Rut Roh!
New polling data from Reuters finds a nationwide toss-up 2016 contest between GOP frontrunner Donald Trump and Democrat frontrunner Hillary Clinton — but he’s beating her by 20 points, 46 percent to 26 percent, among white working-class voters.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-govern...-lead-over-hillary-among-white-working-class/
New polling data from Reuters finds a nationwide toss-up 2016 contest between GOP frontrunner Donald Trump and Democrat frontrunner Hillary Clinton — but he’s beating her by 20 points, 46 percent to 26 percent, among white working-class voters.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-govern...-lead-over-hillary-among-white-working-class/
Bernie Has More Supporters Than Trump, Gets 4% of Coverage
By SemDem
Sunday Jan 10, 2016 7:12 AM PST
Let's put our cards on the table. Donald J. Trump has no chance to be elected president.
Everyone knows it. The RNC knows it. The MSM knows it. Everyone who can do basic math knows it.
That’s not me saying it, either. That’s the finding from the RNC's 2012 "autopsy report". The GOP needs 40% of the Latino vote to win. Romney didn't come close. The current GOP crop is doing worse. And then there is Trump. See this super long line? That is Trump's unfavorability among Latinos: a record 51% . Yes, it was back in August but if anything, it has gotten worse.
Add in his (justifiably) high negatives with just about every other constituency (women, Jews, African-Americans, etc.), on top of the Muslim voting bloc in the battleground states, and you have yourself a colossal why the f*** are we even pretending?
Well, Trump has a lot of supporters, as we are told.
Compared to the rest of the GOP field, that's true. Why wouldn't it be? Trump has it all. Trash-talking racist AND a desire to bang his own kin? Wow. That's a trailer trash dreamboat.
In a crowded field, he is currently polling at 34% among GOP. That's a lot of people.
Someone else running for president named Bernie Sanders is currently polling at 33% among Democrats. That’s a lot more people. The percentage of Americans who identify as Democrats is 32% compared to only 23% of Republicans, ergo Bernie has many more supporters than the Donald.
Yes, Bernie is a longshot candidate against Hillary. However, unlike Donald Trump, Bernie has an actual shot of becoming president. His rallies are epic; (Trump bragged about the 2,000 people at his last rally—sooo adorable); he has a big lead in New Hampshire; and he crushes Trump in a head-to-head matchup. Yet the second likeliest person in this race to become president has been almost completely shut out of the mainstream news media.
For 2015, the nightly news programs for NBC, CBS, and ABC devoted 234 total network minutes for Trump.
Bernie got 10 minutes. That's it—for an entire year!
Even worse: CBS and NBC made up over nine of those minutes. From the same article, you see that ABC News devoted less than one minute of coverage to Bernie Sanders for all of 2015. You read that right. Less than one minute. C'mon, ABC News. Let’s make a New Year’s pledge to try to be a news network this year, okay? (And you are not off to a good start.)
Even if you are a network president in the tank for Donald Trump, you can’t justify this lopsided coverage. Either Hillary or Bernie is going to win come November, and either way, Bernie’s ideas will live last long past the election. Trust me. I know you don’t think this is true, but Americans would rather hear about jobs, tuition-free college, and fixing the income gap as opposed to which protestor got spit on or what name Trump called Jeb this week. Just try it and see!
But you are going to have to give it at least a full minute this year.
By SemDem
Sunday Jan 10, 2016 7:12 AM PST
Let's put our cards on the table. Donald J. Trump has no chance to be elected president.
Everyone knows it. The RNC knows it. The MSM knows it. Everyone who can do basic math knows it.
That’s not me saying it, either. That’s the finding from the RNC's 2012 "autopsy report". The GOP needs 40% of the Latino vote to win. Romney didn't come close. The current GOP crop is doing worse. And then there is Trump. See this super long line? That is Trump's unfavorability among Latinos: a record 51% . Yes, it was back in August but if anything, it has gotten worse.
Add in his (justifiably) high negatives with just about every other constituency (women, Jews, African-Americans, etc.), on top of the Muslim voting bloc in the battleground states, and you have yourself a colossal why the f*** are we even pretending?
Well, Trump has a lot of supporters, as we are told.
Compared to the rest of the GOP field, that's true. Why wouldn't it be? Trump has it all. Trash-talking racist AND a desire to bang his own kin? Wow. That's a trailer trash dreamboat.
In a crowded field, he is currently polling at 34% among GOP. That's a lot of people.
Someone else running for president named Bernie Sanders is currently polling at 33% among Democrats. That’s a lot more people. The percentage of Americans who identify as Democrats is 32% compared to only 23% of Republicans, ergo Bernie has many more supporters than the Donald.
Yes, Bernie is a longshot candidate against Hillary. However, unlike Donald Trump, Bernie has an actual shot of becoming president. His rallies are epic; (Trump bragged about the 2,000 people at his last rally—sooo adorable); he has a big lead in New Hampshire; and he crushes Trump in a head-to-head matchup. Yet the second likeliest person in this race to become president has been almost completely shut out of the mainstream news media.
For 2015, the nightly news programs for NBC, CBS, and ABC devoted 234 total network minutes for Trump.
Bernie got 10 minutes. That's it—for an entire year!
Even worse: CBS and NBC made up over nine of those minutes. From the same article, you see that ABC News devoted less than one minute of coverage to Bernie Sanders for all of 2015. You read that right. Less than one minute. C'mon, ABC News. Let’s make a New Year’s pledge to try to be a news network this year, okay? (And you are not off to a good start.)
Even if you are a network president in the tank for Donald Trump, you can’t justify this lopsided coverage. Either Hillary or Bernie is going to win come November, and either way, Bernie’s ideas will live last long past the election. Trust me. I know you don’t think this is true, but Americans would rather hear about jobs, tuition-free college, and fixing the income gap as opposed to which protestor got spit on or what name Trump called Jeb this week. Just try it and see!
But you are going to have to give it at least a full minute this year.
Will you accept my proposal, PUSSY.
Lying Ace said:
"In this year's bowls, every favorite you picked was a PowerSweep play and every underdog pick you made was a PowerSweep play. "
If I can prove the above statement was an absolute, provable Lie, will you leave this site forever? I know you have no money, so not proposing a $$$ bet, just one that will remove your lying ass forever.
You can't prove it was a lie.
So I accept.
Go right ahead and prove it was a lie.
Vit had several side Picks where Power Sweep did not pick the side. Lying Ace was PROVEN to have lied, and is WELCHING on a Ban bet, and is reduced to the Clintonian "Depends on what the meaning of is, is," to defend his WELCHING. It's who he is, and what he does, and no Pussy in the Sick Cult has the decency or integrity to call him on it, which makes them only a slightly higher level on the decency and integrity scale than the Lying WELCHER himself. But that's what this hellhole is, only a select few have any decency or integrity, so no surprise.
[h=6]- JANUARY 11, 2016 -[/h][h=1]TRUMP SOARS, BUSH SINKS IN LATEST N.H. POLL[/h]Politico
Donald Trump is now the choice of nearly one-in-three likely Republican primary voters in New Hampshire, while Jeb Bush, who once pledged that he would win in the state, plummeted to just 4 percent in the latest Monmouth University poll.
With less than a month before the New Hampshire primary, the Republican polls are showing significant movement, and a competitive battle for second and third place within the margin of error.
Trump jumped six points from the November poll, to 32 percent, followed by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, both at 14 percent. For Cruz, the results mark an increase of 5 points from the last survey, while for Kasich, Monday's poll is a three-point bump.
