Americans will - for the first time in their history - have a choice of whether they’ll put him in the Oval Office, to lead the country for four years. They almost certainly won’t.
While you're here - flip through this as well.
I highly recommend you download this Chrome extension that replaces photos of Trump with pictures of kittens.
It would seem that — like a lot of Republicans — they’re just not that into you, dude.
- Even Ted Cruz's own family can't deal with him (image above)
[W]hen I hear Bernie speak, I feel like I’m the problem with America. I’m one of those millionaires he mentions who should pay more taxes. I’m the bad guy. I’m the white male who is only successful because everything was handed to me. I don’t deserve the money I made. All the things I sacrificed don’t matter. The additional stress I was under doesn’t matter. The risks I took don’t matter. According to Bernie, the world needs fewer people like me, and more people like the smart Yale student who majors in something useless, travels the world, and then graduates with $100,000 in debt that people like me should pay off via higher taxes.
- "Dear Bernie Sanders, Sorry I'm The Problem With America"
As the Trump campaign has accrued power, its treatment of the media has grown even more worrisome … If you want a picture of a future Trump presidency, imagine a reporter shouting questions into an empty void.
- What it's like to be a reporter on the Trump Trail. Spoiler alert: it sounds horrible. (h/t DM)
According to a new Deseret News/KSL poll, if Donald Trump becomes the GOP nominee, the voters of Utah would opt for a Democratic candidate for the first time in over 50 years. Poll respondents said they would support either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders over Trump, though Clinton was only two points ahead of Trump in the poll, falling within the margin of error. As many as 16 percent of respondents said they would skip the election altogether if Trump was the nominee.
An episode of the beloved American sitcom that aired almost exactly 16 years ago – on March 19, 2000 – features Donald Trump as President of the United States, presiding over a broken economy. “It was a warning to America,” one of the writers, Dan Greaney, told the Hollywood Reporter. The idea of a Trump presidency, he added, came about when the writers needed to invent a world in which “everything went as bad as it possibly could.”
- The Simpsons: our modern day Magic 8 Ball
I believe Clinton has the experience and knowledge to deliver on her promises. And her mission has always been to care for the American people. I have disagreed with Clinton's positions from time to time but, like any good leader, she listens, processes information and adjusts based on knowledge. We have a tendency in our political discourse to claim that this type of change is "flip-flopping" or "waffling," but this is simply not a fair assessment of Clinton's record. We need a president with a core set of values, but we cannot afford to have an entrenched individual who refuses to see both sides of an argument. Now, more than ever, we need a diplomat in the White House.
- Unlike the majority of Utahans, SLC Mayor Jackie Biskupski supports Hillary
Ted Cruz really isn’t the guy to make the case that Obama is not acting presidential, given that his own response to the Brussels attack has been hysteria, demagoguery, and a foul sop to anti-Muslim sentiment. As my colleague Elias Isquith writes, Cruz is talking an abhorrent abuse of government power that takes existing anti-Muslim sentiment in the country and enshrining it as official policy. He’s proposed denying American citizens their civil liberties and using the heavy hand of the state to treat them as potential criminals for no other reason than their faith. And this guy is going to give a lecture on how to act presidential? He sees a terrorist attack unfold overseas and his immediate instinct is to bomb things, violate religious freedom, and curtail civil liberties at home.
- Ted Cruz needs to calm down.
"One of the great strengths of the United States and part of the reason we have not seen more attacks on the United States: We have an extraordinary successful, patriotic, integrates Muslim-American community … any approach that would single them out or target them for discrimination is not only wrong and un-America, but it would also be counter-productive. As far as the notion of having surveillance of neighborhoods where Muslims are present, I just left a country that engages in that kind of neighborhood surveillance. Which, by the way, the father of Senator Cruz escaped for America, the land of the free."
- Obama wonderfully shoots down Ted Cruz's horrifying plan to "secure" Muslim neighborhoods
There is an inauthenticity in appeals to anger rather than to reason, for simplified solutions rather than ones that stand a chance of working. This is true about Donald Trump, and lamentably also true about Sanders. On the question of experience, the ability to enact progressive change, and the issue of who can win the general election and the presidency, the clear and urgent choice is Hillary Clinton.
