A small but not insignificant slice of the Sanders crowd who would consider backing Trump.
This week the Guardian sought out Sanders fans who are contemplating switching their allegiance to Trump if Hillary Clinton secures the Democratic nomination.
Almost 700 people replied to the call-out, and some 500 of them said they were thinking the unthinkable: a Sanders-Trump switch.
----------------
“If Trump were the Republican nominee he would get the highest percentage of black votes since Ronald Reagan in 1980,” said Republican messaging guru Frank Luntz, referring to the year Reagan won 14 percent of that bloc of voters. “They listen to him. They find him fascinating, and in all the groups I have done, I have found Obama voters, they could’ve voted for Obama twice, but if they’re African-American they would consider Trump.”
.
About Freakin Time. Hopefully, if it works, Lyin Ted will be smart enough to back Kasich at an open convention as the only R that can win.
Ted Cruz, John Kasich join forces to stop Donald Trump
By Dan Berman, Phil Mattingly and David Mark, CNN
Updated 12:36 AM ET, Mon April 25, 2016ED
(CNN)Ted Cruz and John Kasich are joining forces in a last-ditch effort to deny Donald Trump the Republican presidential nomination.
Within minutes of each other, the pair issued statements late Sunday saying they will divide their efforts in upcoming contests with Cruz focusing on Indiana and Kasich devoting his efforts to Oregon and New Mexico. The strategy -- something the two campaigns have been working on for weeks -- is aimed at blocking Trump from gaining the 1,237 delegates necessary to claim to GOP nomination this summer.
The extraordinary moves reflect the national strength Trump has shown and the inability of Republicans who oppose the New York billionaire to come together to stop him. Dividing up some of the remaining primary states by putting forward one strong alternative to Trump in each could be enough to take away delegates and curb Trump's run to the nomination.
Trump is the only candidate who can realistically get a first-ballot victory -- there's no mathematical path for Cruz or Kasich to clinch the nomination heading into the convention. The billionaire is poised for a strong performance Tuesday, when Republicans in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Connecticut and Rhode Island head to the polls.
CNN delegate estimate
Cruz campaign manager Jeff Roe said in a statement the Texas senator will focus on the May 3 Indiana primary. He called Trump at top of the GOP ticket "a sure disaster."
He added: "To ensure that we nominate a Republican who can unify the Republican Party and win in November, our campaign will focus its time and resources in Indiana and in turn clear the path for Gov. Kasich to compete in Oregon and New Mexico."
Kasich's chief strategist, John Weaver, said in a separate statement: "Due to the fact that the Indiana primary is winner-take-all statewide and by congressional district, keeping Trump from winning a plurality in Indiana is critical to keeping him under 1,237 bound delegates before Cleveland. We are very comfortable with our delegate position in Indiana already, and given the current dynamics of the primary there, we will shift our campaign's resources West and give the Cruz campaign a clear path in Indiana."
Trump blasted the arrangement on Twitter.
"Wow, just announced that Lyin' Ted and Kasich are going to collude in order to keep me from getting the Republican nomination. DESPERATION!" Trump wrote Sunday night.
Trump social media director Dan Scavino also blasted the deal on Twitter. "Two losing politicians-mathematically eliminated from receiving the nomination-trying something NEW! They will FAIL!" he tweeted.
Talks started after Ohio
Kasich's camp has been working for weeks to get Cruz on board with a divide-and-conquer strategy against Trump.
Initial overtures started about a week after Kasich won the Ohio primary but were initially met with silence, according to a senior Kasich official. But talks -- primarily between Weaver and Roe -- started in earnest during the following weeks, as both campaigns saw a need to work something out, even before Trump's big win in the New York primary, the source said.
Sunday's move is what many in the GOP have urged on for a while -- a combined "Never Trump" strategy. Both campaigns have each sought to be the one that denies Trump a first-ballot win at the Republican convention. Each has offered their own rationales for why GOP delegates would then turn to them as the party standard-bearer.
Republican Party braces ahead of critical 'Acela primary'
But these strategies by Kasich and Cruz have fallen short as Trump has proved a nearly unstoppable force in the Republican primary season. Kasich has won only his home state of Ohio, more than a month ago, and is far back in the delegate chase.
Cruz has remained a steady second behind Trump, but his victories have been sporadic. His initial strategy to sweep the South with heavy support for evangelical voters fell flat. Cruz has in recent contests focused more on the delegate game, picking off support in individual congressional districts even as he lost statewide in several places.
Campaigns in trouble
The two statements were the only public comments Sunday night from the campaigns, and notably only refer to three states -- Indiana, New Mexico and Oregon. California, with its treasure trove of delegates, Nebraska and West Virginia are among the states not included.
Weaver, in a tweet, indicated the campaign still plans to compete in other states besides Oregon and New Mexico, but declined to elaborate beyond the statement.
For Kasich, this arrangement also makes financial sense. The campaign finished March with only $1.2 million in the bank, and limiting its focus to two states in cooperation with Cruz is good cover to essentially shrink its footprint to a more manageable level. The cash Kasich expected after his Ohio victory never came. A big California donor presentation swing in California a few weeks ago was received positively, according to a senior official, but with limited big bundling commitments.
As Trump continues to lead, and especially following his romp in New York last week and expected victories in northeastern states this week, tensions have been mounting, especially for Cruz. According to CNN estimates, Cruz would have to win every available delegate to reach 1,237 on the first ballot, a virtual impossibility.
Cruz has consistently called for Kasich to move aside, touting the fact that only he and Trump have won multiple states and have a way to secure the delegates needed.
Trump campaign holds organizing call with Pennsylvania delegate candidates
The pro-Cruz Trusted Leadership PAC has continued to hit Kasich. Friday, it announced it was planning to spend $1.6 million against Kasich in Indiana. The advertisement airing in Indiana features President Barack Obama praising the Ohio governor for expanding Medicaid, which is anathema to the GOP's conservative base. A version of the ad also aired before the New York primary.
"The primary has done the job it's supposed to do, it has narrowed the field. As we stand here today, there are two people with any plausible path whatsoever to the nomination, me and Donald Trump," Cruz said Sunday in Terre Haute, Indiana.
An audience member then shouted out, "John Kasich."
Cruz's response: "As I said, plausible path."
Ted Cruz, John Kasich join forces to stop Donald Trump
By Dan Berman, Phil Mattingly and David Mark, CNN
Updated 12:36 AM ET, Mon April 25, 2016ED
Cruz and Kasich join forces against Do
- Cruz to focus on Indiana while Kasich will devote his efforts to Oregon and New Mexico
- Strategy is aimed at blocking Trump from gaining the 1,237 delegates necessary to claim to GOP nomination
(CNN)Ted Cruz and John Kasich are joining forces in a last-ditch effort to deny Donald Trump the Republican presidential nomination.