Kasich’s strong showing in this poll, combined with Bush's weak showing, could propel him onto the main stage in the next GOP debate, scheduled for Thursday night.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio drew 12 percent, statistically unchanged from two months ago, with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie ticking up three points to 8 percent. Carly Fiorina remained at 5 percent, followed by Bush and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul at 4 percent each.
Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, meanwhile, plunged from 16 percent in November to 3 percent this time. Other candidates polled at 1 percent or less, with 3 percent undecided. In November, Carson trailed Trump by a mere 10 points.
For Bush, the latest poll marks a three-point drop from November and an eight-point decrease since last July, when the Manhattan businessman began his meteoric rise in most state and national polling.
About four-in-10 voters said they had met or seen at least one of the Republican or Democratic presidential candidates in New Hampshire, with 14 percent each saying they had seen or met Christie or Fiorina, 13 percent Trump, 11 percent Bush and Kasich, and 10 percent Rubio.
In terms of voter opinion, Cruz led the way at a net positive 33 points (57 percent favorable to 24 percent unfavorable), while Rubio came in second at +28 (56 percent to 28 percent).
Only Bush, who has expressed an unwavering belief as late as early November that he would win over New Hampshire voters, earned negative favorability (39 percent favorable to 47 percent unfavorable). By last week, however, the former governor of Florida would only say, "better than expected," when asked how he would perform in the state.
There's still plenty of fluidity in the state. About a month out from the Feb. 9 primary, roughly one-in-three likely voters — 32 percent — said they are completely set with their choice, while 42 percent indicated a strong preference. Just 15 percent said they had a slight preference, and 12 percent said they were undecided.
The poll was conducted by telephone from Jan. 7-10, surveying 414 New Hampshire voters likely to vote in the Republican primary. The margin of error is plus or minus 4.8 percentage points.
Donald Trump is now the choice of nearly one-in-three likely Republican primary voters in New Hampshire, while Jeb Bush, who once pledged that he would win in the state, plummeted to just 4 percent in the latest Monmouth University poll.
With less than a month before the New Hampshire primary, the Republican polls are showing significant movement, and a competitive battle for second and third place within the margin of error.
Trump jumped six points from the November poll, to 32 percent, followed by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, both at 14 percent. For Cruz, the results mark an increase of 5 points from the last survey, while for Kasich, Monday's poll is a three-point bump.
Kasich’s strong showing in this poll, combined with Bush's weak showing, could propel him onto the main stage in the next GOP debate, scheduled for Thursday night.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio drew 12 percent, statistically unchanged from two months ago, with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie ticking up three points to 8 percent. Carly Fiorina remained at 5 percent, followed by Bush and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul at 4 percent each.
Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, meanwhile, plunged from 16 percent in November to 3 percent this time. Other candidates polled at 1 percent or less, with 3 percent undecided. In November, Carson trailed Trump by a mere 10 points.
For Bush, the latest poll marks a three-point drop from November and an eight-point decrease since last July, when the Manhattan businessman began his meteoric rise in most state and national polling.
About four-in-10 voters said they had met or seen at least one of the Republican or Democratic presidential candidates in New Hampshire, with 14 percent each saying they had seen or met Christie or Fiorina, 13 percent Trump, 11 percent Bush and Kasich, and 10 percent Rubio.
In terms of voter opinion, Cruz led the way at a net positive 33 points (57 percent favorable to 24 percent unfavorable), while Rubio came in second at +28 (56 percent to 28 percent).
Only Bush, who has expressed an unwavering belief as late as early November that he would win over New Hampshire voters, earned negative favorability (39 percent favorable to 47 percent unfavorable). By last week, however, the former governor of Florida would only say, "better than expected," when asked how he would perform in the state.
There's still plenty of fluidity in the state. About a month out from the Feb. 9 primary, roughly one-in-three likely voters — 32 percent — said they are completely set with their choice, while 42 percent indicated a strong preference. Just 15 percent said they had a slight preference, and 12 percent said they were undecided.
The poll was conducted by telephone from Jan. 7-10, surveying 414 New Hampshire voters likely to vote in the Republican primary. The margin of error is plus or minus 4.8 percentage points.
[h=6]- JANUARY 11, 2016 -[/h][h=1]WORKING-CLASS HERO: TRUMP EXPANDS TO 20-POINT LEAD AMONG WHITE BLUE-COLLARS VS. HILLARY CLINTON[/h]Breitbart
[h=2][/h][h=2]NEW POLLING DATA FROM REUTERS FINDS A NATIONWIDE TOSS-UP 2016 CONTEST BETWEEN GOP FRONTRUNNER DONALD TRUMP AND DEMOCRAT FRONTRUNNER HILLARY CLINTON — BUT HE’S BEATING HER BY 20 POINTS, 46 PERCENT TO 26 PERCENT, AMONG WHITE WORKING-CLASS VOTERS.[/h]That’s up from a five-point lead in mid-December. Trump’s January lead is so huge, in fact, that Hillary just barely edges out the option “don’t know.”
In fact, he is beating Hillary Clinton among all working-class voters, regardless of race. Trump leads Hillary by five points among all voters earning between $25,000 and $75,000.
Just among whites, Trump gets the support of almost half of all white voters who earn between $25,000 and $75,000 a year. Among white working class voters who are married, Trump’s lead over Clinton expands to 27 points. His lead is 30 points among married, white working class voters with children.
Married, with children, is one of the most determinative factors in predicting how someone will vote. While most political chatter is obsessed over the alleged “gender gap” that leaves Democrats with a large lead among women, the reality is that any gap in how men or women vote is determined by marriage and parenting. White women who are married, generally, vote exactly the same as white men who are married. Any perceived “gender gap” is due largely to martial status and race, with majorities of both sexes voting overwhelmingly for Republicans. Single white women and single men are more inclined to vote Democrat.
There was a time that Democrats were the party of the working class, but those days are long behind us. Even among white voters, who are the most Republican of American ethnic or racial groups, Trump does worse as earnings rise. Trump’s lead among whites earning $100,000 a year or more is just 9 points, 42 percent to 33 percent.
Political pundits across the spectrum have paid too little attention to the ill-fated history of the Bobby Kennedy Project. Launched with great fanfare after the 2012 elections by the Center for American Progress and other progressive groups, the project was meant to reverse the Democrat party’s long slide with white working class voters.
The project was founded on the realization that, for now, the demographic numbers spell trouble for Democrats. In 2012, the black voter share of the electorate was higher than the black share of the population. This historic turnout was no doubt due to the presence of Barack Obama on the ballot. Other Democrat candidates can’t count on this heavy turnout.
The Hispanic share of the electorate is growing, but it was still just 10 percent of the total turnout in 2012. Even if Democrats continue to dominate this demographic, it isn’t enough to offset a leveling of black turnout and continued losses among white working-class voters.
But the Bobby Kennedy Project was abandoned just months after it was launched. It was doomed, partly by poor fundraising, but also by an awareness by Democrat strategists that the party would have to abandon certain progressive policies to reconnect with white working-class voters. This trade-off was viewed as an existential threat to the Democrats’ progressive-led coalition.
Today’s Democrat Party is no longer held together by an alliance of people worried about income and economic-class, as it was under FDR or LBJ. Instead, the party’s diverse components are held together by compatible political goals in their mutual fights for race, sex and gender related goals. Basically, the party’s leaders have discarded the Marxist politics of poverty vs. wealth, and have embraced the quasi-Marxist politics of oppressed cultural minorities vs. cultural oppressors.
