Discussion for article #243593
Demagoguery doesn’t work, has no staying power, isn’t paid attention to and embraced by millions of Americans?
Rush Limbaugh puts Sanders’ assertion on shaky ground.
It always has before. What’s different? 2015, not about black people, what?
“Crap” is too mild a word, but Bernie rightly describes what Trump has been doing. Although, I don’t think Trump’s primary interest is to divert attention from the real issues… because the clown doesn’t give a shit to what are at issues in the first place, zero interest there. He just says whatever that puts him center in the spotlight.
I’m not sure either exactly what Bernie means by saying it “is not going to work.” Does he mean Trump won’t be the next Prez? Or does he mean it won’t get any traction? Or what?
I can understand the out-of-body sense that Trump provokes - “Not in my country” - but it is working and will continue to work as long as there is an “Il Douché” to lead them. Trump didn’t invent any of this, he just gave it a name.
I haven’t got anything to say about Bern but on another topic Josh is correct. The fascist Big Door is most comparable to is Mussolini.
Take a look at Il Duce’s speeches. Look at his delivery. It’s more melodramatic than Trump but the outlook is the same. That is if you HAVE to tag Big Door as a fascist in the first place. Personally, I think THIS is more like him:
With family members lost in the Holocaust, Bernie must find Trump’s rhetoric shocking. He’s got to hope it has no staying power in America.
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Native Americans hoped genocidal staying power would wane, also. I marvel people think the Nazis have some sort of exclusive franchise on horrific acts against humanity.
Usual responses: “That was so long ago.” “My family didn’t migrate to the U.S. until 1919 so we weren’t a part of that.” “Too bad! The savages got what they deserved.”
…and on and on and on.
I’d say both. I think Trump’s “crap” helps him with people who already support him, but hurts him with almost everyone else. He has a solid 25-30% of Republican voters behind him, but he’s been hovering there in that range for months, not falling, but not rising either. And the growing mound of crap that he’s depositing around himself may hinder him as he tries to round up voters left behind as some of the other candidates drop out.
And his growing mound of crap would hurt him even more in the general, where the right wing of the Republican base makes up a much smaller part of the electorate. In other words, the very sort crap that has made him wildly popular with the salivating, crap-guzzling right wing base voters, would doom him with less feces-friendly independent and “swing” voters.
Yes, that’s what I thought… and not necessarily disagree. But then I also wondered as well. Two-thirds of the Republican voters support Trump’s proposal of banning Muslim immigrants, three-fourths of them believe Muslim is incompatible with American values, and half of them think registering Muslims is a good idea. And the thing is, even though the conversation at Fallon was specifically about Trump, the same xenophobic sentiments have been repeatedly expressed by most of the other Republican candidates. And further, democratic respondents, not so many in number but still non-negligible, answered the same to those survey questions.
I’m not saying Trump will win the nomination or will win presidency even (I believe he won’t). But Trump’s “crap” has already done significant damage to what we as a country stand for, and our standing in the world. So in that sense, it’s working… in a very, very bad way. And I hope Bernie has realized it. No, I believe he has, but “it’s not gonna work” does not quite seem to communicate it well.
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Maybe you’re referring to a different poll, but this one being reported here at TPM seems to show that while Trump’s ban-all-Muslims plan is very popular with Republicans, it’s a net negative with general election voters.
In a new Bloomberg Politics/Purple Strategies poll, 37 percent of all likely general election voters said they support Trump’s plan while 65 percent of likely Republican primary voters said they back the ban…
…Trump’s anti-Muslim plan makes 18 percent of all general election voters more likely to vote for the real estate mogul, Bloomberg reported. Thirty-three percent of voters said they were less likely to back Trump after the plan, while 44 percent reported the proposal has no impact on their vote.
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Thanks for that. Just saw it and also went to Bloomberg/PS directly as well and saw the results in detail. Good to see the net neg (and his fav/unfav, worse than Hillary’s), which seems to be in line with our thought that he won’t win this one. Plus the 35% of “favor the plan” is such a familiar number… then again, that more than one out of three likes the idea is still stunning.
By the by… pardon my ignorance, but I’m not sure what this “more/less likely to vote” question actually means. This is not really about Trump per se, more generally about a technical/methodological question. How has this questioning performed to predict election trends/results historically, do you know? It’s well known a little bit of tweaking of the survey wording can change the results quite significantly, and respondents can interpret questions in ways unintended by researchers despite multiple pilot tests (I know this latter from experience). I would imagine, there may well be some overlap between “no impact” and the other two indicating either of the directions. Say, for example, a guy who intended to vote for Trump (who should choose the “no impact” choice) may think “Gawd, I love the guy even more!” after learning the plan and choose “more likely.”
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Yes, and someone who can’t stand Trump and would never vote for him (who should choose the “no impact” choice) may think “#@?&%$! I hate this guy even more!” after learning the plan and choose “less likely.” Or someone who loves Trump and was 100% going to vote for him may be a little put off and think, “O.K., now I’m only 90% sure that I’m going to vote for him” and correctly answer “less likely,” but still end up voting for Trump in the end.
So I agree, it’s hard to be sure what’s really going on behind those numbers, or how much effect any of this might have on how people actually vote. But it’s still good to hear that more people are saying it counts against him than are saying that it counts in his favor.
It may not be much, but I’ll take my good news where I can find it… 
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