Within minutes of each other, the pair issued statements late Sunday saying they will divide their efforts in upcoming contests with Cruz focusing on Indiana and Kasich devoting his efforts to Oregon and New Mexico. The strategy -- something the two campaigns have been working on for weeks -- is aimed at blocking Trump from gaining the 1,237 delegates necessary to claim to GOP nomination this summer.
The extraordinary moves reflect the national strength Trump has shown and the inability of Republicans who oppose the New York billionaire to come together to stop him. Dividing up some of the remaining primary states by putting forward one strong alternative to Trump in each could be enough to take away delegates and curb Trump's run to the nomination.
Trump is the only candidate who can realistically get a first-ballot victory -- there's no mathematical path for Cruz or Kasich to clinch the nomination heading into the convention. The billionaire is poised for a strong performance Tuesday, when Republicans in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Connecticut and Rhode Island head to the polls.
CNN delegate estimate
Cruz campaign manager Jeff Roe said in a statement the Texas senator will focus on the May 3 Indiana primary. He called Trump at top of the GOP ticket "a sure disaster."
He added: "To ensure that we nominate a Republican who can unify the Republican Party and win in November, our campaign will focus its time and resources in Indiana and in turn clear the path for Gov. Kasich to compete in Oregon and New Mexico."
Kasich's chief strategist, John Weaver, said in a separate statement: "Due to the fact that the Indiana primary is winner-take-all statewide and by congressional district, keeping Trump from winning a plurality in Indiana is critical to keeping him under 1,237 bound delegates before Cleveland. We are very comfortable with our delegate position in Indiana already, and given the current dynamics of the primary there, we will shift our campaign's resources West and give the Cruz campaign a clear path in Indiana."
Trump blasted the arrangement on Twitter.
"Wow, just announced that Lyin' Ted and Kasich are going to collude in order to keep me from getting the Republican nomination. DESPERATION!" Trump wrote Sunday night.
Trump social media director Dan Scavino also blasted the deal on Twitter. "Two losing politicians-mathematically eliminated from receiving the nomination-trying something NEW! They will FAIL!" he tweeted.
Talks started after Ohio
Kasich's camp has been working for weeks to get Cruz on board with a divide-and-conquer strategy against Trump.
Initial overtures started about a week after Kasich won the Ohio primary but were initially met with silence, according to a senior Kasich official. But talks -- primarily between Weaver and Roe -- started in earnest during the following weeks, as both campaigns saw a need to work something out, even before Trump's big win in the New York primary, the source said.
Sunday's move is what many in the GOP have urged on for a while -- a combined "Never Trump" strategy. Both campaigns have each sought to be the one that denies Trump a first-ballot win at the Republican convention. Each has offered their own rationales for why GOP delegates would then turn to them as the party standard-bearer.
Republican Party braces ahead of critical 'Acela primary'
But these strategies by Kasich and Cruz have fallen short as Trump has proved a nearly unstoppable force in the Republican primary season. Kasich has won only his home state of Ohio, more than a month ago, and is far back in the delegate chase.
Cruz has remained a steady second behind Trump, but his victories have been sporadic. His initial strategy to sweep the South with heavy support for evangelical voters fell flat. Cruz has in recent contests focused more on the delegate game, picking off support in individual congressional districts even as he lost statewide in several places.
Campaigns in trouble
The two statements were the only public comments Sunday night from the campaigns, and notably only refer to three states -- Indiana, New Mexico and Oregon. California, with its treasure trove of delegates, Nebraska and West Virginia are among the states not included.
Weaver, in a tweet, indicated the campaign still plans to compete in other states besides Oregon and New Mexico, but declined to elaborate beyond the statement.
For Kasich, this arrangement also makes financial sense. The campaign finished March with only $1.2 million in the bank, and limiting its focus to two states in cooperation with Cruz is good cover to essentially shrink its footprint to a more manageable level. The cash Kasich expected after his Ohio victory never came. A big California donor presentation swing in California a few weeks ago was received positively, according to a senior official, but with limited big bundling commitments.
As Trump continues to lead, and especially following his romp in New York last week and expected victories in northeastern states this week, tensions have been mounting, especially for Cruz. According to CNN estimates, Cruz would have to win every available delegate to reach 1,237 on the first ballot, a virtual impossibility.
Cruz has consistently called for Kasich to move aside, touting the fact that only he and Trump have won multiple states and have a way to secure the delegates needed.
Trump campaign holds organizing call with Pennsylvania delegate candidates
The pro-Cruz Trusted Leadership PAC has continued to hit Kasich. Friday, it announced it was planning to spend $1.6 million against Kasich in Indiana. The advertisement airing in Indiana features President Barack Obama praising the Ohio governor for expanding Medicaid, which is anathema to the GOP's conservative base. A version of the ad also aired before the New York primary.
"The primary has done the job it's supposed to do, it has narrowed the field. As we stand here today, there are two people with any plausible path whatsoever to the nomination, me and Donald Trump," Cruz said Sunday in Terre Haute, Indiana.
An audience member then shouted out, "John Kasich."
Cruz's response: "As I said, plausible path."
Ted Cruz and John Kasich team up in deal to stop Trump
The Ohio governor will give the Texan senator a free run in Indiana in exchange for the same favor in Oregon and New Mexico
Ben Jacobs
Ben Jacobs is a political reporter for Guardian US based in Washington DC. He was previously a reporter for the Daily Beast. Follow him on Twitter @bencjacobs
Ted Cruz and John Kasich have announced that their campaigns will cede certain states in an attempt to keep Donald Trump from reaching the 1,237 delegates he needs to clinch the Republican nomination.
In a pair of coordinated statements released on Sunday night, the Cruz and Kasich campaigns said that the Texan senator would concentrate his resources in Indiana while the Ohio governor would put all his effort into Oregon and New Mexico.
Both have already stated that they expect there to be a contested convention in Cleveland in July and are already preparing for a second ballot.
However, for that scenario to come to pass, they first need to stop Trump. This apparent agreement seems to be an admission that only way to do so is for his opponents to finally cooperate against him. Under current rules, delegates are only bound by the results of their state’s primary or caucus for the first ballot. On any subsequent ballot, delegates are free to vote their conscience and, since delegate selection is often an entirely separate process from a primary, there is likely to be a significant shift in votes on a second ballot.
Jeff Roe, Cruz’s campaign manager, went first. He said “our campaign will focus its time and resources in Indiana and in turn clear the path for Kasich to compete in Oregon and New Mexico, and we would hope that allies of both campaigns would follow our lead”.