For many years, this new politics — often summarized as “political correctness” — was confined to infuriating, but ultimately harmless, torturing of the language.
But when Democrat politicians, however, are unable to admit publicly that America is threatened by a strain of radical Islam, for example, it becomes dangerous. When Democrats race to the microphone to condemn a police officer even before full facts about a shooting are known, it drives a real wedge between politicians and everyday people.
On December 20th, Donald Trump’s lead over Hillary among white working class voters was just 5 points. Between then and now, Trump has amplified his call to temporarily ban Muslim refugees, doubled-down on building a border wall and called out Hillary over Bill’s past transgressions with women.
Trump, in other words, threw aside political-correctness and raised troubling issues about the Clintons that the polite political establishment had refused to raise. He now leads Hillary by 20 points among white working-class voters.
The truth shall set a Republican campaign free.
[h=2][/h][h=2]NEW POLLING DATA FROM REUTERS FINDS A NATIONWIDE TOSS-UP 2016 CONTEST BETWEEN GOP FRONTRUNNER DONALD TRUMP AND DEMOCRAT FRONTRUNNER HILLARY CLINTON — BUT HE’S BEATING HER BY 20 POINTS, 46 PERCENT TO 26 PERCENT, AMONG WHITE WORKING-CLASS VOTERS.[/h]That’s up from a five-point lead in mid-December. Trump’s January lead is so huge, in fact, that Hillary just barely edges out the option “don’t know.”
In fact, he is beating Hillary Clinton among all working-class voters, regardless of race. Trump leads Hillary by five points among all voters earning between $25,000 and $75,000.
Just among whites, Trump gets the support of almost half of all white voters who earn between $25,000 and $75,000 a year. Among white working class voters who are married, Trump’s lead over Clinton expands to 27 points. His lead is 30 points among married, white working class voters with children.
Married, with children, is one of the most determinative factors in predicting how someone will vote. While most political chatter is obsessed over the alleged “gender gap” that leaves Democrats with a large lead among women, the reality is that any gap in how men or women vote is determined by marriage and parenting. White women who are married, generally, vote exactly the same as white men who are married. Any perceived “gender gap” is due largely to martial status and race, with majorities of both sexes voting overwhelmingly for Republicans. Single white women and single men are more inclined to vote Democrat.
There was a time that Democrats were the party of the working class, but those days are long behind us. Even among white voters, who are the most Republican of American ethnic or racial groups, Trump does worse as earnings rise. Trump’s lead among whites earning $100,000 a year or more is just 9 points, 42 percent to 33 percent.
Political pundits across the spectrum have paid too little attention to the ill-fated history of the Bobby Kennedy Project. Launched with great fanfare after the 2012 elections by the Center for American Progress and other progressive groups, the project was meant to reverse the Democrat party’s long slide with white working class voters.
The project was founded on the realization that, for now, the demographic numbers spell trouble for Democrats. In 2012, the black voter share of the electorate was higher than the black share of the population. This historic turnout was no doubt due to the presence of Barack Obama on the ballot. Other Democrat candidates can’t count on this heavy turnout.
The Hispanic share of the electorate is growing, but it was still just 10 percent of the total turnout in 2012. Even if Democrats continue to dominate this demographic, it isn’t enough to offset a leveling of black turnout and continued losses among white working-class voters.
But the Bobby Kennedy Project was abandoned just months after it was launched. It was doomed, partly by poor fundraising, but also by an awareness by Democrat strategists that the party would have to abandon certain progressive policies to reconnect with white working-class voters. This trade-off was viewed as an existential threat to the Democrats’ progressive-led coalition.
Today’s Democrat Party is no longer held together by an alliance of people worried about income and economic-class, as it was under FDR or LBJ. Instead, the party’s diverse components are held together by compatible political goals in their mutual fights for race, sex and gender related goals. Basically, the party’s leaders have discarded the Marxist politics of poverty vs. wealth, and have embraced the quasi-Marxist politics of oppressed cultural minorities vs. cultural oppressors.
For many years, this new politics — often summarized as “political correctness” — was confined to infuriating, but ultimately harmless, torturing of the language.
But when Democrat politicians, however, are unable to admit publicly that America is threatened by a strain of radical Islam, for example, it becomes dangerous. When Democrats race to the microphone to condemn a police officer even before full facts about a shooting are known, it drives a real wedge between politicians and everyday people.
On December 20th, Donald Trump’s lead over Hillary among white working class voters was just 5 points. Between then and now, Trump has amplified his call to temporarily ban Muslim refugees, doubled-down on building a border wall and called out Hillary over Bill’s past transgressions with women.
Trump, in other words, threw aside political-correctness and raised troubling issues about the Clintons that the polite political establishment had refused to raise. He now leads Hillary by 20 points among white working-class voters.
The truth shall set a Republican campaign free.
[h=6]- JANUARY 11, 2016 -[/h][h=1]DONALD J. TRUMP RECEIVES MAJOR GRANITE STATE ENDORSEMENTS FROM PROMINENT COMMUNITY LEADERS[/h]
Mr. Trump stated, “I am honored to receive these important endorsements from such accomplished businessmen in the great state of New Hampshire. Their support, and the support of so many incredible people all over the state means so much to me. It is time to Make America Great Again and with your help, on February 9th, we will do just that.”
A strong supporter of the local community, Gamache has served the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, Chairman of the Board for Intown Manchester, and proudly served as Chairman of the Board for Easter Seals New Hampshire from 2007 to 2009. His strong professional reputation, charitable endeavors, and active participation in Manchester city politics have made him a coveted community endorsement and he is proud to support Donald J. Trump as the Republican nominee for President of the United States.
Bruce Breton served as Chair of Windham GOP in 2015 and is a Selectman in the Town of Windham. Breton, a former Pataki supporter, proudly endorses Donald J. Trump.
Arthur Sullivan is co-owner of Brady Sullivan properties, which owns some of the most iconic properties in the state of New Hampshire, including City Hall Plaza, Brady Sullivan Plaza, and Brady Sullivan Tower.
Sam Tamposi Jr. is President of the Tamposi Company, a well-known Republican Party activist, member of the Rivier College Board of Trustees, and Heritage Club Member of the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Nashua. His father, Sam Tamposi Sr., was part owner of the Boston Red Sox.
Mr. Trump visited New Hampshire again today where he had a capacity crowd at his rally in Windham, New Hampshire and has several more visits planned prior to February 9th. Mr. Trump continues to hold a commanding lead in all New Hampshire state polls as well as nationally, as the first in the nation primary contest approaches. The most recent poll, just released by Monmouth University, shows Mr. Trump with a wide, double digit point lead over his closet rival with 26% support. Also, recently released polls from NBC/WSJ, FOXNews, and NH1 show similar, double digit leads for Mr. Trump who continues to be the definitive front runner for the Republican nomination for President of the United States.
Trump Campaign Continues to Dominate in New Hampshire Weeks Before Primary Contest
(New York, NY) January 11th, 2016 – Today Donald J. Trump received endorsements from four prominent and highly respected businessmen in New Hampshire: Ben Gamache, Bruce Breton, Arthur Sullivan, and Sam Tamposi Jr. These four individuals are responsible for driving the majority of economic development in the state for the last several years and they recognize Mr. Trump’s unparalleled abilities and leadership as one of the most successful entrepreneurs of all time. Mr. Trump stated, “I am honored to receive these important endorsements from such accomplished businessmen in the great state of New Hampshire. Their support, and the support of so many incredible people all over the state means so much to me. It is time to Make America Great Again and with your help, on February 9th, we will do just that.”
