I will now talk about Donald Trump for at least one LJ entry

[drwex]

My last attempt to address Trump didn't go so well - fortunately, John Scalzi rescued me. But a confluence of things has brought me 'round to trying to write about this again, so here goes.

There's a good chance I'm preaching to the choir every time I post a political entry but sometimes I can't shake these things out of my brain so I try to write them out. This time I think we may have company, but we're still in trouble. Try this on for size:

[Trump is] a xenophobic, race baiting, religious bigot.

That gem didn't come from Daily Kos or any of your favorite Democrats or left-leaning publications. It came from Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who is not exactly a liberal lion. Graham is an example of what I've been calling a Machine Republican and the Machine is in deep shit right now and likely freaking out.

They're freaking out (if they have an ounce of sense) at the possibility that Trump will either be the Republican nominee or they'll have to take some action to keep him from being the nominee and he'll go independent, torpedoing whoever they do manage to nominate. Over at fivethirtyeight, Harry Enten thinks that the Machine will have to enlist evangelical Christians to beat Trump. Talk about taking a scorpion to bed with you. Even if evangelicals can be convinced to work against Trump in Iowa (far from certain) the price they would need to get and stay on-board could be the nomination of someone like Ted Cruz. Ms. Clinton's political advisors have to be salivating over that prospect.

(It's a measure of just how remarkably bad the Republican field is that I'm warming up to the idea of a conniving, mammonite, warmongering woman as my candidate of choice. But that's a separate post. Somewhere the ghost of Margaret Thatcher has to be laughing her immaculate coiffure off.)

But the core problem that prompts me to write is not with Trump, not with the Machine's flailing ineffectuality, not with the distasteful candidate of the other party. It's the people.

Because, see, if there wasn't a solid and apparently unshakable plurality of Americans who seem to want a xenophobic, race-baiting, religious bigot as their president we wouldn't be having this discussion. Trump is a symptom, not the cause. Each bigoted shriek he utters just reinforces this. Each time he directs hate toward someone new (women, Mexicans, Blacks, Muslims) I have this moment of thinking "OK, now people will get it." But they don't. We have a persistent front-runner who is giving voice to the broad misogyny, bigotry, xenophobia, and racism that runs as deep in America as hot dogs and apple pie. And that, dear friends, is really fucking depressing.

I am aware that it is an element of privilege never to have to question one's place in the systems of power. As a person with a minority religion, a non-mainstream sexual orientation, and a visibly non-normal lifestyle I find the words of Pastor Niemöller's famous poem running through my head every time Trump's poll numbers go up and I wonder, really, what the hell is wrong with people.

Comments

[chienne-folle.livejournal.com]

I was weeping and wailing at Norman about What Trump Means For The Country, and he pointed me at this article, which I found immensely reassuring.

I still find it upsetting that Trump is any kind of front runner, but someone who seems to understand actual data is saying that only a teeny sliver of the population can make someone the front runner. I hope he's right!

[drwex]

I tend to think he's right - Nate Silver got where he is by being good at understanding how data are (mis)used. The problem (and a thing I elided from my post) is that this year the schedule is very compressed. Lots of things have been moved forward so the Republican primaries are going to go Iowa-NH-*boomeverywhere* very fast. I have no doubt that in a longer, more thought-out campaign Trump would be gone. I have my doubts about how that's going to happen this time.

[davidfcooper.livejournal.com]

The machine Republicans are reaping what they have sowed by appealing to voter bigotry going back to the immigration acts of 1924 and 1927, Nixon's southern strategy and George H. W. Bush's Willie Horton ads. For decades that party's voices, Fox News and right wing talk radio, have been fanning the resentments and prejudices of undereducated white men, which the Trump campaign incarnates and inartfully articulates.

[drwex]

True, but not especially relevant. Schadenfreude aside, the Democrats (particularly southern) have been just as happy to play overt race cards when it suited them and (northern) subtle race cards as well in the past century. The encysting of the Tea Party and the religious right into the Republican machine is a subject worthy of many dissertations, but it remains true that we are where we are.

[selenite.livejournal.com]

My working theory is that so many people are reflexively hanging up on pollsters that a majority of the people answering are only doing it to actively troll the pollster.

[drwex]

See the article linked above - Nate Silver also seems to think that poll responses are thin.

Maybe so. We'll know in a few weeks.

[mrw42.livejournal.com]

It's a measure of just how remarkably bad the Republican field is that I'm warming up to the idea of a conniving, mammonite, warmongering woman as my candidate of choice.