- Rolling Stone endorses Hillary for President
I didn't care about Senator Cruz one way or the other until I watched the first Republican debate. I noticed that his countenance doesn’t move the way I typically expect faces to move. Human faces can’t help but broadcast what we feel, what we may be thinking, and even what we may intend. I have rarely, if ever, seen a conventional smile from Senator Cruz. The eyes give away one’s game and help us tell forged from genuine smiles. No matter what the emotional coloring of Senator Cruz’s outward rhetoric is, his mouth typically tightens into the same straight line. If it deviates from this, then the corners of his mouth bend down, not upwards. The outside of his eyebrows bend down, too, when he emotes, something so atypical that it disturbs me. For the record I am not a Democrat. I’m at a loss to verbalize what unsettles me so when I watch the freshman senator. But it leaves me cold.
- Another reason to be creeped out by Ted Cruz: his face
Nate Silver points out that while polling from May 2015 shows a plurality of voters under 30 supporting socialism, that figure drops to a mere 15 percent among those over 65. The reason for this is not difficult to see. It reflects a difference in personal experience. Millennials either missed the Cold War entirely or were young children in its final years, with little or no conception of the triumph of liberty achieved with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. They do not understand the menace that socialism – combined with power – posed to the people it enslaved and to the free nations that it threatened. The violence and brutality of the communist regimes of the past are irrelevant, just lines in the history book somewhere between the Spanish-American War and 9/11. It’s more personal for older Americans. Perhaps some of their friends or neighbors – or they themselves – arrived in this country just ahead of Soviet tanks that were rolling into their homeland. Perhaps they remember the stories of citizens of these supposed utopian socialist prison states arrested, “disappeared,” tortured, or shot simply for trying to cross a border. Perhaps they remembered cowering under their school desks during drills in case of a nuclear attack, planned in communist Russia and launched from communist Cuba. This is the context young American voters should know as they prepare to cast their vote this year – many of them for the first time. We should all be mindful of the power of words and ideologies, and how discredited ideas can flourish again as memories of their failure fade. We cannot forget the lessons of history. All of us, but especially the youngest among us who will have to live in that world for the longest, should make this election about the future by rejecting the ugly, violent legacy of socialism’s past.
- Do we even know what "socialism" means anymore?
Marxist governments trample on individual rights because Marxist theory does not care about individual rights. Marxism is a theory of class justice. The only political rights it respects are those exercised by members of the oppressed class, with different left-wing ideological strands defining those classes in economic, racial, or gender terms, or sometimes all at once. Unlike liberalism, which sees rights as a positive-sum good that can expand or contract for society as a whole, Marxists (and other left-wing critics of liberalism) think of political rights as a zero-sum conflict. Either they are exercised on behalf of oppression or against it. Any Marxist government immediately sets about snuffing out the political rights of parties or ideas deemed reactionary (a category that also inevitably expands to describe any challenge to the powers that be). Repression is woven into Marxism’s ideological fabric. The case for democratic, pluralistic, incremental, market-friendly governance rooted in empiricism – i.e., liberalism – has never been stronger than now. What an odd time to abandon a successful program for an ideology that has failed everywhere it has been tried.
- Liberalism: Yay; Marxism: Nay
In an interview with Slate, the historian of fascism Robert Paxton warns against describing Donald Trump as fascist because “it’s almost the most powerful epithet you can use.” But in this case, the shoe fits. And here is why. Like Mussolini, Trump rails against intruders (Mexicans) and enemies (Muslims), mocks those perceived as weak, encourages a violent reckoning with those his followers perceive as the enemy within (the roughing up of protesters at his rallies), flouts the rules of civil political discourse (the Megyn Kelly menstruation spat), and promises to restore the nation to its greatness not by a series of policies, but by the force of his own personality (“I will be great for” fill in the blank). To quote Paxton again, this time from his seminal “The Anatomy of Fascism”: “Fascist leaders made no secret of having no program.” This explains why Trump supporters are not bothered by his ideological malleability and policy contradictions: He was pro-choice before he was pro-life; donated to politicians while now he rails against that practice; married three times and now embraces evangelical Christianity; is the embodiment of capitalism and yet promises to crack down on free trade. In the words of the Italian writer Umberto Eco, fascism was “a beehive of contradictions.” Like Mussolini, Trump is dismissive of democratic institutions. He selfishly guards his image of a self-made outsider who will “dismantle the establishment” in the words of one of his supporters. That this includes cracking down on a free press by toughening libel laws, engaging in the ethnic cleansing of 11 million people (“illegals”), stripping away citizenship of those seen as illegitimate members of the nation (children of the “illegals”), and committing war crimes in the protection of the nation (killing the families of suspected terrorists) only enhances his stature among his supporters. The discrepancy between their love of America and these brutal and undemocratic methods does not bother them one iota. To borrow from Paxton again: “Fascism was an affair of the gut more than of the brain.” For Trump and his supporters, the struggle against “political correctness” in all its forms is more important than the fine print of the Constitution... [F]or a historical analogy to be useful to us, it has to advance our understanding of the present. And the Trumpism-Fascism axis (pun intended) does this in three ways: it explains the origins of Trump the demagogue; it enables us to read the Trump rally as a phenomenon in its own right; and it allows those of us who are unequivocally opposed to hate, bigotry, and intolerance, to rally around an alternative, equally historical, program: anti-fascism.