A strong supporter of the local community, Gamache has served the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, Chairman of the Board for Intown Manchester, and proudly served as Chairman of the Board for Easter Seals New Hampshire from 2007 to 2009. His strong professional reputation, charitable endeavors, and active participation in Manchester city politics have made him a coveted community endorsement and he is proud to support Donald J. Trump as the Republican nominee for President of the United States.
Bruce Breton served as Chair of Windham GOP in 2015 and is a Selectman in the Town of Windham. Breton, a former Pataki supporter, proudly endorses Donald J. Trump.
Arthur Sullivan is co-owner of Brady Sullivan properties, which owns some of the most iconic properties in the state of New Hampshire, including City Hall Plaza, Brady Sullivan Plaza, and Brady Sullivan Tower.
Sam Tamposi Jr. is President of the Tamposi Company, a well-known Republican Party activist, member of the Rivier College Board of Trustees, and Heritage Club Member of the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Nashua. His father, Sam Tamposi Sr., was part owner of the Boston Red Sox.
Mr. Trump visited New Hampshire again today where he had a capacity crowd at his rally in Windham, New Hampshire and has several more visits planned prior to February 9th. Mr. Trump continues to hold a commanding lead in all New Hampshire state polls as well as nationally, as the first in the nation primary contest approaches. The most recent poll, just released by Monmouth University, shows Mr. Trump with a wide, double digit point lead over his closet rival with 26% support. Also, recently released polls from NBC/WSJ, FOXNews, and NH1 show similar, double digit leads for Mr. Trump who continues to be the definitive front runner for the Republican nomination for President of the United States.
- JANUARY 07, 2016 -
DONALD TRUMP’S ART OF THE STEAL
Time
There is a reason most presidential candidates stump through diners and living rooms this time of year. They can’t fill a bigger room.
And then there is Donald J. Trump.
On the second day of January, in the Gulf Coast town of Biloxi, Miss., at least 13,000 stood for hours in a stinging chill to pack an entire sports arena for Trump, and when that venue was full, the overflow spilled into a second megaspace nearby. Trump called it the biggest crowd in Mississippi political history, which is exactly what you’d expect him to say, and also entirely plausible.
A few days earlier, Trump had packed a convention hall in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Two days later, he filled the 8,000-seat Paul Tsongas Center in Lowell, Mass., with people who waited on line in subfreezing cold. The next night, after standing for two hours in single-digit temperatures, locals filled the equivalent of two high school gymnasia on the Vermont–New Hampshire border to catch Trump’s revival show.
Given these crowds, the unprecedented Trump-driven television ratings for GOP debates and his unsinkable run at the top of the national polls–a streak of more than five months and counting–even the most mainstream Republicans are coming to grips with an idea they have resisted since last summer. This could be their nominee. And they are asking themselves, could they stop worrying and, perhaps, learn to love the Donald?
Leading Republicans unhappily find themselves deep in “probing” conversation, asking, “perhaps he wouldn’t be so bad,” says veteran strategist and lobbyist Ed Rogers. True, Trump is a wild card, a flamethrower, a man with no known party loyalties and no coherent political principles, a thrice-married casino mogul and reality-TV star, a narcissist and even a demagogue. On the other hand: Biloxi.
At a time when the crown princes of Republican politics can’t mount so much as a two-car parade, Trump is drawing the biggest crowds by far. He has the largest social-media footprint–again, by far–and lodges the sharpest attacks on Hillary Clinton while attracting the greatest number of potential recruits to Republican ranks. As a result, Washington insiders from both parties are now calling around to GOP heavies, asking, “Do you know anybody on Trump’s campaign? Who is on his foreign-policy team? I need to get to know them fast.” Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus, who entertained a discussion of Stop Trump strategies at a meeting late last year, now consults regularly with the front runner by phone. Even if the GOP could resist, should it? “He’s got the mo, he’s got the masses,” says Rick Hohlt, a GOP strategist. “He’s attracting a new class of voters.” Efforts to stop him have failed miserably; meanwhile, Trump may be getting smarter as a candidate, adds Hohlt. “He knows when to push and when to back off.”
The man is moving people, and politics does not get more basic than that. Trump is a bonfire in a field of damp kindling—an overcrowded field of governors and former governors and junior Senators still trying to strike a spark. His nearest rival, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, has traction in Iowa among the evangelical bloc and—in contrast to Trump—is a tried-and-true conservative. But with little more than half the support Trump boasts in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls, Cruz has a long way to go to show that he can move masses.
Cruz staffers, tellingly, have been studying a 1967 tome titled Suite 3505 as a playbook for their campaign. This F. Clifton White memoir, long out of print, tells the story of the 1964 Barry Goldwater campaign. That was the last successful populist rebellion inside the Republican Party, propelling a rock-ribbed conservative past the Establishment insiders–just as Cruz hopes to do. But this triumph of intramural knife fighting proved a disaster at general-election time. Goldwater suffered one of the worst defeats in American political history. It’s no wonder that GOP leaders are every bit as wary of Cruz as they are of Trump.
In short, the GOP has awakened less than a month from the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary to find itself in bed between a bombshell and a kamikaze. It’s a sobering dawn for a political party that seemed, not long ago, just a tweak or two away from glory. Republicans dominate America’s state legislatures and governors’ mansions. They control both houses of Congress. So why is their electorate leaning toward the outstretched grip of such a man as Trump?
And could Trump be a sign of something bigger even than himself?
Traditional GOP power brokers have long since lost count of the indignities Trump has inflicted on their rites and rituals. Since entering the race in June with a fantastical promise to wall off America’s southern border and send the bill to Mexico, Trump has shredded the political rule book, scattering the pieces from his private helicopter. Have mouth, will travel. Policies that would be preposterous coming from anyone else–like barring all Muslims from entering the country or hiking U.S. tariffs while somehow erasing trade barriers erected by other nations–sound magical to his supporters when served up by their hero. Outrages that would sink an ordinary candidate, like mocking a person who has a congenital disease or giving a pass to Vladimir Putin for the murder of Russian journalists, lifted Trump atop the polls and then helped keep him there. What Flubber was to physics, Trump is to politics: an antidote to gravity, cooked up by a quirky but prodigious amateur.
Other candidates work to relate their lives to the struggles of ordinary voters. Trump does the opposite, encouraging Americans to savor vicariously his billionaire’s privilege of saying whatever he damn well pleases. “I love Donald Trump because he’s so totally politically incorrect. He’s gone after every group,” says Greg Casady, 61, an Army veteran who joined an immense Trump rally in Council Bluffs, Iowa. “He’s spending his own bucks–therefore he doesn’t have to play the politically correct game. He says what we wish we could say but we can’t afford to anymore.”
Trump is an anomaly, but not the only one in this 2016 campaign. There is Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an avowed socialist who leads the early polls in the New Hampshire Democratic primary–despite the fact that he spent most of his career spurning the Democrats. Though not as shocking or aggressive as Trump, Sanders is no less the darling of a discontented army. He too draws large audiences–but unlike Trump, Sanders faces an even stronger opponent in former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Big Money, the supposed superpower of post–Citizens United politics, is a dud so far. Super-PAC bets by various billionaires have done nothing to fire up such candidates as former Florida governor Jeb Bush. Bush has filled screens in key states with millions of dollars in both positive and negative ads. The result: falling poll numbers. Touted as a front runner a year ago, Bush is mired in single digits and rang in the new year by announcing that he was scrapping a round of ads in favor of more ground troops in early-voting states.
