For the GOP, the terrifying lesson is that Donald Trump — who abandoned Republican zeal for cutting entitlements while going all in on a few reactionary issues, like immigration — speaks to the preferences of the general electorate more than the party platform.
Finally, if we are in a realignment moment, the Democrats need to move their economic agenda leftward in a hurry. The implicit gamble the party seems to be making with Clinton is that the Obama coalition can hold together without any serious tweaks to the platform. But so far it's only been challenged by elitist champions of standard GOP economic policies, and Democrats may be underestimating how much the instinctive economic liberalism of their various voter blocks kept the party glued together in response. The Obama coalition has never gone up against someone like Trump, and as my colleague Ryan Cooper pointed out, there's no guarantee it will hold together.
If the Clinton campaign doesn't adapt, they may well enter the general election by walking right into a populist buzzsaw named Donald Trump.
The polls may not show it at the moment, but this article sums up why I think Trump really has a chance to defeat Clinton in November.
His positioning as populist on economic issues yet hawkish on immigration, is closer to the popular center of American public opinion than the current GOP establishment.
All he needs to do, and it is a very big if, is persuade the left of centre Democratic voters to elect him as president.
Peace always has been and always will be an intermittent flash of light in a dark history of warfare, violence, and destruction
You know you’ve witnessed an epic upset when the victor is as glassy-eyed and gobsmacked as the vanquished.
A groggy and disheveled Bernie Sanders approached the podium in Miami Tuesday night, three slightly askew campaign signs haphazardly tacked to the wall behind him, talking to a room that had been abandoned by his supporters hours earlier. He had the happily dazed expression of a death-row inmate who had just been told he wasn’t going to be executed, and – who knows? – he might even have a shot at getting the warden’s job.
Michigan was meshuggana. Anyone who polled the Democratic race there should chuck it in and pursue a new career in interpretive dance – Hillary Clinton never had a 17-point lead (the average of several closing-day surveys) and moreover, the exits showed the race wasn’t swayed by a wave of last-minute defectors. And that means every other Clinton lead in the region could be a chimera, or not – nobody knows.
Clinton still commands a big lead in overall delegates but her failure to finish off a 74-year-old socialist from Vermont who a year ago had the national name recognition of, well, a 74-year-old socialist from Vermont, augurs ill for a string of upcoming contests in the Rust Belt.
The Rust Belt states are key - they will likely switch to Trump in November, assuming Sanders fails to get the Democratic nomination.
Peace always has been and always will be an intermittent flash of light in a dark history of warfare, violence, and destruction
You know you’ve witnessed an epic upset when the victor is as glassy-eyed and gobsmacked as the vanquished.
A groggy and disheveled Bernie Sanders approached the podium in Miami Tuesday night, three slightly askew campaign signs haphazardly tacked to the wall behind him, talking to a room that had been abandoned by his supporters hours earlier. He had the happily dazed expression of a death-row inmate who had just been told he wasn’t going to be executed, and – who knows? – he might even have a shot at getting the warden’s job.
Michigan was meshuggana. Anyone who polled the Democratic race there should chuck it in and pursue a new career in interpretive dance – Hillary Clinton never had a 17-point lead (the average of several closing-day surveys) and moreover, the exits showed the race wasn’t swayed by a wave of last-minute defectors. And that means every other Clinton lead in the region could be a chimera, or not – nobody knows.
Clinton still commands a big lead in overall delegates but her failure to finish off a 74-year-old socialist from Vermont who a year ago had the national name recognition of, well, a 74-year-old socialist from Vermont, augurs ill for a string of upcoming contests in the Rust Belt.
The Rust Belt states are key - they will likely switch to Trump in November, assuming Sanders fails to get the Democratic nomination.
It is too soon to count Bernie out. He has raised five million sense Tuesday's win in Michigan and by my count 461 of Hillary's delegates are super delegates that can switch sides if they choose to.
As lots of conservatives on social media have already said, just imagine if a bunch of violent Trump fans had disrupted a Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton event. They would be called fascists, and the condemnation would be global. Politicians across the world would issue statements expressing concern.
When the same thing happens to a Trump rally, however, the reaction is strangely mute. This unfairness causes resentment which causes Trump to win more votes.
In fact, lots of people who previously might have not voted for Trump will now do so precisely because they don’t want to be told what to do by a bunch of snarling, smug left-liberal millennials. If there was any chance of stopping Donald Trump becoming the Republican nominee, it was shut down last night in Chicago.
Trump has a remarkable ability to drive his opponents up the wall and in the process discrediting themselves.
He baited Marco Rubio to the point that Rubio tried to out-insult him, with disastrous results for Rubio's chances of becoming the Republican candidate.
Trump's at times inflammatory language drives the hard left up the wall but attacking policemen and shutting down rallies is not a smart way to appeal to Middle America.
Most ordinary Americans, even those who disagree with Trump, will be appalled by the violence and infiltration of a peaceful rally and the resulting attacks on law and order afterwards.
Peace always has been and always will be an intermittent flash of light in a dark history of warfare, violence, and destruction
Noam Chomsky, who is no Democrat party supporter, wrote:There's no need to review the spectacle of the Republican primaries. Commentators can barely conceal their disgust, and concern for what it tells us about the country and contemporary civilization. The candidates have, however, answered the crucial questions. They either deny global warming or insist that nothing should be done about it, demanding, in effect, that we race even more rapidly to the precipice. Insofar as they have detectable policies, they seem to be intent to escalate military confrontation and threats. For these reasons alone, the Republican organization - one hesitates to call it a political party in any traditional sense - poses a threat of a novel and truly horrifying kind to the human species and to the others who are "collateral damage" as higher intelligence proceeds on its suicidal course.
I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker
AutomaticEarth wrote:Clinton wiped the floor with Sanders.
I think that is an exaggeration as some of the state races were quite close.
Also the Dems hand out delegates proportionality (sort of) so Bernie actually won some delegates last night.
edit to add, 169 delegates with probably 30 more coming from Missouri when they finish counting the votes. (Clinton is only ahead there by 2000 votes.)
I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker
The more big money, big media and the Republican establishment condemn Trump, the better he does.
All the sneering of the liberal-left does is drive ever more people to vote for Trump - because that sneering is implicitly directed against millions of decent, law abiding citizens who are sick of a crooked political system.
I suspect that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, that Trump will win a majority of delegates.
Why? The more the arrogant media pundits and Republican leaders talk about a brokered convention and removing the most popular candidate, the more likely the voters will stick two fingers at the establishment and give him the majority.
Peace always has been and always will be an intermittent flash of light in a dark history of warfare, violence, and destruction