Cruz has already shifted resources to focus entirely on Indiana, whose 30 winner-take-all statewide delegates represent the biggest individual haul remaining. The state, which holds its primary on 3 May, also allocates three delegates to the winner of each of its nine congressional districts. Polls in the Hoosier State had Trump with a narrow lead ahead of Cruz with Kasich lagging behind. One campaign source indicated that internal polls showed Kasich was dividing the anti-Trump vote in Indiana and serving as a major hindrance to Cruz’s prospects.
The Cruz statement was followed minutes later by a statement from Kasich strategist John Weaver. The veteran operative said “due to the fact that the Indiana primary is winner-take-all statewide and by congressional district, keeping Trump from winning a plurality in Indiana is critical to keeping him under 1,237 bound delegates before Cleveland. We are very comfortable with our delegate position in Indiana already, and given the current dynamics of the primary there, we will shift our campaign’s resources west and give the Cruz campaign a clear path in Indiana”.
Weaver added that “in turn, we will focus our time and resources in New Mexico and Oregon, both areas that are structurally similar to the north-east politically, where Governor Kasich is performing well. We would expect independent third-party groups to do the same and honor the commitments made by the Cruz and Kasich campaigns”.
Although the Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment, the candidate responded in a late night tweet: “Wow, just announced that Lyin’ Ted and Kasich are going to collude in order to keep me from getting the Republican nomination. DESPERATION!”
The statement come just days after Cruz suggested in Florida that Kasich was only staying in the presidential race because “it may be John is auditioning to be Donald’s vice president”. The Texas senator also said earlier on Sunday that the Ohio governor did not have “a plausible path” to the nomination.
Tim Miller, a spokesman for Our Principles PAC, an anti-Trump superPAC said he found the apparent alliance “encouraging.”, when asked for comment via e-mail. He added “See you in Cleveland.”
Oregon, which holds its primary on 17 May, and New Mexico, which votes on 7 June, each have relatively proportional primaries. Oregon allocates its 28 delegates in purely proportional manner while New Mexico has a threshold that requires a candidate to get 15% of the vote.
Both campaigns made it clear that they would compete against each other in all of the remaining primary contests.
Cruz’s campaign chief said: “In other states holding their elections for the remainder of the primary season, our campaign will continue to compete vigorously to win.”
The deal comes more than a month after Kasich squelched an overture from Marco Rubio to engage in strategic voting in their home-state primaries on 15 March. While a Rubio spokesman urged supporters of the Florida senator to vote for Kasich in the Ohio, the Kasich campaign declined to return the favor in Florida.
The deal between the two campaigns came 36 hours before the opening of polls in the so-called Acela Primary, comprising five states in the northeast and mid-Atlantic. Trump is expected to dominate in these states and both Cruz and Kasich are likely to be shut out in the bound-delegate chase in at least three of the states holding contests on Tuesday. However, because 54 of the 71 delegates elected in Pennsylvania will be unbound and free to vote for any candidate, Trump’s rivals could still gain there.
Don’t Be So Sure Hillary Clinton Will Crush Donald Trump
What if an ideologically fluid celebrity candidate has changed the rules of the game?
BY ELSPETH REEVE
March 16, 2016
Every presidential election is just like all the other ones until it’s not. The many people who predicted Donald Trump would flame out in the Republican primary aren’t idiots; mostly their predictions were based on past primaries. Many people are now predicting Trump will be destroyed in the general election. This is based on reams of voter surveys and demographic data from past elections. But what if everyone is repeating the same mistake?
In August, Nate Silver predicted Donald Trump was doomed to be a blip, just like Herman Cain and Michelle Bachmann in 2012, or perhaps Mike Huckabee in 2008. Almost exactly four years earlier, Republicans were passing around a slideshow noting that no president had been reelected when the consumer confidence index was below 75, and it was at 55.7. (It rose to a mere 72.2 a few days before President Barack Obama was reelected.) Until Obama, no Democrat from outside the South had been elected president since 1960. There arecountless examples of rock-solid election laws that suddenly crumbled.
Since just after the 2012 election, political punditry has been almost Calvinist in its certainty about 2016: The electorate was predestined to have a particular demographic makeup, and each demographic group would turn out and vote a particular way, and the math added up to Republicans being toast. It wouldn’t matter much whether the GOP candidate was Chris Christie or Scott Walker or Jeb Bush, because voters’ views of the parties were set.
But what if the candidacy of Donald Trump is so weird and new and different that it can actually change all that? Last summer, one of the few people who bet big on Trump winning the GOP nomination and the election was a British Scientologist. Of course a Scientologist would understand the power of celebrity in America—the church has long used movie stars to get people to do something even harder than switch parties: switch religions. John Mappin, who bet almost $10,000 on Trump and could win $100,000 come November, explained, “His rise marks a paradigm shift in media, really ... What I could see was that the pundits in America hadn’t woken up to that.” Mappin continued, “People say, ‘Well, this is ridiculous, he’s a reality TV show star.’ But hang on, he’s an icon. He can use his power as an icon to attract attention. We’ve moved into a new media age, which is the age of icon control. And somebody with a Twitter account has effectively more power, perhaps unjustly, than somebody who perhaps has been sincerely working their whole life doing something really, really good.”
What’s the evidence Democratic voters will be more immune to the power of celebrity than Republican voters? Perhaps the strongest such evidence is the phenomenon ofnegative partisanship—increasingly, people vote against the party they hate instead of for the party they like. Last summer, political scientists at Emory University published a paper showing that while people are more likely to call themselves independent, they are also more likely to vote straight ticket. In a Junepost at Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball, Emory’s Alan I. Abramowitz and Steven Webster explained:“Between 2000 and 2012 the proportion of positive partisans—voters who liked their own party more than they disliked the opposing party—fell from 61 percent to 38 percent while the proportion of negative partisans—voters who disliked the opposing party more than they liked their own party—rose from 20 percent to 42 percent.”
It would only get worse in 2016, Abramowitz and Webster wrote, “given the deep divisions between Democrats and Republicans over issues ranging from immigration and health care to climate change and same-sex marriage.” Further, they added, “We can predict with a high degree of confidence that party loyalty will be very strong in next year’s elections.”
Nine months ago, in other words, hate-voting seemed like a recipe for stability. But what if it’s the opposite? What if a candidate came along and did something crazy, like change some of his party’s positions? There was a curious result in a recent Wall Street Journal poll: Only 8 percent of all voters think Trump “represents the values and positions of the Republican Party.” For Democratic-leaning voters, maybe that’s not more to love, but at least less to hate.