Big Media too has been brought low. The collapse of Trump was predicted so often, so erroneously, in so many outlets that the spectacle was almost comic, like a soap opera that keeps killing off the same deathless character. Televised debates became seminars in media ethics, with candidates delivering stern lectures to their questioners, while offscreen, campaigns threatened to boycott networks and blacklist reporters.
What if all of these groundswells are part of the same tsunami? By coming to grips with Trump, Republicans might begin grasping the future of presidential politics, as the digital forces that have upended commerce and communications in recent years begin to shake the bedrock of civic life.
Disintermediation is a long word for a seemingly simple idea: dumping the middleman. It came into use a half-century ago to describe changes in the banking business. A generation later, the term described a key concept of the Internet age. In one field after another, the power of networked computing swept middlemen out of the picture. Ubiquitous retailers like RadioShack and Waldenbooks have either downsized or vanished as their customers go online to buy directly from manufacturers and warehousers. Netflix shutters the Blockbuster chain by mailing movies directly to viewers–then offers streaming, which cuts out the mailbox as well. Craigslist drains the advertising lifeblood from local newspapers, and local libraries reinvent themselves after the web puts the world in your pocket. It’s a familiar story, one of the megatrends of our era.
Donald Trump is history’s most disintermediated presidential front runner. He has sidestepped the traditional middlemen–party, press, pollsters and pooh-bahs–to sell his candidacy directly to voters, building on a relationship he has nurtured with the public from project to project across decades.
As far back as 1986, Trump began seeding this direct relationship with the public. That was the year he goaded New York City Mayor Ed Koch into handing over the disastrous renovation of the Wollman ice-skating rink in Central Park. The decline of New York was an old story by then, and the ice rink was a sorrow symbol. City bureaucrats had turned a routine rehab into a six-year slog with no end in sight. Trump took the reins, and the project took less than six months. He cut the ribbon on a beautifully finished rink, completed ahead of schedule and below budget, with live TV there to cover it.
He followed up with more self-styled rescue missions: the East Coast shuttle operations of dying Eastern Airlines, for example, and the ruined paradise of Atlantic City. Launched with fanfare (if often abandoned in silence), these efforts burnished Trump’s image as a can-do, cut-the-crap businessman–even as he risked his fortune. This is part of the power of owning your image, free of the mediators. You can tell your own story, even if it is not entirely true. Trump’s a fine businessman, with a keen eye for bargains and a knack for leverage. Where he is peerless is as a promoter; he is the Michelangelo of ballyhoo.
A masterstroke in 2004 vaulted him free of remaining middlemen; that’s when Trump debuted his television show, The Apprentice. Tens of millions of Americans followed the cameras past the gatekeepers and into a direct relationship with the purse-lipped entrepreneur. That this intimacy is an illusion doesn’t really matter; it has an undeniable power to create loyal followings for even the unlikeliest characters. From the Kardashians of Rodeo Drive to the Robertsons of Duck Dynasty, from the Cake Boss to Honey Boo Boo, the crafted characters of reality TV experience a different kind of stardom from the TV and movie idols of the past. Fans are encouraged to feel that they know these people, not as fictional characters but as flesh and blood.
Something similar goes on in every celebrity Twitter feed or Instagram account. Properly tended, the social network of skilled disintermediators can grow to encompass tens of millions of people, all sharing a joke or commiserating over a disappointment or comparing breakfasts with their famous “friend.” The pop star Taylor Swift’s nearly 70 million Twitter followers recently overheard her share a Christmas memory with her brother Austin and chuckled at a picture of her cute elf costume.
Peggy Lemke, 64, from Dows, Iowa, is one of many voters who see what is going on. “Trump is a reality-show phenomenon,” she says. “His supporters treat this like American Idol. We treat everything like American Idol. I’m having a really hard time taking this seriously.”
Disintermediation is not entirely new. In 1941, the radio personality W. Lee “Pappy” O’Daniel dealt Lyndon B. Johnson the only defeat of his consummate insider’s career. Johnson had the credibility with middlemen, but O’Daniel had a direct connection to his listeners. Nearly 60 years later, the professional wrestler Jesse Ventura used his direct connection with an audience to win a three-way race for governor of Minnesota. But technology now gives the power of direct relationships to everyone, not just media stars; indeed, the line between being a media star and simply having a big Twitter following is blurring into nothingness. It’s telling that Trump’s rallies often feature appearances by a pair of women who go by the names Diamond and Silk, whose spirited endorsement of Trump on YouTube has been watched by nearly 100,000 people–as many as tune in to some cable news shows.
Trump tends his virtual community with care. Among the candidates, his 5.6 million Twitter followers are matched only by his counterpart at the top of the Democratic polls, Hillary Clinton. Trump has 5.2 million Facebook likes—three times as many as Cruz and 17 times as many as Bush. His 828,000 Instagram followers is nearly a third more than Clinton’s 632,000. For many, if not all, of these individuals, their networked relationships with Trump feel closer and more genuine than the images of the candidate they see filtered through middlemen.
This can explain why Trump is unscathed by apparent gaffes and blunders that would kill an ordinary candidate. His followers feel that they already know him. When outraged middlemen wail in disgust on cable news programs and in op-ed columns, they only highlight their irrelevance to the Trumpiverse.
Indeed, the psychology of disintermediation adds another layer of protection to a figure like Trump. For members of an online network, the death of the middlemen is not some sad side effect of this tidal shift; it is a crusade. Early adopters of Netflix relished the fate of brick-and-mortar video stores, just as Trump voters rejoice in the idea of life without the “lamestream” media. Trump gets this: mocking abuse of his traveling press corps is a staple of his campaign speeches.
The fading power of middlemen is also visible in less garish manifestations than the Trump campaign. For example, voters used to judge candidates in part on their record of government service. Experience was a middleman, a sort of ticket puncher, that stood between the would-be President and the public. Not anymore. A stable of successful GOP governors–Rick Perry of Texas, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Scott Walker of Wisconsin–have dropped out, unable to understand the new calculus. As for the three current Senators on the trail–Cruz, Florida’s Marco Rubio and Kentucky’s Rand Paul–experience is the least of their selling points. All are first-term rookies known for defying party leaders, not for passing legislation. Rubio won office by challenging his party’s official choice for the seat. Cruz glories in his reputation as the least popular Senator in the cloakroom: he doesn’t need Washington’s validation. In fact, it’s the last thing he wants.
The three Senators–and their colleague Sanders in the other party–have used the Senate as a foil. What they accomplished as Senators, which is next to nothing, pales in their telling compared with what they refused to do. They did not sell out. They did not compromise. They did not break faith with their followers–a virtue that has replaced the ideal of service to a constituency. With disintermediation, the power to set the campaign agenda shifts from the middlemen to the online networks, and those networks, this year, are very angry. Here, again, Trump is far outrunning his rivals in seizing the momentum. Americans are unhappy about an economy that punishes workers, according to opinion polls and conversations with voters. They are tired of politicians who don’t deliver on their promises. Trump’s strongest backers are angry about illegal immigration. Cruz channels anger over Obamacare. Sanders mines anger from the opposite end of the spectrum, targeting “Wall Street” and “billionaires” to the seething satisfaction of the Democratic base.
These voters don’t want someone to feel their pain; they want someone to mirror their mood. Woe to the candidate who can’t growl on cue. Perhaps nothing has hurt the Bush campaign–whose money and endorsements, lavished by middlemen, have fizzled on the launchpad–more than Trump’s observation that the former Florida governor is “low energy.” Translation: he’s not ticked off. Voter anger in this sour season is less a data point than table stakes.
