But Mr. Axelrod is a believer, as are many Republicans, in the school of presidential politics, which holds that voters look for someone offering a remedy for the problems they see facing the country, rather than a replica of the president they have. And recent history suggests that voters favor candidates who are a stylistic, and at times substantive, departure from the incumbent.
Prediction Market: 2016 President – Winner
Democratic: 58%
Republican: 42%
What Kind of Person Would Vote For Donald Trump? These People.
It’s still not clear whether he’s in on the joke—there’s always been a bit of mystery to how aware Donald Trump is that Donald Trump is full of shit. But when you see him in person, and you hear him claim that the term “Supreme Leader” would be more fitting for him than for the head of Iran, there is the tiniest hint that he knows what a ludicrous thing this is to say. Even his exaggerations are hilarious. He said this was the biggest crowd in state history, even though we were in a public-school auditorium. He said he was worth more than $10 billion, a figure that is impossible for him to prove but also impossible for us to disprove. He said he made $213 million from The Apprentice, a figure which NBC steadfastly refutes.
.. You can see why people think he’s more “honest” than one of the other randos in the GOP field—he’s gifted at not sounding like a politician even as he deploys standard tricks from the “I’m not a politician” handbook.
.. If Donald Trump has one undeniable virtue as a politician, it’s that he does not try to fake being one of us. He’s not going to the fucking Bowl-o-Rama on a Saturday night in a plaid shirt to prove he’s a man of the people. The whole thrust of The Donald’s campaign is that he is special. He is extraordinary.
.. And here is where my brief jag of mildly effusive praise for Donald Trump must come to an end, because the grim undercurrent of his rise is SHAME. After all, if you believe we must make America great again, then you must also believe that America, at the present moment, sucks. And pretty much everyone at the Trump picnic believed that America sucks. When I asked a group of Trump supporters outside if they were proud of America, they all laughed with derision. Of course they weren’t proud of America. Of course this nation is a shithole. One voter named Corey told me he hoped Trump would help America “get back to the way it was,” a refrain I heard from a lot of people, as if the country was a rock band that had changed its sound. Backing Trump means acknowledging that you live in a world of failure, and that your last best hope is the Music Man moseying into town.
.. Now, here is how Donald Trump says he will Make America Great Again™. In Trump’s worldview, politics is little more than series of deals to be made. Every complex global problem, or intractable adversary, can be tamed with sufficiently hard-ass steakhouse dealmaking. He explained it all in Osky:
“I know the greatest negotiators in the world,” he said. “Now some of these people are horrible human beings. You wouldn’t have them to dinner. They’re vicious. They’re crude. They’re unhappy. They treat everybody badly. Who cares? I want them negotiating against China. Think of Carl Icahn, a friend of mine. He’d be great. I’d say, ‘Carl, take China’.”
Camille Paglia analyzes the GOP field
I have constantly said that Senator Dianne Feinstein should have been the leading woman presidential candidate for the Democratic party long ago. Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi is a very deft and clever behind-the-scenes legislator and dealmaker, a skill she acquired from her political family–her father and brother were mayors of Baltimore. Both of these women, to me, are far better politicians than Hillary Clinton. Hillary has accomplished nothing substantial in her life. She’s been pushed along, coasting on her husband’s coattails, and every job she’s been given fizzled out into time-serving or overt disaster. Hillary constantly strikes attitudes and claims she’s “passionate” about this or that, but there’s never any sustained follow-through. She’s just a classic, corporate exec or bureaucrat type who would prefer to be at her desk behind closed doors, imposing her power schemes on the proletariat. She has no discernible political skills of any kind, which is why she needs a big, shifting army of consultants, advisors, and toadies to whisper in her ear and write her policy statements. There’s this ridiculous new theme in the media about people needing to learn who the “real” Hillary Clinton is. What? Everything they’re saying about what a wonderful person Hillary is in private tells us that she’s not competent or credible as a public figure! A politician, particularly a president, must have a distinct skill or expertise in communicating with the masses. It’s the absolutely basic requirement for any career in politics.
If you don’t have an effective public persona, if you’re not a good speaker, if you don’t like to press the flesh, if you’re not nimble enough to deal with anything that comes along, then you are not a natural politician! And you sure aren’t going to learn it in your late 60s! Get off the stage, and let someone else truly electable on!
.. Dianne Feinstein is the only woman politician in America who has true gravitas.
.. All they have to do is read the obituaries of the smaller newspapers in metropolitan New York to see how the early retirement and lavish pensions of the public sector unions have grotesquely drained taxpayer dollars. Obituary after obituary–so-and-so, aged 75, worked for fifteen or twenty years as a policeman or city sanitation worker, retired in his late 40s, and spent the rest of his life on the taxpayer’s dime, pursuing his hobbies of fishing, boating, and golfing. Great work if you can get it!
.. The rigid and antiquated seniority system imposed by the teachers unions has been a disaster–“last hired, first fired.” So many young and vital teachers have been terminated during budget cuts–the entire future of the profession. The unions value seniority over quality, and it’s inner-city children who have paid the price.