In the weeks before the Massachusetts primary, almost 20,000 Democrats changed their registration to Republican or independent, which a state official called a product of “the Trump effect.” In Pennsylvania, 46,000 Democrats switched to Republicans in 2016. Onlyhalf that number of Republicans have become Democrats (though more independents became Democrats than became Republicans). NBC Miami reports that in early 2016, “Florida saw Republican Party registration increase by 67,065 while Democratic Party registration increased by 34,943 and independent voters decreased 27,721.”
Mark Munroe, chairman of the Republican Party in Mahoning County, Ohio, said last week that he got calls every day from Democrats wanting to vote in the GOP primary. “And nine times out of 10, or 19 out of 20, you get the sense they are doing so because they want to vote for Trump,” Munroe said. Trump, he said, is “getting Democrats to cross over ... but he’s also getting a large number of unaffiliated voters—people who don’t participate in primaries.” (Munroe supports John Kasich.)
According to Pew Research Center, 2016 primary turnout rivals that of 2008. For Republicans, it’s the highest since at least 1980, a projected 17.3 million voters, and more than five million more than projected turnout on the Democratic side. As a column in The Hill recently noted, there’s no historic correlation between high turnout in the primaries and high turnout in the general. But the column also noted that people who pay less attention to the election are likely to sit out the primary and vote in the general. Isn’t it possible those less engaged voters might find Trump’s celebrity appealing? In July 2008, John McCain attacked Obama for being a “celebrity”—then he picked Sarah Palin to be his VP.
Last week, Politico reported that Republican donors expect Trump to lose the general election, and so contributors are “forking over piles of money to contain down-ballot collateral damage from a potential Trump nomination.” On a Politico podcast released Monday,Hillary Clinton pollster Joel Benenson said that if Trump is the Republican nominee, he could potentially expand the swing state map for Democrats, putting places like Arizona in play.
Benenson dismissed the idea that Trump could have a path to the White House through the Rust Belt. “What’s the evidence of it? The evidence of it, they’ve turned out a lot of people,” Benenson said. Romney won Rust Belt primaries too, and then lost them in the general. Trump, he said, “doesn’t have a message that appeals to these folks. It’s not real.”
Primary results thus far suggest that Trump appeals to at least some of the folks Benenson is referring to. His strongest constituency is whites without a college degree. If you look at FiveThirtyEight’s great interactive on what demographic changes would flip states from blue to red, you can see it takes a significant but not unfathomable increase in non-college educated white Republican votes to swing the election.
FiveThirtyEightFor a long time, liberals have been asking what’s the matter with Kansas—why do so many working-class whites vote against their economic self-interest? Obama infamously suggested they were clinging to white identity politics. It now seems crazy it took so long for a guy to come along and combine the two. Donald Trump trashes immigrants but says we shouldn’t let people die in the streets without health care.
A recent Atlantic Media/Pearson Opportunity poll finds that Americans think the biggest obstacles to “achieving your personal goals in life so far” are slow wage growth, few local jobs, and their lack of education. A large majority thinks they could make more money if they had more education, but they can’t afford to invest in it. The “central conundrum” of this poll, The Atlantic’s Ronald Brownstein writes, is that “those who might benefit the most from more education and training often feel least equipped, for cost and other reasons, to obtain it.”
Trump offers them someone to blame for the barriers to their economic success—immigrants, Wall Street, companies that move factories overseas. And even though he’s a billionaire who got his start with the help of his millionaire dad, and who wears different colors of hats to signal his mood to his butler, he talks like them. He makes jokes like them, he’s not polished and prim. He brags about being a winner and makes them feel like winners, too. Trump can give them something to vote for, instead of pointing to the other party as a monster to vote against.
To be sure, Trump has historically high unfavorable ratings for a general election candidate. He could end up turning out high numbers of Democrats who find him disgusting. Clinton has held a lead over Trump in national polling averages for six months. But his “ceiling” of support has slowly inched upward, and he hit 50 percent support among Republicans for the first time in one poll this week. While Clinton admits she’s not a natural politician, Trump delivers his stump speech like a comedian, playing to the mood and rhythm of the crowd. And unlike most Republicans, Trump can attack Clinton for her ties to Wall Street, the source of so much anger across party lines.
Will Donald Trump crush Hillary Clinton in the general election? Probably not. But instead of having the worst chance among all Republicans to beat her, maybe he has the best.
Elspeth Reeve is a senior editor at the New Republic.
@elspethreeve
It's going to be Trump vs. Clinton. Period.
Yes, Donald Could Beat Hillary
Conventional wisdom says he has no chance. But what if he blows up all the old rules?
By WILLIAM MCGURN.
Leave it to Al Sharpton to come up with the most compelling analogy for Mr. Trump: another New York promoter.
“The best way I can describe Donald Trump to friends is to say if Don King had been born white he’d be Donald Trump,” Mr. Sharpton told Politico earlier this year.
Mr. King, of course, was the wild-haired boxing promoter who put on epic fights that included the 1975 “Thrilla in Manila”—the third and final time Joe Frazier andMuhammad Ali met in the ring. Like Mr. Trump, Mr. King was accused of links to organized crime, invoking the Fifth Amendment in a deposition to Senate investigators when asked. Like Mr. Trump too, Mr. King has been sued by a number of his former associates, including Mr. Ali.
Before Barack Obama, Mr. King even supported George W. Bush.
For years Mr. King dominated his industry by combining an outsize personality with a willingness to blow up the rules. It is a similar brashness and defiance of convention that make Mr. Trump such a wild card today, which also suggests why it’s probably premature to write him off for November—assuming he will be the Republican squaring off againstHillary Clinton.
Let’s run through the arguments:
• Mr. Trump has high negatives. Notwithstanding the manifest enthusiasm of Trump voters for their man, they often fail to appreciate that he may turn off more voters than he turns on. Real Clear Politics puts the average of his negatives at 63.2% That would help explain his failure thus far to break 50% in any Republican primary, and it justifies worries about how he’d fare among, say, Latinos and women come November.
But Mrs. Clinton has very high negatives too. Her own RCP average is 53.9%.
Whom would the voters regard as the lesser of two evils? A candidate who is dishonest and untrustworthy at a political moment when distrust of government is ascendant? Or a candidate who is crude and inexperienced at a time when the terrorists we face are organized and sophisticated.
David Plouffe, who managed Barack Obama’s successful 2008 campaign, has been warning Democrats not to take a Clinton victory for granted in the event Mr. Trump is the Republican nominee.
He has also consistently reminded Democrats that the coalition that sent Mr. Obama to the White House—including women, minorities and young voters—is not one Mrs. Clinton can take for granted. She needs to earn their support, he says. Right now theBernie Sanders wins are highlighting some of her soft spots, including with young women.