At a late-December rally in Council Bluffs, Trump treated his audience to one of his trademark free-form speeches, which are like nothing in the modern campaign repertoire. He sampled alter egos from talk-radio host to insult comic to the fictional Gordon Gekko. (“I’m greedy,” Trump bragged. “Now I’m going to be greedy for the United States.”) When he wrapped up, Teresa Raus of nearby Neola, Iowa, waited another 30 minutes for Trump’s autograph. Why? “I feel real confident that he can make America better. I believe him,” she explained. And yes, she’s angry. Other politicians “are liars,” Raus continued. “They’re all liars. I’m sick of politicians. If he’s not running, then I’m not voting.”
But if Trump voters are angry, that doesn’t mean they’re crazy. You meet more state representatives and business owners at his rallies than tinfoil-hat conspiracy buffs. In ways, they are a vanguard, catching sight of a new style of politics and deciding early to throw out the old rules. Their radical democracy helps account for Trump’s uncanny resilience: the less he honors the conventions of politics, the more his supporters like him. They aren’t buying what the political process is selling. They want to buy direct from the source. “It’s like this,” says Casady, the Army vet. “We’re going to go with this guy sink or swim, and we’re not going to change our views. It doesn’t matter. It’s time for us to do a totally insane thing, because we’ve lost it all. The times demand it, because nothing else is working.”
Some powerful forces inside the GOP will continue to fight Trump to the bitter end. As strong and durable as his support appears to be, the number of Americans who tell pollsters they would not vote for Trump is bigger. Trump’s intemperate remarks have alienated millions of Latino, Muslim and women voters. His rash pronouncements are the antithesis of the moderate approach that many citizens still value. His proposed religious test for foreigners who want to come to this country is as inconsistent with America’s self-image as linoleum floors in a Trump hotel.
The problem is that the party is weak at the national level, deeply divided into hostile camps, while Trump has the strength of a technological epoch at his back. Finding a way to live with Trump might not be a choice for the GOP; those might be the terms of surrender that he dictates at the national convention in Cleveland in July. And in private, even top party officials occasionally admit it.
Unless Cruz can continue to rise through the primaries—aided by members of the congressional Freedom Caucus who share his maximal conservatism—or a candidate like Rubio manages to push aside all mainstream rivals to consolidate the anti-Trump vote, the pot-stirring plutocrat may well steamroll through winter into spring with the lion’s share of the delegates. They won’t stop Trump because they can’t stop Trump.
In that case, party insiders may be forced to decide whether to pull every trick in the rule book to keep Trump from the nomination, with all the havoc that would ensue–including a very real chance that the party could split in two. Faced with that prospect, they may decide instead to swallow hard and follow Trump’s glowing blond nimbus into battle this fall. “The pundits don’t understand it,” Marco Rubio told an audience at a recent campaign stop in New Hampshire. “They don’t understand why in this election, why aren’t the things that worked in the past working again? Why is it that the people with the most money, or the most endorsements, or the one that all the experts thought would be in first place–why aren’t they winning?”
Donald Trump will be happy to tell them.
http://www.donaldjtrump.com/media/donald-trumps-art-of-the-steal
DONALD TRUMP’S ART OF THE STEAL
Time
There is a reason most presidential candidates stump through diners and living rooms this time of year. They can’t fill a bigger room.
And then there is Donald J. Trump.
On the second day of January, in the Gulf Coast town of Biloxi, Miss., at least 13,000 stood for hours in a stinging chill to pack an entire sports arena for Trump, and when that venue was full, the overflow spilled into a second megaspace nearby. Trump called it the biggest crowd in Mississippi political history, which is exactly what you’d expect him to say, and also entirely plausible.
A few days earlier, Trump had packed a convention hall in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Two days later, he filled the 8,000-seat Paul Tsongas Center in Lowell, Mass., with people who waited on line in subfreezing cold. The next night, after standing for two hours in single-digit temperatures, locals filled the equivalent of two high school gymnasia on the Vermont–New Hampshire border to catch Trump’s revival show.
Given these crowds, the unprecedented Trump-driven television ratings for GOP debates and his unsinkable run at the top of the national polls–a streak of more than five months and counting–even the most mainstream Republicans are coming to grips with an idea they have resisted since last summer. This could be their nominee. And they are asking themselves, could they stop worrying and, perhaps, learn to love the Donald?
Leading Republicans unhappily find themselves deep in “probing” conversation, asking, “perhaps he wouldn’t be so bad,” says veteran strategist and lobbyist Ed Rogers. True, Trump is a wild card, a flamethrower, a man with no known party loyalties and no coherent political principles, a thrice-married casino mogul and reality-TV star, a narcissist and even a demagogue. On the other hand: Biloxi.
At a time when the crown princes of Republican politics can’t mount so much as a two-car parade, Trump is drawing the biggest crowds by far. He has the largest social-media footprint–again, by far–and lodges the sharpest attacks on Hillary Clinton while attracting the greatest number of potential recruits to Republican ranks. As a result, Washington insiders from both parties are now calling around to GOP heavies, asking, “Do you know anybody on Trump’s campaign? Who is on his foreign-policy team? I need to get to know them fast.” Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus, who entertained a discussion of Stop Trump strategies at a meeting late last year, now consults regularly with the front runner by phone. Even if the GOP could resist, should it? “He’s got the mo, he’s got the masses,” says Rick Hohlt, a GOP strategist. “He’s attracting a new class of voters.” Efforts to stop him have failed miserably; meanwhile, Trump may be getting smarter as a candidate, adds Hohlt. “He knows when to push and when to back off.”
The man is moving people, and politics does not get more basic than that. Trump is a bonfire in a field of damp kindling—an overcrowded field of governors and former governors and junior Senators still trying to strike a spark. His nearest rival, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, has traction in Iowa among the evangelical bloc and—in contrast to Trump—is a tried-and-true conservative. But with little more than half the support Trump boasts in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls, Cruz has a long way to go to show that he can move masses.
Cruz staffers, tellingly, have been studying a 1967 tome titled Suite 3505 as a playbook for their campaign. This F. Clifton White memoir, long out of print, tells the story of the 1964 Barry Goldwater campaign. That was the last successful populist rebellion inside the Republican Party, propelling a rock-ribbed conservative past the Establishment insiders–just as Cruz hopes to do. But this triumph of intramural knife fighting proved a disaster at general-election time. Goldwater suffered one of the worst defeats in American political history. It’s no wonder that GOP leaders are every bit as wary of Cruz as they are of Trump.
In short, the GOP has awakened less than a month from the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary to find itself in bed between a bombshell and a kamikaze. It’s a sobering dawn for a political party that seemed, not long ago, just a tweak or two away from glory. Republicans dominate America’s state legislatures and governors’ mansions. They control both houses of Congress. So why is their electorate leaning toward the outstretched grip of such a man as Trump?
And could Trump be a sign of something bigger even than himself?
Traditional GOP power brokers have long since lost count of the indignities Trump has inflicted on their rites and rituals. Since entering the race in June with a fantastical promise to wall off America’s southern border and send the bill to Mexico, Trump has shredded the political rule book, scattering the pieces from his private helicopter. Have mouth, will travel. Policies that would be preposterous coming from anyone else–like barring all Muslims from entering the country or hiking U.S. tariffs while somehow erasing trade barriers erected by other nations–sound magical to his supporters when served up by their hero. Outrages that would sink an ordinary candidate, like mocking a person who has a congenital disease or giving a pass to Vladimir Putin for the murder of Russian journalists, lifted Trump atop the polls and then helped keep him there. What Flubber was to physics, Trump is to politics: an antidote to gravity, cooked up by a quirky but prodigious amateur.
