The news is full of Donald Trump and his lead in the crowded Republican field. Off to the side a bit, Sen Bernie Sanders is drawing huge crowds and capturing the imaginations of many supporters – and a few polls, too. With more than a year to go the Presidential election is going wildly off script as insurgent candidates are leading the insider choices, Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush.
Will this keep up for the next year or more?
A smart person would say that nothing is predictable as the electorate is obviously very volatile right now. Good thing I’m not smart. Despite the teevee noise and the large crowds it is very early and what we might call “mainstream” voters – people with jobs, families, et cetera – are not engaged yet. They will probably put a stop to the circuses and at least change the tone before it’s all over. But that doesn’t mean the election will quite go back on script.
Megyn Kelly, you deserve better. All around.
The problem with Trump is easy to explain. He has his own direct conduit to a tremendous amount of teevee time and does not rely on the conservative outlets like Fox to promote him. He appears to have been able to take on Fox and beat them, in fact, only gaining in popularity from his dust-up with Megyn Kelly. A truce has been declared that apparently leaves Trump untouchable.
What will it take to dump Trump? The answer is right in front of everyone all along. He is ahead of the pack with 24% or so of the Republican vote – which is to say 24% of about a third of all voters or 8% total. It’s reasonable to assume that everyone knows who he is, so as soon as the field narrows someone will be able to poll higher than him.
There are signs that this math may not work in Iowa, but momentum in a campaign is a real thing. Give it time to sink in.
This is all confirmed by a poll by the Washington Post which shows that Trump actually plays a lot worse among Independents than Republicans. His total support across the board is about 12% at this time, and an astonishing 61% of the nation says they will never vote for him. Changing that figure is going to be difficult and it will involve a big change in Trump’s schtick.
Has Jeb given up? No, but he looks like it.
The same poll, interestingly, found about 40% would never vote for Clinton and about 40% would never vote for Bush. The election will be decided by the middle 20%, as nearly all are these days, regardless of what we do this summer.
I’m sure we haven’t heard from them yet.
Bernie Sanders is a lot more problematic on the Democratic side. His supporters are never going to be wowed by Clinton because she represents the exact opposite of change to them. While she probably has the most impressive resume of anyone who has run for President in a long time, this is a year when a resume is a liability.
But for all the noise and the large crowds “feeling the Bern”, he will probably also burn out over the long haul. Sanders did successfully navigate a big setback from “Black Lives Matter” protesters who shut down an event, but later made peace. That was skilled on his part, but the progressive left demands a level of ideological purity that cannot be maintained. In order to keep his supporters going Sanders, like Trump, has to keep the rhetoric hot. He can’t move to the middle until he has cemented their support and turned them into the hard-core workers that an insurgent needs – especially one that eschews big money.
Feel the Bern? That flame has to last if he’s gonna do it.
Many people are comparing these insurgencies to Governor Jesse Ventura in 1998. But the comparisons need to look at the calendar. Ventura didn’t come on strong until August 1998, three months before the election. His big surge came from the State Fair at the end of that month and his no-BS performance in the debates. Where Ventura is famous for the crazy things that come out of his mouth, he was actually a very sharp politician with a great common touch – and the second thing he said was usually quite brilliant.
You cannot compare anything that’s happening now with Ventura because the extra year and lack of coherent debates on actual policy isn’t happening yet.
So how will this play out? We have to expect that the big players, Clinton and Bush, are taking note. They know this year will remain volatile. They have about six months to put their organizations in place and get the attention of the mainstream voters.
Once they do, the real fight will begin. Only then, too.
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There is this: That pretty much everything Sanders says is true, and essentially nothing Trump says–to the extent he actually says things that can be evaluated–is true. Granting that truth is a weak reed in politics, lumping them together does not seem appropriate.
Fair enough. I also am very sure that Trump is capped at around 25% of the Republican vote no matter what, where Sanders could win the Democratic nod.
There appears to be some bias. Trump is speaking the language that many “unheard” Americans like and believe in. It’s been nearly a decade of trying to forget about 9/11 and Bush II and embracing our first non-white President. Sanders could win, but hasn’t convinced Black and Brown voters (who traditionally vote Democratic).
I will admit my bias – I think Trump is a complete clown and the only redeeming feature about him is that he is completely unelectable. Having said that, I am sure that people supporting him want someone, somewhere to “tell it like it is” and not couch their language.
I understand that. We’ve been in a Depression for 15 years and no one in power has yet to say the “D” word. That’s ridiculous. The Iraq War was a farce. We’ve allowed spying on innocent citizens. Yes, there are reasons to want someone to speak up.
But Trump just isn’t that person. If someone better came along, someone not drunk on narcissism, that would be interesting. But I do understand why some percentage of the voters are so hungry for candor that they don’t really care.
That is the real tragedy here, IMHO.
I’m probably not voting for him but it’s important to understand white, middle America (some significant portion of America). He speaks to these people very well. If you try to use logic to understand Trump, then you won’t get far; if you think about the unheard Americans, then it makes perfect sense why he’s leading the GOP.
Fair enough all around. 🙂 Thanks for commenting, I think you have something here.
I agree with kdawnb that Trump is not about logic, he’s about playing into peoples’ resentments. In that sense he resembles George Wallace, or Dick Nixon, or Bush II for that matter. I suspect he’s a very smart person and knows what he’s doing. But what he says is not helpful or useful in making good national policy, or objectively true. To put it another way, he’s a demagogue, and they can be very dangerous. (“A leader who obtains power by means of impassioned appeals to the emotions and prejudices of the populace.” Wordnik.)
Excellent. But I also want to know what’s in it for him. Does he really think he can win? He may, given his personality, but I can’t help but think that this isn’t another promotional thing like a reality show.
Trump will fade & I suspect Sanders will too. But I do not expect Bush to win the republican party – we are not interested in Bush III.
That does seem to be true so far. He will need a lot more traction to get it and his team seems to be full of tired old retreads.
I am not impressed by anyone yet.
I don’t think I am, either. But it’s very, very early.
I would love to see us just elect Hillary and get it over with.
Hold on, now – there’s a “process” for that. 🙂
I’d love to see us just elect Bernie and get it over with.
Seriously folks, we all know the US political system is seriously corrupted, gridlocked, bought and sold. If it doesn’t have the capability for corrective action–that is, electing a serous reformer–we are in big trouble.
So far, we don’t seem to have a system that is capable of doing that. I don’t know what that would look like, honestly.
Trump reminds me of Prime Minister Berlusconi, Trump thinks he is Maserati and Lamgorghini but he is more like a Fiat.
A good comparison!
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