- Trump and the modern fascist movement (h/t MH for this great article)
Speaking with a CNN reporter, Terry proudly pointed to his wife as an example of immigration done "correctly." "It's not fair to her to let the illegals stay here. She does everything right. She works, she pays taxes, she votes," he said. The couple said they both planned to vote for Trump.
Paul Weber of Appleton, Iowa, describing himself as "kind of a redneck" at an October Trump rally in Waterloo, said he was tired of the so-called "new Americans" flooding the country. "The people that are coming in here from China, Indonesia and all of them countries, they're getting pregnant and coming here and having babies," Weber said, telling an Asian reporter that he meant no offense. "They get everything and the people that were born here can't get everything."
"Islam is traced patrilineally. I am a Muslim if my father is Muslim. In that sense, it is undeniable that Barack Obama was born a Muslim," Michael Rooney said at a Trump event in Worcester, Massachusetts, in November. Rooney, a respiratory therapist in his late 40s, likened Obama's Christian faith to Caitlyn Jenner's recent gender transition: "It is true that he now identifies as a Christian in the same sense that Bruce Jenner identifies as a woman." At another rally in Manassas, Virginia, on December 2, Robin Reif, 54, yelled into the crowd that the President was from Kenya. He told CNN afterward that Obama was "too much of a Muslim" and an "Islamist sympathizer." "In our Constitution, it says that the president has to be an American citizen," Reif said. "I'm still wondering where is he really from. What is this man's background?"
Rhett Benhoff, a middle-aged white man at a December Trump campaign event in Raleigh, North Carolina, said discrimination against whites is "absolutely" real. "I mean, it seems like we really go overboard to make sure all these other nationalities nowadays and colors have their fair shake of it, but no one's looking out for the white guy anymore," he said. At the Trump rally in Myrtle Beach, where signs that read "silent majority" dotted the crowd, Patricia Saunders told CNN that Trump is speaking directly to a segment of the population that feels left behind and marginalized. "White Americans founded this country," said Saunders, 64. "We are being pushed aside because of the President's administration and the media."
Brothers Ernie Martin and Lee Walter from Cresco, Iowa, were among a group of zealous Trump fans at the front of the line outside a Trump rally in Des Moines on December 11. They had waited more than seven hours to see the candidate in person. "Hey, hey. Ho, ho. All the Muslims have to go!" Walter, a 64-year-old retired factory worker, began to chant. "I don't want [Muslims] here," Ed Campbell said. "Who knows what they're going to bring into this country?"
Bickie Mason, a contractor from Lyman, South Carolina, who attended Trump's Spartanburg rally in November, said he felt he didn't have a choice but to agree with Trump's idea of tracking Muslim-Americans through a national database. "I don't believe all Muslims are bad. But anybody can turn bad, and you've got to be able to locate them and know where they're at," said Mason, 64.
"Islam is not a religion. It's a violent blood cult. OK?" said Hoyt Wood, a 68-year-old military veteran waiting to hear Trump speak aboard the U.S.S. Yorktown in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. "All they know is violence, that's all they know." At the same rally, 55-year-old Susan Kemmelin said, "We can't look at a Muslim and tell if they're a terrorist or friendly."
Robert Engelkes, a 45-year-old corn and soybean farmer from Dike, Iowa, pointed out that there is historical precedent for targeting one group. "What did we do in World War II? We put all the Japanese in internment camps," said Engelkes, who was standing outside a Trump event in Des Moines. "We had to do something with them."