• Mrs. Clinton will use her knowledge and experience to make Mr. Trump look like an ignorant yahoo. Maybe. But again there are two caveats.
First, presidential matchups do not score like Oxford Union debates, and Mr. Trump plays his own game. For example, when Mrs. Clinton was readying the sexist meme against him, Mr. Trump took it away from her by bringing up the Bill Cosby-style allegations of rape and sexual misconduct against hubby Bill Clinton.
Who’s to say he won’t do the same in the debates? (“Did Goldman Sachs pay you to say that, Hillary?”) No one can know how Mr. Trump would debate Mrs. Clinton—or how voters would react.
Equally to the point, though pundits give great weight to candidate debates, plainly voters do not. In 2004 John Kerry demolished George W. Bush in the first debate, and the next two were generally given to him on points. But he still lost the election.
• Mrs. Clinton is a formidable candidate. The truth is, we don’t know how Mrs. Clinton would fare in a no-holds-barred debate with a tough challenger—because she’s not faced one in this primary. From the way the Democratic superdelegates have been awarded, to the number and timing of debates, the entire primary season has been orchestrated to serve Mrs. Clinton’s interests by a party that is mostly in her pocket.
This is why the last man standing is an angry, white-haired socialist. And yet the former first lady still can’t put him away. What does it say about large dissatisfactions within the Democratic Party that this cranky old guy continues to pull out victories?
In the long stretch between now and Election Day, many events could affect the outcome. More terror attacks à la Brussels or San Bernardino. More setbacks in Iraq or Syria. More belligerence from Vladimir Putin in Ukraine. And of course maybe even a Hillary indictment. Does anyone think any of this will help Mrs. Clinton?
Sure, it’s possible the GOP front-runner will implode, just as it’s possible all those polls showing Mrs. Clinton with a double-digit lead over Mr. Trump will indeed come to pass. But some of us who never thought he would get this far are a little more reluctant to be so categorical about an election that is still seven months away.
Why Trump can beat Clinton
GERALD CAPLAN
Special to The Globe and Mail
Published Wednesday, Mar. 23, 2016 3:04PM EDT
Last updated Wednesday, Mar. 23, 2016 3:04PM EDT
Gerald Caplan is an Africa scholar, a former New Democratic Party national director and a regular panelist on CBC’s Power & Politics.
Hillary Clinton is perhaps the best-qualified candidate for the American presidency since Thomas Jefferson and she will lose to Donald Trump in November. Few candidates have had her experience, knowledge and competence to be president, which is also one of the Achilles heels that will bring her down.
Ms. Clinton has for years been among the bright stars in that political establishment that so many Americans blame for their poor fortunes. It’s these millions of disillusioned Americans who gave us Donald Trump and who almost gave Ms. Clinton Bernie Sanders. Can Ms. Clinton present herself as the person who understands their grievances and who can credibly promise to address them?
In fact, the opposite argument is far more credible. Given her background and her network, it’s far more plausible to expect Ms. Clinton to administer a government dedicated to and run by the same Wall Street barons who ran her husband’s administration and who have since been so lavishly generous to the Clinton family foundation and to Ms. Clinton personally. It will be easy, if rather ironic, for Mr. Trump to argue that Ms. Clinton will be the president of the 1 per cent while he would be the president of the aggrieved workers.
Besides any such line of attack, Mr. Trump in general is Ms. Clinton’s nemesis. Anyone who has watched her in those endless TV debates with Mr. Sanders has seen a brilliant debater, almost impossible to trap on any policy issue, but someone who is programmed right to her teeth. She is always ready for anything – except the unpredictable. Which is Mr. Trump’s middle name.
No one ever knows what grotesque insult he will next pull out of his bag of wonders, which is precisely what will most rattle Ms. Clinton. She can’t prepare for him like she can prepare for a question about Bill Clinton’s philandering or the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, and this will make her vulnerable to Mr. Trump every time they face each other. She will be permanently flustered and prone to making costly gaffes.
And if they’re not directly debating, you can be sure that reporters, many of whom openly dislike her, will happily repeat every new accusation from Mr. Trump.
But for most of Mr. Trump’s craziness there is no reply at all. This will badly shake Ms. Clinton’s confidence and leave her vulnerable to the phenomenon of feral Trumpism, which he will instantly grasp and exploit.
But Mr. Trump will not be alone in trying to undermine Ms. Clinton.
First comes the Republican Party, and, broken as it by its own crackpot ideas and internal stresses, it remains a power in the land. We must never forget that the mediocrities who lost to Barack Obama still won more than 46 per cent of all the votes cast: Mitt Romney, John McCain-Sarah Palin! Despite everything, Mr. Trump is likely to get those same Republican votes, and won’t need many more to win.
Second comes the real power in American political-economic life, a vast extremist right-wing conspiracy pervading every corner of the republic, as described by investigative journalist Jane Mayer in her powerful and deeply chilling new book, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. Featuring the reactionary oil barons Charles and David Koch and their fellow ultraconservative billionaires like Sheldon Adelson, this is a tale of how money hijacks democracy in the United States.
Once the final act of the 2016 presidential campaign begins, their sole target will be Ms. Clinton. Despite her closeness to the 1 per cent, they hate her beyond explanation. Almost a billion dollars in advertising, social media, ground organizing and dirty tricks of every possible kind will be launched at her. She won’t know what hit her.
And here’s the thing about Ms. Clinton: She is deeply vulnerable to such attacks. She has always attracted visceral and often irrational hostility. She is seen as too ambitious (which really means a woman with any ambition), inauthentic, programmed, opportunistic, dedicated only to her own success, forever politicking (which really means she’s a smart politician). Averaging the last 379 polls by 40 pollsters, 53.8 per cent of Americans give her an unfavourable rating, and only 41.5 per cent a favourable verdict. This is deeply humiliating for Ms. Clinton and potentially fatal for her chances.
Indeed, from first to last over her 25 years in politics, with and without Bill, she has offered hostages to fortune, beginning perhaps with her joining Wal-Mart’s board while Bill was governor of Arkansas, where the company is based. Ever since, it has often seemed that Ms. Clinton, sometimes deliberately, has walked a fine line, as if she was looking for trouble, which she always has found. They trail nosily behind her like the tin cans on a wedding vehicle.
The situation was summed up in a recent Politico magazine: “Those younger voters who doubt her trustworthiness likely have no memory, or even casual acquaintance with, a 25-year history that includes cattle-futures trading, law firm billing records, muddled sniper fire recollections and the countless other charges of widely varying credibility aimed at her.”
