October 7, 2016

"The puzzle that is currently frustrating the pundit minds of America is this: why is Hillary Clinton not simply clobbering Donald Trump?"

"How is this ranting, seething buffoon still competitive with her? Trump has now stumbled through a series of the kind of blunders that break ordinary political campaigns – the sort of deadly hypocrisies that always kill the demagogue in old movies – and yet this particular demagogue keeps on trucking. Why? Let us answer that burning pundit question of today by jumping to what will undoubtedly be the next great object of pundit ardor: the legacy of President Barack Obama.... As a president who has accomplished little since 2011... Obama has pretty much undermined Clinton’s ability to sell us on another centrist Democratic presidency. His legacy has diluted her promise.... Thanks to Obama’s flagrant hope-dealing in the dark days of 2008 – followed up by his failure to reverse the disintegration of the middle class – this favorite Democratic cliché has finally become just that: an empty phrase."

Says Thomas Frank.

ADDED: Frank does not say that Trump himself is a source of hope, only that the Democratic Party candidate can't sell hope this time around. But having given the post my "hope" tag, I see that I've only used it twice before in the last 2 years, and both posts are about Donald Trump. How did he earn the rarely awarded "hope" tag?

Most recently, on August 8th, offering his economic plan, he said: "I want to jump-start America and it can be done and it won't even be that hard."

And here, on January 31, 2016, there's a post with an embedded 3 Stooges video (which hardly seems expressive of hope):
"Donald Trump has muscled ahead in Iowa, regaining his lead on the brink of the first votes being cast in the 2016 presidential race."

The Des Moines Register selects a very masculine verb as it reports its last poll before the caucus that will finally release us from the clutches of Iowa.
Trump stands at 28 percent, while rival Ted Cruz has slid to 23 percent. But there’s still a strong case for Cruz in this race — he’s more popular and respected than Trump, the final Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics Iowa Poll shows.

“The drill-down shows, if anything, stronger alignment with Cruz than Trump, except for the horse race,” said J. Ann Selzer, the pollster for the Iowa Poll.
And that's the wan encouragement for anti-Trumpions from J. Ann Selzer...

Oh! That was just the hope that someone other than Trump might win. That's the kind of hope Hillary can still sell... the kind that Cruz flogged last winter.

This tastes flat.

93 comments:

PB said...

I hope the answer smacks them back to reality.

David Begley said...

Puzzle to be solved in Elkhorn, Wisconsin on Saturday.

cubanbob said...

"How is this ranting, seething buffoon still competitive with her? "

Franks can start by asking did he expect a grifter, criminal and traitor whose policies are fascistic to be 50 points ahead? Just how horrible must she be that she is barely above a seething buffoon? Apparently he is incapable of reflection.

DKWalser said...

Obama is a "centrist"? If he had been, Clinton would be clobbering Trump (and Trump wouldn't have won the Republican nomination).

chickelit said...

Sounds to me like Dems were counting on this storm to hammer home the central point of Obams' legacy: the Climate Change is the biggest threat we face.

rehajm said...

Thanks to Obama’s flagrant hope-dealing in the dark days of 2008 – followed up by his failure...

Nice job for recognizing one of the many, many reasons in the egg hunt. Here's a clue to find another one: many elite Democrats find the Clinton's revulsive.

PB said...

Obama's Legacy? Simple. It's Obama himself.

He'll be around for years telling us repeatedly about his historic legacy.

BarrySanders20 said...

"As a president who has accomplished little since 2011 . ."

Strike "since 2011" and it's more accurate

PB said...

Obama's legacy? I can't wait for Obama-worship to spawn a whole bunch of churches focused on this deity.

chickelit said...

Trump is a political reaction to a third Bush or a second Clinton presidency. Pundits still can't get that through their heads.

rhhardin said...

Trump talks like ordinary people talk. If you disparage Trump for that, ordinary people take you as insulting them.

Anthony said...

When you think about recent times when a candidate is following his or her party have a two term president

In 1960, 1988, and 2000, Nixon, Bush and Gore were running on peace and prosperity. Bush won easily, Nixon and Gore lost narrowly.