At a campaign rally in Rock Hill, South Carolina, this month, a Muslim woman wearing a hijab stood up in silent protest as Trump spoke about the hidden presence of ISIS among Syrian refugees. As Rose Hamid was escorted out of the building, one person shouted: "You have a bomb, you have a bomb."
- "Why I'm Voting For Trump" - The only thing scarier than Donald Trump (besides maybe Ted Cruz) are these people
- DARTH TRUMP (video above)
So this is the state of Ted Cruz less than a week before Super Tuesday. Hated by his party, incapable of getting anyone to like him. The GOP establishment has even made it clear that as much as they hate Trump, they would still prefer him as the party nominee. That alone must be galling to Ted Cruz, who has spent his entire life planning and plotting and gearing up for this run, only to see it swamped by a walking billionaire troll doll who has made a mockery of all the voter-fooling conservative arguments he was counting on to carry the day for him. You might even feel a tinge of sympathy for him, if he wasn’t such a galactically shitty jerk.
- Welp, some things never change - everyone still hates Ted Cruz
Look, all of this speculation can end. All you have to do is say "I am not the Zodiac Killer." What are you hiding [?]
- The Internets just cracks me up sometimes
Trump’s wager was simple: Pretend to be stupid and angry because that’s what stupid and angry people like. He’s held up a mirror to the country, shown us how blind and apish we are. He knew how undiscerning the populace would be, how little they cared about details and facts. In Nevada, for instance, 70 percent of Trump voters said they preferred an “anti-establishment” candidate to one with any “experience in politics.” Essentially, that means they don’t care if he understands how government works or if he has the requisite skills to do the job. It’s a protest vote, born of rage, not deliberation...Debate after debate, speech after speech, Trump has personified the anti-intellectualism percolating in this country for decades. Is there any doubt it’s working? He may be cynical, but he isn’t wrong...The people are getting what they want, and what they want is to have their idiocies and their discontent beamed back at them. Trump is clearly more than a media construction. He’s everything dumb and regressive about our political culture distilled into a single candidate. And he exists only because a sufficient number of Americans want him to – that’s the problem.
What we call right-wing and liberal media in this country are really just two different strategies of the same kind of nihilistic lizard-brain sensationalism. The ideal CNN story is a baby down a well, while the ideal Fox story is probably a baby thrown down a well by a Muslim terrorist or an ACORN activist. Both companies offer the same service, it's just that the Fox version is a little kinkier. It's our fault. We in the media have spent decades turning the news into a consumer business that's basically indistinguishable from selling cheeseburgers or video games. You want bigger margins, you just cram the product full of more fat and sugar and violence and wait for your obese, over-stimulated customer to come waddling forth.
- Has the sensationalism of mainstream media gotten out of control?
There’s no official definition of the “establishment” but it presumably includes all of the people and institutions that have wielded significant power over the American political economy, and are therefore deemed complicit...The establishment doesn’t get that most Americans couldn’t care less about economic growth because for years they’ve got few of its benefits, while suffering most of its burdens in the forms of lost jobs and lower wages. Most people are more concerned about economic security and a fair chance to make it. The establishment doesn’t see what’s happening because it has cut itself off from the lives of most Americans. It also doesn’t wish to understand, because that would mean acknowledging its role in bringing all this on. Yet regardless of the political fates of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, the rebellion against the establishment will continue. Eventually, those with significant economic and political power in America will have to either commit to fundamental reform, or relinquish their power.
- Robert Reich optimistically predicts the end of the establishment
Indeed, the uncomfortable truth, for the pundits and fellow Republicans who turned their noses up at Trump, is that his appeal has spread over seven months so far beyond a rabble-rousing, anti-establishment rump to encompass the very elements of the American electorate the GOP has been eager to reach. And while it’s no majority, it’s a bigger group than anything the rest of the fragmented Republican field has galvanized.
- Donald J. Trump's fans aren't all just angry, uneducated white men
"THAT'S the Black Experience? Get the f*ck out of here, Ben Carson. And take your pebble with you."
- Trevor Noah questions Ben Carson: What makes you the arbiter of black?
We — the undersigned artists, musicians, and cultural leaders of America — are excited to endorse a new vision for our country. It’s a vision that pushes for a progressive economic agenda. It’s a vision that creates jobs, raises wages, protects the environment, and gets big money out of politics. We endorse Bernie Sanders to become the 2016 Democratic Nominee for President of the United States of America.