“Countless other charges” is the key phrase here. These charges have never stopped from the moment she became a public figure, and if young Americans don’t recall them, you can be sure the Koch campaign will hammer them home until Hillary Clinton can stand no more, literally or figuratively.
Of course, this all means that Donald Trump will be president. And if you can’t face that, just remember this: I’m not always right.
The Election Paradox: Trump’s to Lose
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by JOHN MCLAUGHLIN & JIM MCLAUGHLIN March 28, 2016 3:07 PM Regarding the presidential race, although there are many national polls showing pretty much the same numerical results, it’s the analysis that counts. Our analysis of our just-completed national survey shows that there’s only one person who can beat Donald Trump: That’s Donald Trump, and he might be able to do it. This poll of 1,002 likely voters was just completed on March 23, and compared with our February 17 poll, it shows that when looking ahead to November, his poll numbers are actually getting worse. This is in spite of Trump’s decisive primary wins on March 15 and the fact that he should do better among the remaining voters. So the Trump paradox is that while he has become more likely to win the nomination, he is becoming more likely to lose the November election. Unless things change, he might even do worse than Mitt Romney did against an opponent who today is less popular than President Obama was back then. The majority of all voters still remain unfavorable to Hillary Clinton, only 39 percent favorable to 57 percent unfavorable, compared with 59 percent unfavorable last month. Nevertheless, Donald Trump has become even more unpopular, only 33 percent favorable, 65 percent unfavorable.
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On the ballot last month, Clinton and Trump were in a dead heat: Clinton at 46 percent and Trump at 44 percent. Clinton now leads Trump 48 percent to 41 percent.
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Clinton’s base is now stronger as she wins among Democrats 85 percent to 10 percent, while Trump wins among Republicans 76 percent to 11 percent, and he holds a slim lead among independents 42 percent to 39 percent. African Americans go strongly for Clinton, 88 percent to 6 percent. Hispanics prefer Clinton 57 percent to 35 percent. Clinton holds a slim lead among men, at 47 percent to 44 percent, and a wider lead among women, at 49 percent to 38 percent. Compared with his remaining rivals, Donald Trump is sagging toward November when he could be getting stronger. Ted Cruz — who is a long shot for a first-ballot nomination but the only candidate other than Trump who can win the nomination on the first ballot — is a net negative, at 35 percent favorable to 50 percent unfavorable. However, Cruz is still in a dead heat with Hillary: Clinton has 45 percent to Cruz’s 44 percent.
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John Kasich, who mathematically can’t win the nomination on the first ballot, is 35 percent favorable to only 33 percent unfavorable. He leads for president: Kasich 46 percent to Clinton’s 41 percent. Bernie Sanders is much more popular nationally than Hillary Clinton, with 50 percent favorable to 41 percent unfavorable. Unfortunately, the fix is in with the Democratic super delegates already committed to Hillary, and Sanders can’t win the nomination without them. So we didn’t bother asking about any general-election ballots with him in it. Among all voters, a whopping 30 percent remain unfavorable to both Clinton and Trump. And the 12 percent who remain undecided clearly don’t like either likely nominee. Their opinion of Clinton is favorable 8 percent to unfavorable 77 percent. Their opinion of Trump is favorable 6 percent to unfavorable 84 percent.
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As we forecast in February, this race will be the ugliest presidential race in history. In years past, we polled for Senator Jesse Helms. He placed ahead in the polls only one day every six years: Election Day. Helms always had a 40 percent or higher unfavorable rating, and he would take the lead only when his opponent’s negatives rose over 50 percent. We made sure that happened by Election Day. In order to win, it appears that Clinton will need to drive Donald Trump’s negatives above 70 percent, which she and her team are clearly working to do. However, the paradox is that Trump remains on track to win the GOP nomination on a first ballot if he can win 54 percent of the remaining delegates. An explanation for this paradox is that in spite of the fact that Donald Trump has never run for public office before, he has seemed the most qualified candidate to win a primary campaign that resembles a season of Celebrity Apprentice for President more than a political campaign for president. We live in an age of reality television, and for years Trump hosted TV’s top-rated reality show. Just as the telegenic JFK outshone Richard Nixon in their TV debates, as actor Ronald Reagan outperformed Jimmy Carter, as action star Arnold Schwarzenegger exploded in the California recall, Donald Trump has so far mastered every episode during the primary season — until now. On many reality series, the final winner is often someone who is not popular with the fans but gets results. Donald Trump will now have to increase his popularity to get the results that he wants. People want reality, but now it seems that they want content, too. We can see this in the response voters had to a line added to our poll by the nonpartisan, independent group SecureAmericaNow: “Donald Trump recently said his primary foreign policy advisor is ‘myself.’” Knowing this, 58 percent of all voters were less likely to vote for him, including 29 percent of Trump voters. Only 20 percent were more likely. It’s time for Donald Trump to show content.
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For the remaining states, only about a third of the Republicans have yet to vote. So in our poll of 1,002 voters, only 144 voters are in the upcoming states and likely to vote in the Republican primaries. At first glance, these states appear to geographically favor Trump, then Kasich. They include Wisconsin, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Indiana, Montana, West Virginia, Oregon, Washington, New Mexico, South Dakota, New Jersey, and California. Among these voters, Trump leads with 46 percent, but Kasich is in second, at 22 percent, Cruz is third at 18 percent, and 14 percent are undecided. However, at second glance, among the final three, Ted Cruz is the leading second choice, at 40 percent; Kasich is at 21 percent; and Trump is at only 12 percent. Trump must hold what he has and win. He has very little upside unless he starts moving his favorable ratings higher. Among Trump voters, the second choice is Cruz, at 42 percent, and Kasich, at 26 percent. If Trump loses votes, they go almost five to three for Cruz. Among Cruz voters, the second choice is Trump, at 33 percent, and Kasich, at 32 percent. If Cruz loses votes, they split evenly between Trump and Kasich. However, among Kasich voters, the second choice is overwhelmingly Cruz, at 60 percent, to Trump, at 15 percent. If Kasich loses votes, they go four to one for Cruz over Trump. Among the 14 percent who are undecided, again there is not much upside for Trump. The undecideds’ opinion of Trump is only 16 percent favorable to 80 percent unfavorable. A third of the undecided voters like Cruz: favorable 34 percent, unfavorable 24 percent. Kasich is weaker than Cruz among the undecided voters: favorable 22 percent, unfavorable 21 percent. In spite of the Trump paradox, ironically all the other major political trends in our monthly poll favor the Republicans over the Democrats: President Obama remains a polarizing negative overall. On his job rating, 48 percent approve and 50 percent disapprove. In a plus-6 Democratic sample, Republicans lead on the generic ballot for Congress, at 45 percent to 42 percent. Obamacare is decidedly unpopular: Only 42 percent approve, and 54 percent disapprove. Fifty-five percent of voters prefer a smaller federal government with fewer services; only 29 percent want a larger government with many services. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton should take note. Actually, their Republican opponents should really take note and drive the contrast.