I know of a principaled, socialist, peace-loving man you might like... :-)

[drwex]

Yeah, I'm rather fond of Bernie Sanders. I do not, however, rate his chances highly. I will almost certainly vote for him in a primary but I expect my electoral choices to be Ms Clinton and whatever-clown-survives-the-Republican-circus. I might stay home as a protest in that event but I'd have to at least size up the two major-party options before deciding. So I'm sizing.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

Hey, remember when Dean's campaign imploded because he yelled "yeah" really loud one time?

*sigh*

I'm an unenrolled voter, so I'll likely be voting in the Republican primary when it comes around on the electoral guitar here, because I have way more opinions on the Republican ticket than the Democratic one at the moment.

[drwex]

Go you - I hope you'll share your opinions. See above - I think it's more important for me to vote for Sanders than to try and pick the least racist, clownish, buffoonish of the Republicans.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I'm motivated to try to make sure that my choices are both as palatable as possible so that things suck least even if my preferred general election candidate loses.

[dcltdw]

While I don't want to dissuade anyone from speaking up, loudly and clearly, against Trump's insanity, I am rather comforted by the articles at http://fivethirtyeight.com/politics/ . What converted my thinking was that if I start with "well, surely this election, things will be different", then I am neck-deep in pundit poo. Right now, talk is very cheap, but the people who are likely to vote have not yet actually have had an opportunity to do so. (Yes, the rest of the GOP field scares me, but that's a separate story.)

So... continue denouncing the insanity? Yes, of course. Actually be worried? No.
Really, what I'm worried about are the Bernie/Clinton supporters who swear up and down that if their candidate doesn't win, they won't vote for Clinton/Bernie, which makes me pull out my hair and want to scream, "and what about SCOTUS nominees?!?".

[mizarchivist]

I also read Scalzi's review- unlike other Scalzi posts, the whole thing. Then felt compelled to share the post on FB. Something I almost never do.

[wotw]

At the outset, I was very enthusiastic about this field. The only two who struck me as completely unacceptable were Trump and Santorum. There were at least four --- Bush, Walker, Perry and Gilmore --- who made my heart leap. And most of the others seemed perfectly acceptable.

Well, my enthusiasm for Gilmore faded when I discovered that he was not in fact the same person as Ed Gillespie, with whom I had confused him. Trump proved to be 1000 times worse, and Santorum at least 100 times worse, even than I'd anticipated. Kasich soon joined them in the unacceptable pile. Walker and Perry, as happens so often to my favorite candidates, were among the first to fold. And most of the rest (Rubio, Cruz, Paul) moved down a bit in my estimation, though that was probably inevitable as I got to see more of them.

At this point, all my hopes for a candidate I can get enthusiastic about are riding on Jeb. Things were supposed to be much better.

I am inclined to blame the Republican National Committee for this sorry state of affairs. They should have said at the outset that Trump --- by virtue of his temperament and his positions --- is not an acceptable candidate and they would not endorse any debate in which he participated. Yes, they'd have risked his wrath. But it would have been the right thing to do, and in the end I think it would have paid off for them. For one thing, Perry and Walker might still be around, and they're not the kind of candidates we can afford lightly to discard.

[drwex]

I actually have some hopes for both Paul and Rubio. Whatever I think of their positions on various issues, I think each has some potential. Sadly, I think the first is too burdened by legacy and the latter too uncertain. I would definitely watch for a different Rubio four years from now, though, if he can find his footing. He straddles several worlds, none of which naturally rest easy with each other.

Bush is... ugh. Probably not as stupid as the last one, nor as mealy as his father but I don't see him called to any great thing. Lukewarm persons rarely make good presidents.

I think the RNC are afraid not of Trump per se but of his supporters. If they alienate that cadre they will have to do some major surgery. It's the sort of surgery I've been arguing they need to do for four or more years - they need to identify themselves clearly as a party of something other than angry older white men and recognize what that entails. Doing that, and building a reliable and broad base (remember when Republicans talked about the big tent?) would inoculate them against the loss of the fanatic fringe. Right now I don't think they see a clear way to winning without that fringe, which is why they're so scared of a right-flank third party challenge. But at this stage in the presidential cycle I don't think they could do that AND win the White House. Since they're focused on the latter the former is off the table.

[chienne-folle.livejournal.com]

P. S. -- LOVE the line Somewhere the ghost of Margaret Thatcher has to be laughing her immaculate coiffure off.

[drwex]

Thank you, I do try.