In 1968 the Humphrey was stuck with an unpopular war, riots, and societal breakdown. Humphrey lost narrowly, but with a strong third party taking traditionally Democratic votes that probably would have gone to the Republican

In 1976, the Gerald Ford was running as a as the unelected president who restored sanity in Washington following Watergate, had Watergate around his neck, but still almost won.

So where does that leave us this year? The campaign is pretty much issue free and is more about discontent and character (or lack there of) of the candidates.

Tank said...

Thomas Frank is a moron. The answer is that she is an incompetent, corrupt, criminal, with a legacy of mistakes that comprise her "experience," while he is a blunt outsider who has taken positions the elite do not like, the politically correct do not like, but many, many normal Americans do like.

Trump probably gets some sympathy from people reacting to jerks like Frank referring to Trump as a "ranting, seething buffoon" which so many people recognize he is not.

chickelit said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
chickelit said...

As a president who has accomplished little since 2011.... Obama has pretty much undermined Clinton’s ability to sell us on another centrist Democratic presidency.

I'll bet his golf game has improved. Hillary could build on that aspect of Obama's legacy by uttering one phrase with cultural reference:

"Hillary don't golf"

But she's still beholdered to him for some unexplained legal reason. She cannot veer one degree from the third Obama term trajectory. Sad.

Tank said...

Anthony said...

... The campaign is pretty much issue free and is more about discontent and character (or lack there of) of the candidates...


Partially correct. The campaign is not issue free. Trump would not be the Rep candidate but for several important issues, i.e. immigration, trade, etc.

khesanh0802 said...

I just finished Thomas Frank's book "Listen, Liberal". His indictment of the Democratic party's complete disregard of the middle class is quite something from a guy who is a truly flaming liberal. His solutions are, essentially: jail the bankers; bomb Wall Street; and end all trade deals. He can't find his way to do anything other than condemn Trump, but like most Democrats if the R's put up Jesus Christ Frank would condemn him. His major thesis is that the D's have sold out to the wealthy and the professional class and forgotten they are supposed to be the party of the "working man". Frank's book is an interesting confirmation of Thomas Sowell's book "Vision of the Anointed". Which argues that the entire country has been sold out by those who "know better than we do". If you want to raise your blood pressure even higher during this silly season I recommend them both. Frank's is a lot shorter and you can get by reading excerpts from Sowell. Together they clarify why there are so many pissed off people in the country and why Trump (or Bernie) is attractive to them.

bagoh20 said...

That's not the puzzling part for me. I'm surprised that blue collar people are so attracted to a guy who was born rich and whose life never resembled their own in any way. He shares no life experience with working people. Neither does Hillary of course, but Trump supporters seem to imagine he can relate to them for some reason. Sadly, people imagine candidates understand them, or care about them just because of rhetoric designed to do exactly that. Obama scored very high with voters in that regard, and I never got that about a guy who virtually never worked or struggled his entire life. You can like a candidate's policies or style, but imagining he gives a shit about you is pure delusion.

Clayton Hennesey said...

Q: How is it that this Grendel's-mother monster Althouse has managed to publish such a successful blog for so long?

A: Perhaps because the question being asked may be defective in one or more ways.

Bob Boyd said...

Obama is a carefully stage-managed, teleprompter-reading buffoon.
I prefer my buffoons ranting and seething.
Matter of personal taste, I suppose.

BJK said...

This election, more so than any other in recent history, is less about the candidate you are voting for, and more about the candidate you are voting against.

The candidates are largely campaigning on the opposition's negatives, rather than giving people a reason to vote for either Hillary or Trump.


In other words, Hillary's problem is that no matter how unappealing the news cycle makes Trump look...she's still Hillary.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

But but but Obamacare! Free birth control! Bending the cost curve!
What else, what else...oh, the super-tough call to go after Osama Bin Laden! Plus gettin' Gaddiffi. Oh, and the Iran deal and the Russian reset!
So many accomplishments, so much done.
Plus, of course all the racial healing.

Fundamental transformation, baby!

buwaya said...

Thomas Frank is a moron, but as usual that is because he has hidden himself in a bubble. He seems to be breaking out of it, but just by a bit, which makes him, so far, slightly less moronic than many others.
Most of these scribblers live in scribblerworld, and do not deal in real things, concrete and steel and energy.

Paddy O said...

bagoh, I'm with you on this entirely.

chickelit said...

"Hope. It is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective. A lot of hope is dangerous. A spark is fine, as long as it's contained."

tim maguire said...

One does wonder, as many here have already pointed out, just how much head scratching Frank Thomas will have to do before it occurs to him to stop looking at Trump and start looking at Clinton. One may also wonder what he will find if he scratches all the way through his skull to expose what is on the other side.

Telling that when he does look to a villain not named Trump, that villain is named Obama. Obama's last service to the Democratic Party.

JSD said...

Because “Main Street” and their businesses have been gutted by Obama and the Democrats with:
• Obamacare rules
• New minimum wage rules
• New overtime rules
All these rules are directed at small business and have no impact on “Wall Street”

Also, globalism is starting to look like one big tax evasion scam for stateless multi-national corporations. Apple, Google and all their buddies get to shelter profits (which Treasury defended). While Main Street business is subject to 35% tax rate without mercy.

http://fortune.com/2016/09/02/apple-tax-game-ireland/


It’s no secret that the Democrats hate small business and they hate Maine Street. Trump, as bad as he is, is the only way to voice dissatisfaction.

Bruce Hayden said...

I don't know why anyone considers either Obama or Crooked Hillary to be centrist Democrats. Bill, sure, back then. Any more? The difference between the two is that Obama is essentially an anti-colonial, which means that he is essentially somewhat anti-American. Crooked Hillary, on the other hand is merely very crooked and corrupt. If it were just she, then she might not be that dangerous. But, the people who have bought and paid for her are just as greedy and filled with avarice as she. Trillions of dollars sloshing around in DC, the Dems at the national level are at the front of the line to get their cut of it, and she is the one they picked for President, since she has already been bought and paid for. The problem is not, directly, that they are taking a cut of the federal budget for their own benefit, but rather, that anything is for sale. Obama was merely an absentee landlord. Crooked would likely be much worse, helping to institutionalize it. Under her, we saw American foreign policy sold off to the highest bidder, whether it for Muslim oil money buying fundamentalist Islamic revolutions in Libya, Egypt, and Syria, or Russian oil money buying 1/5 of our uranium supplies. The biggest banks bought themselves significant competitive advantage against their smaller competitors with Dodd-Frank. What happens when the person they have been so much money from the banks gets to appoint the banking regulators? Who takes so much environmental money gets to appoint the people running the EPA? Etc. Now she will have the entire federal government to monetize for the benefit of herself, her cronies, family, friends, cronies, campaign contributors, and other Democrats.

They keep pretending that the economy is decent, that it recovered somewhat normally, and that the Dems working with Obama didn't screw an entire generation by their greed taking precedence over economic recovery. Is anyone surprised that the recently released Guccifer hacked DNC documents includes a spreadsheet showing how much big companies benefited from TARP, and how much they contributed to prominent Dem politicians? That is why we are stuck in the 8th year of the Obama Recession, and why a Crooked Hillary Presidency would likely extend this to 12. It is fine for one of the ruling elite to vote for her, because they are likely in on the take. But why would anyone else rationally do so? They are the taken, not the takers.

chickelit said...

@bagoh20 and Paddy O: As long time observer of both of you, the problem with your message is that you're not for anybody this time around. Maybe next time, you both think.

This election may be determined by who can be discouraged enough to stay home and give up voting. Perhaps self-medicate.

bagoh20 said...

Modern Presidents, like most government officials, primarily just fuck with your life by passing laws and regulating things that work against most people and make your life more complicated and harder. They generally are a bad thing - maybe worse than nothing. Yet we get all enthusiastic about one or the other fixing things. That won't happen. Hillary is the poster child for worse than nothing, and I expect Trump won't be as much as of a reformer as people are thinking. He will do what Presidents do - pass laws, regulate, change the names on desk plaques, and expand the state by changing it rather than shrinking it, which is the only solution to most of our problems.

chickelit said...

The 1960 election result was based on hope and the 1964 one was based on fear.

I think Hillary is counting on fear overruling all else this time around.

Michael said...

People are tired of bullshit in pretty words, rehearsed crap, talking points, "pundits" on all channels who have no experience, no background no competency other than to recite these memorized talking points.

Doesn't matter. Trump will likely lose and we will go back to the pretty words and the press will congratulate itself on having stopped hitler.

rhhardin said...

The moron is the fundamental particle of politics.

buwaya said...

US GDP growth is effectively zero this year btw, adjusted for pop growth. Who knows how much more it should be adjusted for financial shenanigans. GDP is quite fudgable that way. Its been a bad decade for the US economy, the real economy. And there are no prospects for improvement.
This rather simple stuff doesnt get through the concrete skulls of the scribbler-kind.

khesanh0802 said...

@bagoh20 It's not Trump's fault he was born "rich" so you really shouldn't hold that against him. Being born rich doesn't mean that you are incapable of caring about the little guy. I think Trump, who has had to work with all kinds of people on his projects, truckers, plumbers, steelworkers, masons, cooks, bakers, bankers, city and state officials, etc., has a hell of a lot better understanding of people than Clinton, who in her entire life has only dealt with others in the professional classes ( much condemned by Frank). Trump was reported, before one his speeches, to have ambled through the hall and talked with the cop and the wait staff, asked their names, generally touching base - and these people didn't even work for him.

One of my takeaways from the "loss carry forward" flap is that Trump, while losing almost $! billion dollars remained standing, willed himself to go forward and clearly adapted his business plans to avoid that happening again. That - to me anyway - shows real strength of character. An awful lot of people who had that happen to them would have ended up weeping in a dark corner.

My name goes here. said...

"That's not the puzzling part for me. I'm surprised that blue collar people are so attracted to a guy who was born rich and whose life never resembled their own in any way. He shares no life experience with working people. "

Two sloppy divorces. Kids from three women. Failed business. Bankruptcy. A belief that America's economy and job situation would be better if the workers only had to compete against legal residents and other citizens. A belief that our trade deals manage to screw the US at the benefit of other nations. A belief that actually enforcing the border is a prerequisite for a healthy economy. A belief that for the last several years the the elite politicians from both parties have been more concerned about their personal gain at the expense of the entire country.

*I* think the "he is like me" attraction is obvious.

rhhardin said...

Bound in a party, morons have right or left spin; but free in space, they're just morons.

chickelit said...

Michael said...Doesn't matter. Trump will likely lose and we will go back to the pretty words and the press will congratulate itself on having stopped hitler.

Ah but it does matter. If Hillary wins, the same pundits will high-five each other, jack-up their salaries, and watch the D.C. property bubble inflate even more.

If Trump wins, the same pundits will have to wake up each day and work for a living for a change.

rhhardin said...

If you leave two doors open, morons will appear to go through both.

Hagar said...

I don't think it is about the candidates so much as about the total moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the Democratic Party.

(Not that the Republican Party is that much better, though at least there is internal dissidence and perhaps some hope for them, but they do not hold the Presidency and so are not in the hot seat this go-around.)

bagoh20 said...

Chick, I don't support anyone, because I don't agree or trust either one, but I have no intention of not voting, even though neither of our votes will mean a thing in CA. I still pretend it does though, and will vote Trump for the same reason I would choose a wrenching course of chemotherapy over cancer. At least with him there is hope, no matter how faint. I fantasize that he will cut regulations and taxation.

You Trumpers need to get over this burning need to have everyone be enthusiastic for Trump. It's a little creepy in this nation built on distrust of power. Some of us are enthusiastic against Clinton. Be thankful for that at least. We are still on your side, but the future of the nation is why, not Trump the man.

chickelit said...

khesanh0802 said...@bagoh20 It's not Trump's fault he was born "rich" so you really shouldn't hold that against him. Being born rich doesn't mean that you are incapable of caring about the little guy.

I agree with that. But, I also think that despite being one of the Internets's all around nicest guys, Bags is a bit blinded by his own rags-to-riches story to appreciate Trump.

Sebastian said...

"As a president who has accomplished little since 2011" True. Or before. Except pushing hundreds of regulations, subverting the rule of law, aiding and abetting Iran's rise, fueling the disaster in the Middle East, etc. etc.

"Obama has pretty much undermined Clinton’s ability to sell us on another centrist Democratic presidency." Sure, viewed from the far left O is "centrist."

"His legacy has diluted her promise" Her promise is what the Dem promise has been for decades: more dough for the takers.

"followed up by his failure to reverse the disintegration of the middle class Рthis favorite Democratic clich̩ has finally become just that: an empty phrase." The notion that a president can prevent something like the (supposed) "disintegration of the middle class" is insane. Where's the insanity tag?

Bruce Hayden said...

I think that the poster above who suggest that Frank's problem was that he was looking at Trump, and not Crooked Hillary. I think, by now, that a lot of Americans are aware that she massively broke the law, and was able to walk. Ditto for her closest associates. The more we see of the FBI deal, the more it stinks. Clinton getting the FBI questions in advance? Not being under oath? Her chief of staff, and co-conspirator, Cheryl Mills, being allowed to be her "attorney", thus shielding their communications from the FBI, getting immunity, and then requiring that the FBI destroy her laptop? WTF? Two systems of justice in this country. If anyone else, besides the elite, had done what she did, they would be in prison by now for the rest of their natural lives, and for their next several.

Besides, she is really a despicable and dislikeable person. Screechy, preachy, voice. Completely arrogant and entitled. Vicious temper, and vindictive personality. Moreover, her health is falling apart before us. Why did they nominate her, one of the worst candidates possible? My guess is that her people were able to buy the Dem party elites better than anyone else. The Clintons had 24 years to do it. Everyone there owed the Clintons something, and they collected. Esp. when so many of them had turned on her eight years earlier.

Etienne said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
MadTownGuy said...

They thought Trump would be another Todd Akin. Instead, he's Archie Bunker. Like Norman Lear, they can't figure out why people like him.

rhhardin said...

Morons have a very long decay time, turns out to be the problem. After 13 billion years, here we are.

chickelit said...

You Trumpers need to get over this burning need to have everyone be enthusiastic for Trump.

It's not Trump that excites me -- it's the voice he gives to forgotten people.

I think Trump is a very flawed man. Not as flawed as Hillary, though.

chickelit said...

@rhhardin: Your 9:50, 9:51, and 9:56 comments are tempting me to break out a soliloquy about degrees of freedom, zero-point energies, and quantum mechanics. Stop tempting me.

Hunter said...

They still don't know what's the matter with Kansas.

CWJ said...

HoodlumDoodlum @9:37,

Don't forget a trillian dollars of "shovel ready" jobs.

Comanche Voter said...

Calling Thomas Frank clueless is an insult to the vast numbers of Democrats who are simply clueless. Frank's ignorance is monumental. He after all is the genius who wrote "What's The Matter With Kansas?"

Frank is perpetually surprised when the world doesn't work the way that Frank thinks it should work. When Kansans, inexplicably and "unexpectedly" choose to act in ways that don't follow Frank's materialist view of the world, he thinks that something's wrong with them. Frank, and other Democrats like him, like to vigorously assert that they are the "reality based party". Bovine dust to that; they live in an alternate reality that has bupkis to do with the real world.

bagoh20 said...

I have no problem with Trump being rich or being born rich. We all want that. And of course he understands working people more than Clinton just from employing so many for so long. But his life was nothing like the blue collar one of many people who have a real affection for him as one of them. I understand he says the right things for them, but it is just talk, not personal identification in my opinion. It's not a criticism of him, but the process. It's that people are so easily lead in politics and other scams by rhetoric. Obama's very strong score on "He understands my problems" was really disappointing. I don't fall in love with my plumber or mechanic until they actually do a great job, not just from their advertizing before I even hire them.

Michael said...

chickelit

From your script to God's eyes!!

These great republics don't, maybe can't, last. The great tensions between the populace and the rulers finally snap.

robother said...

Ann's gonna need a new tag, "hopeless" for the Clinton Presidency. Hopeless resignation to the rule by, of and for a corrupt elite caste is the final stage of the death struggle of a republic. Obama proved that hope for a new New Deal, for racial healing, for a middle class job, is for suckers. Perfect preparation for the Inevitable Clinton dynasty.

Paddy O said...

If Trump loses, I look forward to the nostalgia the media will show for Trump in 4 years when the Republicans nominate the worst candidate, and person, ever.

Paul said...

"I understand he says the right things for them, but it is just talk, not personal identification"

His taste in decor puts paid to that notion.

No, he really does have a cultural affiliation with the blue collars, and that extends to a very basic sense of patriotism that is so foreign as to be incomprehensible to the elite.

buwaya said...

I am a materialist. Show me the stuff, or at least the money, or failing even that, the stats. Franks and co. aren't. They live in and off stories. To be fair, this is true of many other people.
Franks other problem is that even as stories go, they seem stuck in their favorite genre.

bagoh20 said...

I guess it's just not possible for me to be enthusiastic about a politician, but that may be because I never had the opportunity to pick one I agreed with much. It's usually the one with 20-30% of what I'm looking for. My guy would never win. You can't win by saying "it's not my job, I can't do that, or better than nothing is a high standard." You win by promising stuff that rarely ever materializes and when it does it always cost more than promised and delivers less. You win by promissing to step all over The Constitution more than the other guy, and I vote for the one who I think is lying about that most.

Hacker said...

Trump is an Alpha Male, peoples genes respond to him:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LojCcQ5hDEc

Owen said...

rhhardin: loving your moron riff.

Rusty said...

" The great tensions between the populace and the rulers finally snap."

The usual suspects are hoping for just that. They long to bring in the troops against the American people so that, finally, they can introduce the fascist rule that they have longed for.

damikesc said...

Trump has now stumbled through a series of the kind of blunders that break ordinary political campaigns – the sort of deadly hypocrisies that always kill the demagogue in old movies – and yet this particular demagogue keeps on trucking.

Yet having the FBI rig an investigation of blatant illegal actions to protect you wouldn't kill ordinary political campaigns. Trump's "blunders" are always exceeded by Hillary's "crimes".

This rather simple stuff doesnt get through the concrete skulls of the scribbler-kind.

Because it doesn't impact them. There's always a money mark Prog to pay them for their nonsense.

Bob Boyd said...

rhhardin said...
Bound in a party, morons have right or left spin; but free in space, they're just morons.

Trade accelerators were used to fire morons and break the party bonds.

CStanley said...

I agree with and appreciate Bagohs comments here but also liked hearing "My name goes here"'s viewpoint. My initial assumptions of people feeling a connection with Trump had to do with our celebrity culture (people have become accustomed to living vicariously through these people, and think they can relate to them.) but MNGH makes good points about some of th eyes sinless in Trump's life which may make him more relatable (kind of ironic if the Dems attempt to get his financial records more public and that backfires.)

The divorce comment also reminded me of musings I've had about the role of divorce in our culture plays out in this election. Lots of people through the years have commented that Hillary reminds them of their ex wives. I wonder, does Donald also represent the fantasy of a man who successfully navigates messy divorces?

Michael K said...

" She cannot veer one degree from the third Obama term trajectory. Sad."

I think Hillary is at least as far left as Obama and just as likely to learn nothing from the failure of her plans. Bill was practical enough, after being hit with the 2x4 of the 1994 election, to change course. He let the GOP pull his nuts out of the fire and was clever enough to play Gingrich and his ego/envy into power again. The impeachment was a terrible dilemma for Republicans. They probably should have let it play out and never tried for a conviction but he did commit enough lying under oath to make a wise choice difficult.

Hillary was always the left wing screech owl described in Gary Aldrich's book. Her corruption and criminality is nothing new.

CStanley said...

"Th eyes sinless" is a rather funny iPad translation of "the messiness."

CWJ said...

I think those debating bagoh20's point may be missing it. I took his original to be that it is delusional to think any politician gives a shit about you personally so being enthusiastic about a candidate because of their supposed empathy is foolish. Trump is just the current example. I agree.

BTW, bagoh20, I initially loved your handle when I thought it was "bag o' water" - a very sly evocation of the human condition. Imagine my disappointment when I finally realized the final character was a zero rather than an "o."

bagoh20 said...

"Bags is a bit blinded by his own rags-to-riches story to appreciate Trump."

I wouldn't say blinded, but informed and having perspective. If you run the numbers, you see a pretty lackluster return on his inheritance for a guy that brags about his success and acumen so much. Most other billionaires started with essentially nothing by comparison. It's not a bad thing to start rich, but it hardly makes your wealth a great triumph.

bagoh20 said...

CWJ, you got the meaning of my handle right. I just mistyped it way back in the day when I first created the account. Now I'm stuck with a typo for a name. Somehow it's even more fitting for that.

khesanh0802 said...

@bagoh20 There are days when my support for Trump flags so badly that I want to run away and hide. Then I think of Clinton - that despicable person - and I dust myself off and say Trump is the only answer we have at the moment, deal with it! I am, perhaps, a little more optimistic than you about Trump, if he reverses many of the actions of the last eight years and stops the runaway growth of government I'll be happy. Spurring the growth of the economy, to me, is only a matter of the Feds getting out of the way., which I believe he understands completely.

As far as politicians in general go I wish we could go back to having the government run by people who had other things to do as it was originally intended (didn't last long however). Today's politicians are, for the most part, self-serving hacks. If they aren't to start with, they quickly morph.

tim in vermont said...

If he could start out his column explaining why it was perfectly normal for so many people for so many years to take the Fifth and why lying to the FBI is no cause for concern, and why the clusterfuck she has make of North Africa and the Levant as the lazy eyed war mongering Secretary of State is not a valid consideration, I would be more likely to read the rest of the article, contents of which are utterly predictable.

Original Mike said...

Blogger rhhardin said..."The moron is the fundamental particle of politics."

And the Clinton is its force carrier.

Robert Cook said...

"Obama is a 'centrist'? If he had been, Clinton would be clobbering Trump (and Trump wouldn't have won the Republican nomination)."

Obama is absolutely a centrist. This is why so many are so disappointed in him. He ran as a reformer, as (implicitly) a progressive, and he governed as a caretaker of the policies of the Wall-Street favoring policies of his predecessors.

I don't know this would render Clinton more popular among the voters. It's part of why she is so unpopular: voters know they were burned by Obama, and they know they'll be burned by her, because she can't mount the convincing facade of being a progressive that Obama managed.

Matt Sablan said...

If we're arguing Obama is a Centrist, I'd like to see where we're planting flags. He may be a centrist if we redefine where left/right are, but in any honest analysis of American politics he is left, maaaaaaaaaybe center left, but still left of center.

cubanbob said...

MadTownGuy said...
They thought Trump would be another Todd Akin. Instead, he's Archie Bunker. Like Norman Lear, they can't figure out why people like him.

10/7/16, 9:56 AM"

Norman Lear could never understand why Archie was so well liked and Meathead was regarded as a pompous ass. Add forty years, transgender him and Meathead morphs into Hillary.

Bage I'm wildly enthusiastic about the prospect of a president Trump appointing an army of special prosecutors to go after the Obama Administration criminals.

MacMacConnell said...

cubanbob said..
"Bage I'm wildly enthusiastic about the prospect of a president Trump appointing an army of special prosecutors to go after the Obama Administration criminals."

Criminal Hillary is running for her freedom, it's why we need Trump. That and since the Republicans will likely still control both houses the plan is to pass as much as possible though reconciliation process, negating the filibuster by Democrats and requiring just a simple majority vote. What's good for the gander is good for the goose.

Sam L. said...

Dems and their media minions just can't get their heads around the fact that Hillary doesn't play well outside the big cities.

bagoh20 said...

I don't think the nation can survive 8 more years without a Press. Trump's motto should be "Make America's Press Great Again!" Who can doubt he'll turn that institution around single-handed?

mockturtle said...

For a 'pundit' to even ask such a question reveals the lack of quality punditry we have nowadays.

Dixie_Sugarbaker said...

Why do blue collar people like Trump when they have so little in common? It is because he respects them. As a businessman he knows the success of his business depends on hourly, blue collar workers. He understands these people are the backbone of our country. They can sense that respect and gravitate to it. Hillary believes that she is entitled to the blue collared worker's votes; Trump respects them enough to ask for it.

Paul said...

PC is destroying our country, and for that matter it will destroy Western Civilization by gnawing away at its foundation. But that was always its intent. Does anyone here doubt this? Trump is anti PC so he gets my vote regardless of gaffs or peccadilloes. I never thought he, or any other politician, cared about me personally. It's enough he cares about America. God knows his opponent doesn't.

gerry said...

rhhardin, will negative or postive charges cause moron drift?

Michael said...

Robert Cook

You continue to impress. You live in a bubble within a bubble at the highest reaches of old school far left wing paranoia coupled with tiresome semantics. Hat's off. There couldn't be more than six or seven of you left.

Michael said...


Ponder for a moment what is happening along our Southern East coast. Trump and I know that the power will be restored by the Deplorables. They will climb the poles and reattach the lines and fix the grids. The Deplorables will do that and they will restore the food in the supermarkets and the gas in the gas pumps and will reopen the hotels and airports and inspect the bridges and get the airline schedules back on track.

Trump has deep respect for that. The other one does not. To her they are deplorable.

Robert Cook said...

"Robert Cook

"You continue to impress."


Thank you, Michael. Coming from you, it means a lot.

buwaya said...

"Trump and I know that the power will be restored by the Deplorables. "

True. The guys (nearly all are guys) in the trucks and on the poles and cherry-pickers and operating the heavy equipment, fixing water mains and drains and sewers, and if need be running the boat rescues and helicopters and all of that; plus those in the control rooms of all kinds.

I know a lot of these fellows. Trump voters to a man, even here in CA, even in the Bay Area.

Bilwick said...

Thomas Frank is invariably a finalist for the Linda Lovelace Award for State Fellating; and I want to know why isn't Robert Cook clobbering Frank in that contest?

MacMacConnell said...

Trump is real estate developer and we are to believe real estate developers never visits job sites and don't have a clue who's doing the work.

Darrell said...

I am shocked, every day. that Hillary isn't a 100 points behind.

Michael K said...

"It's not a bad thing to start rich, but it hardly makes your wealth a great triumph."

See the Hunt Brothers for the opposite example.

People like Jobs and Gates were at the right place and time. Bezos is actually more impressive to me. He created an industry that should have been Sears Roebuck II. They had all the infrastructure and the catalogue. All they had to do was put it on the internet. They didn't.

Romney did quite well and actually donated his inheritance but he has the advantage of Mormon culture. I forget how many of the Fortune 500 CEOs are Mormon but it is a lot.

Cookie is so far left that Obama is a centrist to him. Cookie should be preserved under glass as a specimen some day.

Robert Cook said...

"Cookie is so far left that Obama is a centrist to him."

Obama can only be seen as anywhere left of center by those so far right that even Goldwater would seem a little pink.

Molly said...

In my opinion, Hillary is clobbering Trump. A couple of models (Lichtman, and Ray Fair) both say that under "normal" circumstances, the Republican (as a non-incumbent party) would be comfortably ahead. Fair has a numerical prediction that has the Republican winning by a greater margin than either of the Obama victories. (You can google it.) So Clinton has not only overcome this 7-8 point "natural" disadvantage (due to poor economic performance and incumbency, in the case of Fair, and due to those things and some others in the case of Lichtman), but has taken a 6-7 point lead -- so I see the personalities as leading to a 15 point or so Clinton advantage, which I would call "clobbering".