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Two-thirds of all voters, 66 percent, say that the country is on the wrong track. Only 26 percent say that it is headed in the right direction. The majority of voters (57 percent) want the next president and Congress to move away from the policies of President Obama. Only 33 percent want them to continue. The Trump paradox is clear. Hillary Clinton wants to run against Donald Trump, because she thinks that, as unpopular as she is, in spite of the trends that favor a Republican, she can still beat Trump. However, if Donald Trump can strengthen his hand and show that he can beat Hillary Clinton, the nomination should be his on a first ballot. November is playing out now. — John McLaughlin and Jim McLaughlin are Republican strategists and partners in the national polling firm McLaughlin & Associates. They are not aligned with any presidential candidate or super PAC.
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This race will be the ugliest presidential race in history. Clinton will need to drive Trump’s negatives above 70 percent.
OPINION | ERIC FEHRNSTROM
Turnout, terror, and tactics favor Trump against Clinton
By Eric Fehrnstrom MARCH 24, 2016
After adding to his delegate lead in Tuesday’s GOP contests, Donald Trump remains on track to be the Republican nominee for president. The question is, can he beat Hillary Clinton? The answer is, yes. Clinton is threatened by factors that are unexpected, unusual, and unique.
The Brussels terror attack is a reminder of the uniquely terrifying age in which we live. Clinton’s response promising to stand with our allies without proposing any specific answers was unsatisfying. Trump’s call to seal the borders and bring back waterboarding was clear-cut and definitive. It may not appeal to our better angels, but they tend to take flight in times of national peril.
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Before the latest wave of terror attacks, The Washington Post quoted a senior Clinton adviser saying she plans to counter Trump with “high-road substance, policy, and issues.” That sounds like Jeb Bush, who was felled by Trump despite having an overwhelming advantage in money, political pedigree, and organization.
Most observers think current polling showing Clinton beating Trump in the fall is conclusive. What no one expects is how a Trump candidacy potentially changes the general election map with an economic message aimed at blue-collar white voters.
Democratic states with high concentrations of white voters situated in the aging rust belt — states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Ohio — will become new battlegrounds, as they hearken to Trump’s message that unfair trade and cheap immigrant labor is hurting American jobs.
Most observers think current polling showing Clinton beating Trump in the fall is conclusive. What no one expects is how a Trump candidacy potentially changes the general election map with an economic message aimed at blue-collar white voters.
Democratic states with high concentrations of white voters situated in the aging rust belt — states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Ohio — will become new battlegrounds, as they hearken to Trump’s message that unfair trade and cheap immigrant labor is hurting American jobs
What about the minority vote? Trump can’t do much worse than Governor Mitt Romney did in 2012, getting only 6 percent of African-American voters. Hispanics turned off by Trump’s talk of a border wall may vote in greater numbers against him, but their biggest effect will be in states already in the Democratic column: New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, and California.
What is unusual about this year’s election is that, without President Obama on the ballot, the historic coalition that swept him into office in 2008 and kept him there in 2012 seems to have lost its enthusiasm for politics.
Through the first half of the 2016 presidential cycle, Republicans have seen record turnout, while Democrats have experienced a startling drop-off. Here in Massachusetts, GOP turnout was up 50 percent over 2012, while Democratic turnout declined 14 percent from 2008, the last time they had a contested primary. The story of a shrinking Democratic vote is the same everywhere: Virginia, down 20 percent; South Carolina, 30 percent; Nevada, 28 percent; New Hampshire, 12 percent; and Iowa, 27 percent.
Overall, Democratic primary turnout is down by roughly one-third, while Republican numbers have increased by more than two-thirds.
An analysis by the FiveThirtyEight blog says there is no correlation between primary and general election turnout, but it is premature to say it won’t make a difference in November. There was only one other time since 1976, in years when both parties had competitive primaries, that GOP turnout exceeded the Democrats, and that was in 2000, when George W. Bush won. It’s also unusual for turnout to exceed previous years by as much as it does this year for Republicans. The only recent precedent for that is 2008 when Democratic primary turnout vastly exceeded the previous competitive race.
Anti-Trump forces are still counting on various convention scenarios to deny Trump the nomination, but they remain divided over the presence in the race of two alternatives: Governor John Kasich of Ohio, and Senator Ted Cruz. In 2012, Romney didn’t win a majority of delegates until the end of May. Trump will take as long, maybe right up to the last primary day in June, but the odds favor him.
Pundits who say Trump cannot win against Clinton are ignoring the factors that make this an unconventional political year.
Eric Fehrnstrom is a Republican political analyst and media strategist, and was a senior adviser to Governor Mitt Romney.
Don’t Be So Sure Hillary Clinton Will Crush Donald Trump
What if an ideologically fluid celebrity candidate has changed the rules of the game?
BY ELSPETH REEVE
March 16, 2016
Every presidential election is just like all the other ones until it’s not. The many people who predicted Donald Trump would flame out in the Republican primary aren’t idiots; mostly their predictions were based on past primaries. Many people are now predicting Trump will be destroyed in the general election. This is based on reams of voter surveys and demographic data from past elections. But what if everyone is repeating the same mistake?
In August, Nate Silver predicted Donald Trump was doomed to be a blip, just like Herman Cain and Michelle Bachmann in 2012, or perhaps Mike Huckabee in 2008. Almost exactly four years earlier, Republicans were passing around a slideshow noting that no president had been reelected when the consumer confidence index was below 75, and it was at 55.7. (It rose to a mere 72.2 a few days before President Barack Obama was reelected.) Until Obama, no Democrat from outside the South had been elected president since 1960. There arecountless examples of rock-solid election laws that suddenly crumbled.
Since just after the 2012 election, political punditry has been almost Calvinist in its certainty about 2016: The electorate was predestined to have a particular demographic makeup, and each demographic group would turn out and vote a particular way, and the math added up to Republicans being toast. It wouldn’t matter much whether the GOP candidate was Chris Christie or Scott Walker or Jeb Bush, because voters’ views of the parties were set.