Other candidates work to relate their lives to the struggles of ordinary voters. Trump does the opposite, encouraging Americans to savor vicariously his billionaire’s privilege of saying whatever he damn well pleases. “I love Donald Trump because he’s so totally politically incorrect. He’s gone after every group,” says Greg Casady, 61, an Army veteran who joined an immense Trump rally in Council Bluffs, Iowa. “He’s spending his own bucks–therefore he doesn’t have to play the politically correct game. He says what we wish we could say but we can’t afford to anymore.”
Trump is an anomaly, but not the only one in this 2016 campaign. There is Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an avowed socialist who leads the early polls in the New Hampshire Democratic primary–despite the fact that he spent most of his career spurning the Democrats. Though not as shocking or aggressive as Trump, Sanders is no less the darling of a discontented army. He too draws large audiences–but unlike Trump, Sanders faces an even stronger opponent in former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Big Money, the supposed superpower of post–Citizens United politics, is a dud so far. Super-PAC bets by various billionaires have done nothing to fire up such candidates as former Florida governor Jeb Bush. Bush has filled screens in key states with millions of dollars in both positive and negative ads. The result: falling poll numbers. Touted as a front runner a year ago, Bush is mired in single digits and rang in the new year by announcing that he was scrapping a round of ads in favor of more ground troops in early-voting states.
Big Media too has been brought low. The collapse of Trump was predicted so often, so erroneously, in so many outlets that the spectacle was almost comic, like a soap opera that keeps killing off the same deathless character. Televised debates became seminars in media ethics, with candidates delivering stern lectures to their questioners, while offscreen, campaigns threatened to boycott networks and blacklist reporters.
What if all of these groundswells are part of the same tsunami? By coming to grips with Trump, Republicans might begin grasping the future of presidential politics, as the digital forces that have upended commerce and communications in recent years begin to shake the bedrock of civic life.
Disintermediation is a long word for a seemingly simple idea: dumping the middleman. It came into use a half-century ago to describe changes in the banking business. A generation later, the term described a key concept of the Internet age. In one field after another, the power of networked computing swept middlemen out of the picture. Ubiquitous retailers like RadioShack and Waldenbooks have either downsized or vanished as their customers go online to buy directly from manufacturers and warehousers. Netflix shutters the Blockbuster chain by mailing movies directly to viewers–then offers streaming, which cuts out the mailbox as well. Craigslist drains the advertising lifeblood from local newspapers, and local libraries reinvent themselves after the web puts the world in your pocket. It’s a familiar story, one of the megatrends of our era.
Donald Trump is history’s most disintermediated presidential front runner. He has sidestepped the traditional middlemen–party, press, pollsters and pooh-bahs–to sell his candidacy directly to voters, building on a relationship he has nurtured with the public from project to project across decades.
As far back as 1986, Trump began seeding this direct relationship with the public. That was the year he goaded New York City Mayor Ed Koch into handing over the disastrous renovation of the Wollman ice-skating rink in Central Park. The decline of New York was an old story by then, and the ice rink was a sorrow symbol. City bureaucrats had turned a routine rehab into a six-year slog with no end in sight. Trump took the reins, and the project took less than six months. He cut the ribbon on a beautifully finished rink, completed ahead of schedule and below budget, with live TV there to cover it.
He followed up with more self-styled rescue missions: the East Coast shuttle operations of dying Eastern Airlines, for example, and the ruined paradise of Atlantic City. Launched with fanfare (if often abandoned in silence), these efforts burnished Trump’s image as a can-do, cut-the-crap businessman–even as he risked his fortune. This is part of the power of owning your image, free of the mediators. You can tell your own story, even if it is not entirely true. Trump’s a fine businessman, with a keen eye for bargains and a knack for leverage. Where he is peerless is as a promoter; he is the Michelangelo of ballyhoo.
A masterstroke in 2004 vaulted him free of remaining middlemen; that’s when Trump debuted his television show, The Apprentice. Tens of millions of Americans followed the cameras past the gatekeepers and into a direct relationship with the purse-lipped entrepreneur. That this intimacy is an illusion doesn’t really matter; it has an undeniable power to create loyal followings for even the unlikeliest characters. From the Kardashians of Rodeo Drive to the Robertsons of Duck Dynasty, from the Cake Boss to Honey Boo Boo, the crafted characters of reality TV experience a different kind of stardom from the TV and movie idols of the past. Fans are encouraged to feel that they know these people, not as fictional characters but as flesh and blood.
Something similar goes on in every celebrity Twitter feed or Instagram account. Properly tended, the social network of skilled disintermediators can grow to encompass tens of millions of people, all sharing a joke or commiserating over a disappointment or comparing breakfasts with their famous “friend.” The pop star Taylor Swift’s nearly 70 million Twitter followers recently overheard her share a Christmas memory with her brother Austin and chuckled at a picture of her cute elf costume.
Peggy Lemke, 64, from Dows, Iowa, is one of many voters who see what is going on. “Trump is a reality-show phenomenon,” she says. “His supporters treat this like American Idol. We treat everything like American Idol. I’m having a really hard time taking this seriously.”
Disintermediation is not entirely new. In 1941, the radio personality W. Lee “Pappy” O’Daniel dealt Lyndon B. Johnson the only defeat of his consummate insider’s career. Johnson had the credibility with middlemen, but O’Daniel had a direct connection to his listeners. Nearly 60 years later, the professional wrestler Jesse Ventura used his direct connection with an audience to win a three-way race for governor of Minnesota. But technology now gives the power of direct relationships to everyone, not just media stars; indeed, the line between being a media star and simply having a big Twitter following is blurring into nothingness. It’s telling that Trump’s rallies often feature appearances by a pair of women who go by the names Diamond and Silk, whose spirited endorsement of Trump on YouTube has been watched by nearly 100,000 people–as many as tune in to some cable news shows.
Trump tends his virtual community with care. Among the candidates, his 5.6 million Twitter followers are matched only by his counterpart at the top of the Democratic polls, Hillary Clinton. Trump has 5.2 million Facebook likes—three times as many as Cruz and 17 times as many as Bush. His 828,000 Instagram followers is nearly a third more than Clinton’s 632,000. For many, if not all, of these individuals, their networked relationships with Trump feel closer and more genuine than the images of the candidate they see filtered through middlemen.
This can explain why Trump is unscathed by apparent gaffes and blunders that would kill an ordinary candidate. His followers feel that they already know him. When outraged middlemen wail in disgust on cable news programs and in op-ed columns, they only highlight their irrelevance to the Trumpiverse.
Indeed, the psychology of disintermediation adds another layer of protection to a figure like Trump. For members of an online network, the death of the middlemen is not some sad side effect of this tidal shift; it is a crusade. Early adopters of Netflix relished the fate of brick-and-mortar video stores, just as Trump voters rejoice in the idea of life without the “lamestream” media. Trump gets this: mocking abuse of his traveling press corps is a staple of his campaign speeches.
The fading power of middlemen is also visible in less garish manifestations than the Trump campaign. For example, voters used to judge candidates in part on their record of government service. Experience was a middleman, a sort of ticket puncher, that stood between the would-be President and the public. Not anymore. A stable of successful GOP governors–Rick Perry of Texas, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Scott Walker of Wisconsin–have dropped out, unable to understand the new calculus. As for the three current Senators on the trail–Cruz, Florida’s Marco Rubio and Kentucky’s Rand Paul–experience is the least of their selling points. All are first-term rookies known for defying party leaders, not for passing legislation. Rubio won office by challenging his party’s official choice for the seat. Cruz glories in his reputation as the least popular Senator in the cloakroom: he doesn’t need Washington’s validation. In fact, it’s the last thing he wants.
The three Senators–and their colleague Sanders in the other party–have used the Senate as a foil. What they accomplished as Senators, which is next to nothing, pales in their telling compared with what they refused to do. They did not sell out. They did not compromise. They did not break faith with their followers–a virtue that has replaced the ideal of service to a constituency. With disintermediation, the power to set the campaign agenda shifts from the middlemen to the online networks, and those networks, this year, are very angry. Here, again, Trump is far outrunning his rivals in seizing the momentum. Americans are unhappy about an economy that punishes workers, according to opinion polls and conversations with voters. They are tired of politicians who don’t deliver on their promises. Trump’s strongest backers are angry about illegal immigration. Cruz channels anger over Obamacare. Sanders mines anger from the opposite end of the spectrum, targeting “Wall Street” and “billionaires” to the seething satisfaction of the Democratic base.
These voters don’t want someone to feel their pain; they want someone to mirror their mood. Woe to the candidate who can’t growl on cue. Perhaps nothing has hurt the Bush campaign–whose money and endorsements, lavished by middlemen, have fizzled on the launchpad–more than Trump’s observation that the former Florida governor is “low energy.” Translation: he’s not ticked off. Voter anger in this sour season is less a data point than table stakes.
At a late-December rally in Council Bluffs, Trump treated his audience to one of his trademark free-form speeches, which are like nothing in the modern campaign repertoire. He sampled alter egos from talk-radio host to insult comic to the fictional Gordon Gekko. (“I’m greedy,” Trump bragged. “Now I’m going to be greedy for the United States.”) When he wrapped up, Teresa Raus of nearby Neola, Iowa, waited another 30 minutes for Trump’s autograph. Why? “I feel real confident that he can make America better. I believe him,” she explained. And yes, she’s angry. Other politicians “are liars,” Raus continued. “They’re all liars. I’m sick of politicians. If he’s not running, then I’m not voting.”
But if Trump voters are angry, that doesn’t mean they’re crazy. You meet more state representatives and business owners at his rallies than tinfoil-hat conspiracy buffs. In ways, they are a vanguard, catching sight of a new style of politics and deciding early to throw out the old rules. Their radical democracy helps account for Trump’s uncanny resilience: the less he honors the conventions of politics, the more his supporters like him. They aren’t buying what the political process is selling. They want to buy direct from the source. “It’s like this,” says Casady, the Army vet. “We’re going to go with this guy sink or swim, and we’re not going to change our views. It doesn’t matter. It’s time for us to do a totally insane thing, because we’ve lost it all. The times demand it, because nothing else is working.”
Some powerful forces inside the GOP will continue to fight Trump to the bitter end. As strong and durable as his support appears to be, the number of Americans who tell pollsters they would not vote for Trump is bigger. Trump’s intemperate remarks have alienated millions of Latino, Muslim and women voters. His rash pronouncements are the antithesis of the moderate approach that many citizens still value. His proposed religious test for foreigners who want to come to this country is as inconsistent with America’s self-image as linoleum floors in a Trump hotel.
The problem is that the party is weak at the national level, deeply divided into hostile camps, while Trump has the strength of a technological epoch at his back. Finding a way to live with Trump might not be a choice for the GOP; those might be the terms of surrender that he dictates at the national convention in Cleveland in July. And in private, even top party officials occasionally admit it.
Unless Cruz can continue to rise through the primaries—aided by members of the congressional Freedom Caucus who share his maximal conservatism—or a candidate like Rubio manages to push aside all mainstream rivals to consolidate the anti-Trump vote, the pot-stirring plutocrat may well steamroll through winter into spring with the lion’s share of the delegates. They won’t stop Trump because they can’t stop Trump.
In that case, party insiders may be forced to decide whether to pull every trick in the rule book to keep Trump from the nomination, with all the havoc that would ensue–including a very real chance that the party could split in two. Faced with that prospect, they may decide instead to swallow hard and follow Trump’s glowing blond nimbus into battle this fall. “The pundits don’t understand it,” Marco Rubio told an audience at a recent campaign stop in New Hampshire. “They don’t understand why in this election, why aren’t the things that worked in the past working again? Why is it that the people with the most money, or the most endorsements, or the one that all the experts thought would be in first place–why aren’t they winning?”
Donald Trump will be happy to tell them.
http://www.donaldjtrump.com/media/donald-trumps-art-of-the-steal
[h=6]JANUARY 12, 2016 -[/h][h=1]DONALD J. TRUMP ANNOUNCES JOSEPH A. TRILLO AS RHODE ISLAND HONORARY CHAIRMAN[/h](New York, NY) January 12th, 2016 – Today Donald J. Trump announced State Representative Joseph A. Trillo will serve as the Honorary Chairman of his campaign in the state of Rhode Island.
Mr. Trump stated, “It is my pleasure to have Joe serve as our Honorary Chairman in the great state of Rhode Island. Securing our border and solving the issue of illegal immigration has become a cornerstone of my campaign and I have great respect for Joe’s passion with regard to solving this problem. With the help of Joe and so many other supporters in Rhode Island, we will Make America Great Again.”
State Representative Joseph A. Trillo currently serves as the Minority Whip in the Rhode Island General Assembly, is host of the statewide cable TV show “Trillo Talks” and is a life-long businessman and real estate investor. He has been an outspoken opponent of illegal immigration, having traveled to the Mexican border to see first-hand how serious the problem really is. Trillo has introduced e-verify legislation and supported the prohibition of illegal immigrants obtaining drivers licenses. Trillo previously served as Republican National Committeeman for the state.
Trillo added, “As a long-time admirer of Mr. Trump’s business acumen, it is a great honor to now serve as his Honorary Campaign Chairman for Rhode Island, where his vision and messageare clearly resonating. I look forward to helping take that message to even more voters so we can Make America Great Again.”
Mr. Trump continues to be the definitive front-runner in all national polls. Yesterday day he campaigned in Windham, New Hampshire before traveling to Iowa, Florida, and South Carolina for multiple visits throughout the week.
Mr. Trump stated, “It is my pleasure to have Joe serve as our Honorary Chairman in the great state of Rhode Island. Securing our border and solving the issue of illegal immigration has become a cornerstone of my campaign and I have great respect for Joe’s passion with regard to solving this problem. With the help of Joe and so many other supporters in Rhode Island, we will Make America Great Again.”
State Representative Joseph A. Trillo currently serves as the Minority Whip in the Rhode Island General Assembly, is host of the statewide cable TV show “Trillo Talks” and is a life-long businessman and real estate investor. He has been an outspoken opponent of illegal immigration, having traveled to the Mexican border to see first-hand how serious the problem really is. Trillo has introduced e-verify legislation and supported the prohibition of illegal immigrants obtaining drivers licenses. Trillo previously served as Republican National Committeeman for the state.
Trillo added, “As a long-time admirer of Mr. Trump’s business acumen, it is a great honor to now serve as his Honorary Campaign Chairman for Rhode Island, where his vision and messageare clearly resonating. I look forward to helping take that message to even more voters so we can Make America Great Again.”
Mr. Trump continues to be the definitive front-runner in all national polls. Yesterday day he campaigned in Windham, New Hampshire before traveling to Iowa, Florida, and South Carolina for multiple visits throughout the week.