But what if the candidacy of Donald Trump is so weird and new and different that it can actually change all that? Last summer, one of the few people who bet big on Trump winning the GOP nomination and the election was a British Scientologist. Of course a Scientologist would understand the power of celebrity in America—the church has long used movie stars to get people to do something even harder than switch parties: switch religions. John Mappin, who bet almost $10,000 on Trump and could win $100,000 come November, explained, “His rise marks a paradigm shift in media, really ... What I could see was that the pundits in America hadn’t woken up to that.” Mappin continued, “People say, ‘Well, this is ridiculous, he’s a reality TV show star.’ But hang on, he’s an icon. He can use his power as an icon to attract attention. We’ve moved into a new media age, which is the age of icon control. And somebody with a Twitter account has effectively more power, perhaps unjustly, than somebody who perhaps has been sincerely working their whole life doing something really, really good.”
What’s the evidence Democratic voters will be more immune to the power of celebrity than Republican voters? Perhaps the strongest such evidence is the phenomenon ofnegative partisanship—increasingly, people vote against the party they hate instead of for the party they like. Last summer, political scientists at Emory University published a paper showing that while people are more likely to call themselves independent, they are also more likely to vote straight ticket. In a Junepost at Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball, Emory’s Alan I. Abramowitz and Steven Webster explained:“Between 2000 and 2012 the proportion of positive partisans—voters who liked their own party more than they disliked the opposing party—fell from 61 percent to 38 percent while the proportion of negative partisans—voters who disliked the opposing party more than they liked their own party—rose from 20 percent to 42 percent.”
It would only get worse in 2016, Abramowitz and Webster wrote, “given the deep divisions between Democrats and Republicans over issues ranging from immigration and health care to climate change and same-sex marriage.” Further, they added, “We can predict with a high degree of confidence that party loyalty will be very strong in next year’s elections.”
Nine months ago, in other words, hate-voting seemed like a recipe for stability. But what if it’s the opposite? What if a candidate came along and did something crazy, like change some of his party’s positions? There was a curious result in a recent Wall Street Journal poll: Only 8 percent of all voters think Trump “represents the values and positions of the Republican Party.” For Democratic-leaning voters, maybe that’s not more to love, but at least less to hate.
In the weeks before the Massachusetts primary, almost 20,000 Democrats changed their registration to Republican or independent, which a state official called a product of “the Trump effect.” In Pennsylvania, 46,000 Democrats switched to Republicans in 2016. Onlyhalf that number of Republicans have become Democrats (though more independents became Democrats than became Republicans). NBC Miami reports that in early 2016, “Florida saw Republican Party registration increase by 67,065 while Democratic Party registration increased by 34,943 and independent voters decreased 27,721.”
Mark Munroe, chairman of the Republican Party in Mahoning County, Ohio, said last week that he got calls every day from Democrats wanting to vote in the GOP primary. “And nine times out of 10, or 19 out of 20, you get the sense they are doing so because they want to vote for Trump,” Munroe said. Trump, he said, is “getting Democrats to cross over ... but he’s also getting a large number of unaffiliated voters—people who don’t participate in primaries.” (Munroe supports John Kasich.)
According to Pew Research Center, 2016 primary turnout rivals that of 2008. For Republicans, it’s the highest since at least 1980, a projected 17.3 million voters, and more than five million more than projected turnout on the Democratic side. As a column in The Hill recently noted, there’s no historic correlation between high turnout in the primaries and high turnout in the general. But the column also noted that people who pay less attention to the election are likely to sit out the primary and vote in the general. Isn’t it possible those less engaged voters might find Trump’s celebrity appealing? In July 2008, John McCain attacked Obama for being a “celebrity”—then he picked Sarah Palin to be his VP.
Last week, Politico reported that Republican donors expect Trump to lose the general election, and so contributors are “forking over piles of money to contain down-ballot collateral damage from a potential Trump nomination.” On a Politico podcast released Monday,Hillary Clinton pollster Joel Benenson said that if Trump is the Republican nominee, he could potentially expand the swing state map for Democrats, putting places like Arizona in play.
Benenson dismissed the idea that Trump could have a path to the White House through the Rust Belt. “What’s the evidence of it? The evidence of it, they’ve turned out a lot of people,” Benenson said. Romney won Rust Belt primaries too, and then lost them in the general. Trump, he said, “doesn’t have a message that appeals to these folks. It’s not real.”
Primary results thus far suggest that Trump appeals to at least some of the folks Benenson is referring to. His strongest constituency is whites without a college degree. If you look at FiveThirtyEight’s great interactive on what demographic changes would flip states from blue to red, you can see it takes a significant but not unfathomable increase in non-college educated white Republican votes to swing the election.
FiveThirtyEightFor a long time, liberals have been asking what’s the matter with Kansas—why do so many working-class whites vote against their economic self-interest? Obama infamously suggested they were clinging to white identity politics. It now seems crazy it took so long for a guy to come along and combine the two. Donald Trump trashes immigrants but says we shouldn’t let people die in the streets without health care.
A recent Atlantic Media/Pearson Opportunity poll finds that Americans think the biggest obstacles to “achieving your personal goals in life so far” are slow wage growth, few local jobs, and their lack of education. A large majority thinks they could make more money if they had more education, but they can’t afford to invest in it. The “central conundrum” of this poll, The Atlantic’s Ronald Brownstein writes, is that “those who might benefit the most from more education and training often feel least equipped, for cost and other reasons, to obtain it.”
Trump offers them someone to blame for the barriers to their economic success—immigrants, Wall Street, companies that move factories overseas. And even though he’s a billionaire who got his start with the help of his millionaire dad, and who wears different colors of hats to signal his mood to his butler, he talks like them. He makes jokes like them, he’s not polished and prim. He brags about being a winner and makes them feel like winners, too. Trump can give them something to vote for, instead of pointing to the other party as a monster to vote against.
To be sure, Trump has historically high unfavorable ratings for a general election candidate. He could end up turning out high numbers of Democrats who find him disgusting. Clinton has held a lead over Trump in national polling averages for six months. But his “ceiling” of support has slowly inched upward, and he hit 50 percent support among Republicans for the first time in one poll this week. While Clinton admits she’s not a natural politician, Trump delivers his stump speech like a comedian, playing to the mood and rhythm of the crowd. And unlike most Republicans, Trump can attack Clinton for her ties to Wall Street, the source of so much anger across party lines.
Will Donald Trump crush Hillary Clinton in the general election? Probably not. But instead of having the worst chance among all Republicans to beat her, maybe he has the best.
Elspeth Reeve is a senior editor at the New Republic.
@elspethreeve
How many times you gonna post the same dumb fucking article? Posting it a dozen times doesn't make it any more likely to happen. And posting analysis shortly after this post by the putz who led Romney's disaster doesn't exactly scream "credibility," either. How do you find your way home after pub crawling in England?
ointer:
