Donald Trump Still Surging In The Polls
His remarks about John McCain's military service don't seem to be hurting Donald Trump with Republican true believers.
Three new polls show that, while Donald Trump is not exactly leaving his fellow candidates in the dust, he is nonetheless continuing to cement a strong presence in the race that will likely guarantee that he won’t be going away any time soon.
First up, there’s a new CNN/ORC poll that shows Trump in the lead although within the margin of error:
In the first national telephone poll since Donald Trump earned rebukes from Republican leaders over his comments about Senator John McCain’s military service, the real estate mogul has increased his support among GOP voters and now stands atop the race for the party’s nomination.
The new CNN/ORC Poll finds Trump at 18% support among Republicans, with former Florida governor Jeb Bush just behind at 15%, within the poll’s margin of error.
They are joined at the top of the pack by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, with 10% support among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who are registered to vote. Trump’s backing has climbed 6 points since a late-June poll, while support for Bush and Walker has not changed significantly
None of the other 14 candidates tested in the new CNN/ORC survey earned double-digit support.
Though Trump currently tops the race for the nomination, his advantage is by no means firm. A majority of Republican voters, 51%, say they see the field as wide open, and that it’s too soon to say which candidate they will ultimately get behind. Among that group that see the contest as wide open, Bush has 14% support, while Trump has the backing of 13% and Walker stands at 9%.
Trump does much better among those Republicans who say they’ve narrowed it down to one or two candidates, 24% of that group backs him, 16% Bush and 12% Walker.
Trump’s popularity among Republican voters does not translate to the broader pool of registered voters. When tested in hypothetical general election matchups against top Democrats, he trails both frontrunner Hillary Clinton and upstart Senator Bernie Sanders by wide margins. Bush and Walker run just behind Clinton and about even with Sanders.
Trump’s unfavorability rating is sky high. Overall, 59% of all registered voters have an unfavorable opinion of Trump, though that dips to 42% among GOP voters.
None of the other Republicans landing near the top of the field have such a negative image nationwide, though many remain little known.
A separate part of the poll shows that a majority want Trump to stay in the race notwithstanding the fact that many have a negative of him:
Most Republican voters want Donald Trump to remain in the race for president, and he’s the candidate GOP voters are most likely to say they want to see on the debate stage, according to a new CNN/ORC Poll.
Trump, whose campaign for the presidency has come to dominate much of the news coverage of the Republican presidential field since he formally announced his candidacy in mid-June, remains a person Republican voters want to see more of, and a sizable 22% say they think he’ll eventually win the party’s nomination for president — second only to Jeb Bush
Among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who are registered to vote, 52% say they want Trump to stay in the race for the party’s nomination, while 33% hope that he drops out. Another 15% say they’d like to see him make an independent run for the presidency.
The CNN/ORC Poll is the first publicly-released national telephone poll to be conducted entirely after Trump talked about Senator John McCain’s military record during an Iowa campaign event last weekend, drawing rebukes from Republicans for saying he didn’t think McCain is a war hero.
The majority of those Republicans surveyed that wants Trump to remain in the race includes numbers of those seen as the core of the GOP primary electorate: 58% of white evangelicals, 58% of conservatives, and 57% of tea party supporters.
RELATED: Trump Iowa supporters shrug off McCain controversy
And when Republican voters are asked to set aside whichever candidate they currently support and pick someone else from the field whom they would most like to see on the debate stage in the next few months, 18% choose Trump, 14% say they want to see Bush there, and everyone else in the field is named by less than 10% of Republican voters.
Among a smaller swath of conservative GOP voters, another contender rises to double-digits: Florida Senator Marco Rubio. Twelve percent of conservative Republican voters say he’s the candidate they’d most like to see on the debate stage, about even with Bush at 14% and Trump at 16%.
Still, more say they expect someone other than Trump will ultimately win the nomination than think that the developer is the most likely winner.
If nothing else the poll, along with others that have come out in the last week, seems to demonstrate quite clearly that Trump’s remarks about John McCain last weekend, which were almost universally condemned by his opponents in the Republican field and even the Republican National Committee, have not had much of an impact on his campaign. It’s possible that they have blunted his rise in the polls to some extent, and that he’d actually be doing better right now had he not said what did is possible but nearly impossible to measure accurately. The best that one can say is that the Trump phenomenon, whatever it might be, would appear to have some staying power and seems unlikely to fade any time before the upcoming debate in Cleveland scheduled for August 6th. This poll follows a YouGov/Economist poll that was released yesterday that actually showed Trump leading the pack with the support of 28% of respondents while his nearest opponent, Jeb Bush, was all the way back at 14% and Scott Walker was the only other candidate in double digits at 13%. YouGov’s polling methodology is somewhat suspect because it uses online panels, however the phenomenon it captures in Trump’s rise is something that we have seen in a number of polls over the past month.
National polls are important right now, of course, because they will be the primary criteria for determining who gets invited to the first round of debates. Right now, the RealClearPolitics average shows Trump in the lead at 18.2%, followed by Bush at 13.7% and then Scott Walker at 11.7%. No other candidate currently has a polling average in the double digits. Using these numbers, which may not necessarily be the same ones that Fox News will use in the coming week when it sends out its invitations or CNN will use for its debate in September, we can get a basic picture of who is likely to be at the debates. At the moment, that would be Trump, Bush, Walker, Marco Rubio, Mike Huckabee, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Chris Christie, and somewhat surprisingly Ohio Governor John Kaisch who has jumped up in the polls and now is a head of Rick Perry in the polling average. Perry, Rick Santorum, Bobby Jindal, Carly Fiorina, Lindsey Graham, George Pataki, and Jim Gilmore would all be shut out of the debate.
In addition to the national poll released today, NBC and Marist College released polls out of Iowa and New Hampshire that also show Trump doing well, along with a couple ther surprises:
Donald Trump has surged to the lead in the New Hampshire GOP presidential primary and virtually erased Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s advantage in the Iowa caucuses, according to new NBC News/Marist polls released Sunday.
In Iowa, Walker still tops the field with 19 percent, the poll shows — only two points ahead of Trump, who garners 17 percent. Interviews for the poll began on July 14 — the day after the Walker campaign’s launch event in Wisconsin. The only other candidate in double digits is former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, at 12 percent.
Those lagging behind include a number of candidates banking on strong finishes in Iowa. Neurosurgeon Ben Carson is in fourth place, at 8 percent, followed by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee at 7 percent, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul at 5 percent, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz at 4 percent and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio at 4 percent.
Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, for whom a super PAC has spent more than $600,000 on ads on Iowa television supporting him over the past six weeks, is at just 3 percent. Bobby Jindal’s super PAC has spent almost $400,000 on Iowa TV ads, but the Louisiana governor only garners 1 percent in the poll.
Meanwhile, in the first-in-the-nation primary state of New Hampshire, Trump is in the lead at 21 percent. Bush, the second-place candidate, is at 14 percent.
Walker is third, at 12 percent, followed by a surprise fourth-place finisher: Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who announced his campaign on the last day the poll was in the field, is at 7 percent. The rest of the candidates earning significant support are tightly bunched: Carson and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie are at 6 percent, Rubio and Cruz are at 5 percent, Paul is at 4 percent and Huckabee is at 3 percent.
Kasich’s strong performance in New Hampshire came mostly before he was an official candidate, but he had some help: A pro-Kasich super PAC, New Day for America, has spent more than $1.8 million on television ads in the Granite State in the past three weeks.
As for the Trump surge, it comes even as many Republican voters remain resistant to him. In Iowa, Trump’s favorability rating is only at parity among Republican voters: 45 percent favorable to 44 percent unfavorable. And in New Hampshire, where he leads, a 53-percent majority of Republicans has an unfavorable opinion; just 39 percent view him favorably.
The Iowa results continue to show Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker leading, although his lead has slipped significantly from what it was just a few months ago before other candidate started entering the race. In the poll average, Walker is ahead at 19.3%, Trump is at 11.8% and no other candidate is in double digits. To large degree, this state is a must-win state for Walker and if somehow manages to lose in February, or comes away with a “win” that is far less than what many were expecting than it could do serious damage to his campaign heading into New Hampshire’s primary the following week. As for Trump, it would seem that his recent visits to the state have paid off in that they are pushing his numbers upward even though he continues to trail Walker. During his appearance yesterday, Trump actually began attacking Walker for the first time in this race. So far, Walker hasn’t responded but it will interesting to watch the Iowa polls to see if this latest Trump imbroglio has any impact. As for the candidates, Bush continues to do decently in the Hawkeye State notwithstanding the fact that he is somewhat out of step with the voters there. If and when Trump leaves the race, it’s possible that Iowa could become a battle between Bush and Walker, just like New Hampshire could be. If anyone should be disappointed with this poll, though, it’s Rick Perry who continues to languish in the low single digits despite spending a sizable amount of money and spending a lot of time there. Unless Perry can turn his campaign around in the debates, this could be over very quickly for the former Texas Governor. Another candidate who is likely disappointed in the Iowa poll is Rick Santorum, who narrowly won the caucuses last year. This time around, he literally registered 0% support in the NBC poll and is at 0.3% in the poll average. Like Perry, Santorum may not be long for this race unless he can turn things around soon.
The New Hampshire poll is consistent with others that have shown Trump in the lead, so that one fact is not really much of a surprise. Trump has a narrow lead over Jeb Bush in the polling average for the state, for example, and so far he seems to be moving upward in the state. If there is a surprise here, it is the fact that John Kasich, who just entered the race last Tuesday and had been languishing in the polls before then. To no small degree, this jump is likely due to the fact that Kasich was spending money in the state on television ads and visiting the state since well before he formally enter the race. If he’s able to maintain this momentum and does in the upcoming debates, Kasich could become a real contender alongside candidates like Bush, Walker, and Rubio. Much of that, of course, will depend on where he ends up in the national polls over the course of the next week. If he can stay ahead of Rick Perry, then he’ll be in and he’ll have his shot.
If there’s any lesson to be drawn from all these polls, it’s the the Trump phenomenon continues to grow and that there is no sign of it ending any time soon. Perhaps Trump’s performance in the debate, if it’s anything like his stump speeches or his appearance on cable news, will do him in and bring and an end to this circus. It seems more likely, though, that the force that Trump is tapping into will continue to build regardless of what he says. If insulting Mexicans and POWs isn’t going to get him out of the race, I’m honestly not sure what will. As I’ve said before, Trump seems likely to not be in this for the long haul but he’s in on his own terms and it’s not going to be easy to get him to quit.
Frankenstein’s monster.
All of this analysis supposes that the Republican party is actually rational. Listening to some of my right wing friends, they’ve tried the whole “nominate a RINO” thing the last two times and it didn’t work out so well. This time they want someone who will “represent what they think”, and Trump is their man!!!!
What’s really great though … on the off, off, off (somewhere in an alternate universe) chance that Donald Trump actually got elected President, you know that the first time these same Conservatives who love the Donald now, threw anything that even sounded like criticism his way, he’d tell them which bridge to go jump off of and do whatever he wants to anyway. 🙂
The latest survey says that three times as many Americans believe that the country is headed “on the wrong track” as believe we are going on the right track and Doug is surprised that a wacker like The Donald is leading in the polls?
Good luck selling Hillary to the voting population next year. Maybe she could run on “Change” too.
@Todd:
I suspect that is true – if you swap the word “feel” for “think.” This is not about policies, if it were Republicans wouldn’t even consider Trump. It’s about incoherent rage and frustration.
@michael reynolds: I agree. Feel is probably a better word.
The other thing is, if there’s any Republican that Conservatives despise almost as much as Clinton, it’s Jeb Bush. They really, really don’t want him to be their nominee.
Predicting Presidential politics isn’t really that hard. If I had to bet right now, smart money says Hillary Clinton will almost certainly be the next President (regardless of who she runs against). Obviously not a sure thing, but best odds.
There is a bet that is almost a sure thing though. Whoever the next President is, Conservatives (and to some extent extreme Liberals too) will not be happy with her/him .. pretty much from day one. 🙂
@Todd:
Exactly right, completely dead-on. You just described the attitude of my parents and 6 of my brothers and sisters, plus the majority of my sister-and-brother-in-laws. Most of my family was ambivalent about McCain but Sarah Palin? They loved her – brassy, ‘speaks the truth’ etc….
Me? I’m loving this. I know that this could be case of ‘watch out what you wish for’ but … nah … I still think it will come down to Walker, Rubio, maybe Kasich and Bush (if he ever wakes up and cuts back on the Ambien).
The funny thing about Trump’s rise is he has a long record of endorsing progressive positions like universal healthcare and abortion rights. He has donated to Democrats in the past, including Hillary Clinton. GOP voters would never tolerate this sort of reinvention from a conventional Republican politician, but they’ll happily buy Trump as Pat Buchanan 2.0.
Huckabee knows the only way he can get attention is to out Trump Trump. “President Obama marching Israelis ‘to the door of the oven’”
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/mike-huckabee-iranian-nuclear-deal-120636.html
@edmondo: None of the Republicans, including Donald Trump, can beat 20%.
That is, a majority of Democratic voters support Hillary Clinton.
And a majority of Republicans oppose Donald Trump.
Jim Mora says, “Luck? Luck?? Are you kidding me?”
@Ron Beasley:
Instead of a race to the bottom, it’s a race to be the craziest. Please proceed, candidates.
@James Pearce:
Edmondo strikes me as the kind of liberal who would actually be happy if a Republican wins the Presidency next year. Better a Republican President than an impure liberal.
I have about a 90 per cent confidence level that he voted Nader in 2000, because “both sides are the same.”
Both the base and about half of the Republican candidates are in full-on, hard-core, reactionary, nativist, let my unrestrained id run free mode.
Trump is the symptom. He is the vessel for the rage.
This is not a sign of a healthy polity.
If our press reported on our politics like they report on far right-wing parties in Europe the tone would be appalled and contemptuous. “How could such a thing happen in a Western civilized nation like Germany or France or Greece?” would be the direct or implied message.
Can someone actually tell me how Golden Dawn and the US Republicans have differing policy outcome preferences?
Roughly 27% of Americans would welcome a fascist takeover. These folks have an enormous influence on one of our two viable political parties.
Somewhat off-topic but related to voters’ view of the two parties, there is a very recent Pew Poll showing that only 32% of respondents have a favorable view of the Repubs and that even Republicans have lost respect for their own party. Dems continue to gain on an assortment of issues. Worth a look:
http://www.people-press.org/2015/07/23/gops-favorability-rating-takes-a-negative-turn/
@JohnMcC: This is what happens when your presidential primary becomes a clown car or in the case of this year a clown bus. When you have to pander to the portion of the base that actually shows up to vote in the primaries – the lowest common denominator in American politics – you are not going to look good. They can thank Rush Limbaugh and FOX “news” for this.
Huckabee on the Iran deal:
To the door of the oven…
Stay classy, Republicans
@JohnMcC:
Thanks for that link. Really interesting poll. On issues there are only two where Republicans lead fairly convincingly, gun control and terrorism. R’s by 12 and 10 points respectively.
The Democrats have wide margins on health care (10 points), education (12), abortion (19) and environment (26.)
Overall Dems have 7 wins to 4 on issues, with lots of those issues being within MOE or otherwise marginal.
But that stat on Republican and independent views of the GOP is kind of amazing. Sharply down in both subsets while Dems and independents see no change in their attitudes to the Democratic Party.
Number after number after number favors the Democrats, and the future looks amazing when you look at the generational breakdown. The future does not like Republicans.
@stonetools:
I can’t speculate on what kind of voter Edmondo is, but it strikes me as nothing but foolish to think that Trump’s slim advantage in poll numbers means he’s actually the strongest Republican candidate.
There are 16 candidates right now. And they’re all weak. Let me repeat that: They’re all weak.
Donald Trump “surging” in the polls just underlines that essential fact.
My instinct would be to say the same about Hillary, but she alone of all the presidential candidates has not only a plurality of voter support, but also a rather solid majority. (She’s not only beating her nearest rival by 20 points, she’s got the support of over 50% of likely Dem voters.)
That’s not to say that Hillary has an advantage in the general election. Her head-to-head numbers are rather awful. But that’s before 16 Republicans tear themselves up in the primary.
Trump will not be the Republican nominee. Sanders will not be the Democrat nominee. The news media, power groups, and government/financial conglomerates will see to that. But running together they could pull enough of the disenchanted, disgusted middle class people to make a horse race of it. A lot of people are tired of being told who they are going to elect as the next president.
I don’t think that Trump would let an unruly mob of hooligans disrupt and take his microphone away.
Is Al Sharpton still alive? If so, could we somehow make him the Democratic frontrunner? I would sell m my country into four years of misery just to see a head to head race between Trump and Sharpton.
Alan Grayson would also be acceptable.
@stonetools:
I have about a 90 per cent confidence level that he voted Nader in 2000, because “both sides are the same.”
Hell, no. The two parties are very different! Jeb! wants to repeal Medicare. Hillary only wants to destroy Social Security as it is presently configured. Great choices.
Trump is the end-product of the Republican/Libertarian koan that more money = more merit. Also called Worthington’s Law. Walker, Rubio, and Bush are all gov’t sponges, sucking from the teat, while Trump is the TRUE job creator and visionary who will lead the USA like a CEO. By their own rhetoric, they’ve created the perfect unwinnable candidate, who touches the bases’ erogenous zones (racism, nativism, worship of wealth, assholery).
What’s funny is to see the the disconnect between the smart Republicans and their base. They both run on the mantra “Do Anything to Make Liberals Mad” as their primary directive, but only the smart Republicans realize that almost all liberals are gleeful at the prospect of the Trump candidacy. The Republican base, safely cocooned the in Fox News/Rush Limbaugh narrative, are not politically aware enough to realize this fact. Which basically means Roger Ailes is running the Republican party right now (even more so than before). Fox News could pull the plug on Trump…and they will when the time is right. The only question is whether it will be before or after the debates. Trump could be useful as a stalking horse, saying HRC is a “demon feminazi who will castrate all American males,” letting Bush or Walker or Rubio springboard as the “moderate” who will still enact horrible policies for which Doug and James will cheer (after the requisite chinstrokes).
@michael reynolds:
Actually, I would never vote for a Republican, but I hope that the future does like Republicans to some extent. We need an opposition party. A responsible one.
But they need a shock to the system. A Goldwater, Mondale type blow-out. They are on an unnatural path and need to be knocked off it. If their id runs absolutely free, we’re looking at fascism or its attempt.
Right now in the US, we don’t have the equivalent of the Tories and Labour, we have the Tories and the BNP. We have Christian Democrats and the National Front.
We have a center party and a far-right party. And our far-right party is getting more and more radical every month, at least in rhetoric.
Only, unlike the rest of the Western world, we only have two parties, and our far-right party controls both of our national legislative houses, a great portion of our judiciary, and a majority of our state legislatures and governorships.
Airline stewardess dies from Ebola symptoms
EbolaOutbreakMap.Com
@de stijl:
But of course. To certain Republicans, being mentioned in the same breath as Columbia and Paraguay is PARADISE! Women dying from ectopic pregnancies! Priests raping with abandon! Corruption running rampant! Bribery the only way to freedom! Atheism punishable by flogging!
It’s enough to bring tears of joy to Ross Douthats’ eyes.
Airline stewardess dies from Ebola symptoms
http://www.ebolaoutbreakmap.com/listings/british-airways-stewardess-dies-from-ebola/
@Tyrell:
Why would those two ever run as a unity ticket? What do they have in common?
Neither would have the other.
And, if Thor knows why they ever decided to run together, both sets of current supporters would think that their guy has totally gone off his rocker and would flee like rats from a sinking ship.
A Sanders / Trump ticket would win about 17 votes nationwide. American right-wing populism and left-wing populism have very little in common.
The biggest difference between the two is that “right-wing populism” is, in reality, about as populist as the People’s Republic of China is a republic.
Modern American conservatism is by definition an ideology aimed at protecting the wealthy and the powerful. You can’t call yourself a populist and support such an ideology. When Donald Trump or Pat Buchanan or Mike Huckabee start talking about raising taxes on the rich, maybe they can begin to earn the “populist” label. Until then, their rhetoric can best be described as pseudo-populist.
I am not trying to romanticize true populism, which I’m well aware has an ugly side in its history. There definitely were elements of nativism and racism in the populist movements of figures such as William Jennings Bryan or Huey Long. But those men were definitely populists, often proposing to soak the rich in ways that make today’s Occupy movement seem rather timid by comparison. Long’s famous motto, after all, was “share the wealth.” I’d just once like to hear those words or anything remotely similar escape Trump’s lips. Why should they? Not even the “socialist” Bernie Sanders ever says anything that bold. And honestly, does anyone really think that’s what Trump is about? If not, then maybe we should start reserving the term “populist” for people who show some genuine interest in policies aimed at helping those making less than six figures, instead of just throwing the term around to anyone who bashes “elites.”
@Tyrell:
Just exactly how would Trump prevent #BLM protesters from taking his mic? Does he have a magic mic protecting rock? Whenever he carries that rock no one has ever stolen his mic?
I’d buy that rock for a dollar.
BTW, what makes a “hooligan” a hooligan? What defines a group of people as “unruly” or as a “mob?” Do they have identifying features that allows you to make this distinction? What, exactly, could this distinction be?
@de stijl:
Somebody who looks and sounds like you?
It’s like Joyner the other day where he got to say the word “Riot” in the headline and in his post, but he very carefully did not call the #BLM protesters rioters because he would get freaking nailed if he did.
Screw that noise. If you cannot distinguish between non-violent protest and a damned riot, that’s your fricken fault.
If you guys want to call uppity black people rioters, just do it. Don’t pussy-foot around. Let your flag fly.
Sitting at the whites-only lunch counter was provocative. Rosa Parks was imprudent. Bus boycotts were un-American. Sit-ins and marches were disruptive. Cassius Clay converting to Islam and truthfully declaring that “No Viet Cong ever called me nigger” was a national scandal.
Now, we’ve somehow rewritten history where MLK is now a cuddly color-blind token. He wanted a full-scale re-ordering of how we think about and act about race in America.
We, as a society, treat black people like crap, but we hate it when people point that out.
And we think that the people that point out our failure are the problem.
@OzarkHillbilly:
It astounds me that we are utterly unable to talk about race in America without being intentionally stupid. We pretend that the past never happened.
Meanwhile I have a comment that is in “Your comment is awaiting moderation” status because I used the exact same words that Muhammad Ali used when he pointed put that the Viet Cong had not slurred him in the way that white people in America had. Somehow Ali was the bad guy in that situation.
I’m flummoxed.
A commenter at Arnold Kling’s Askblog succinctly states the current state of affairs when commenting on hipster politics
So embrace the diversity and celebrate that the middle class is fed up and using Trump to vent.
Yes, the Democratic Party does pretend they weren’t the party of slavery, the party of the Confederacy, the party of apartheid, the party that destroyed Detroit and is destroying other urban centers even now. The party of segregated cities like San Francisco and Seattle.
@de stijl:
I think we engage in wishing the stupid, embarrassing, shameful parts away. But of course, they won’t go away. Kind of like JKB.
@de stijl: unruly mob of hooligans: self indulged, rude, boorish and consumed by their own greed. They disregard the rights of others, push their way around, and think only what they want matters.
Can someone explain why we should dread president Trump more than a president Walker, Bush or Rubio?
@Tyrell:
Describes Trump to perfection. The protesters? Not even close.
@Castanea: Wrong question. The right question is “Why should Republicans dread a Trump candidacy/nomination more than a Walker, Bush, or Rubio?”
The answer is simple: The GOP loses for sure with Trump.
@Castanea:
Don’t make me defend Bush, Walker, and Rubio.
@JKB:
Kling’s quote cuts to the bone in a way most liberals wouldn’t like to admit to themselves.
But that said, the “middle class” isn’t using Trump to vent. The “take our country back” Tea Party right is using Trump to vent….and really, those people have been “venting” for nearly a decade. Maybe they should find a more useful application for all that steam.
@Castanea: I’m not sure that “we” do dread a President Trump, as we don’t think it could ever happen. But I’m starting to think we might be wrong. He keeps improving in the Republican polls, and were he nominated there’s always the chance of a scandal or a crisis or health derailing Hillary. I don’t think Trump believes a word he says, which makes it difficult to predict what he’d do. Rubio has less of a record, but it’s easy to predict what Bush and Walker would do. And you are quite right, they’re more to be feared as prez than Trump.
@de stijl: “Now we’ve rewritten history where MLK was a cuddly color-blind token.” Indeed. Martin’s evolution against the War in VietNam and against predatory capitalism was part of the eye-opening that I went through. And the central message of his life was that I was a loser because of racism that was theoretically going to elevate my ‘race’. In fact the very reason ‘black lives matter’ is because if black lives don’t matter then neither does the precious life of my white @ss.
Have we heard this kind of revolutionary wisdom since?
@edmondo:
Liar:
http://www.ontheissues.org/celeb/Hillary_Clinton_Social_Security.htm
Hillary was of course in the Senate during the time when the Democrats foiled Bush’s attempt to privatize social security. She did not break ranks.
A more recent quote from Hillary:
Seriously- there is a case to be made against Hillary from the left. Why would one lie instead?
@JKB:
Give me a break: we are not talking about the “middle class” here- but about the same people who had been screaming that “they” had stolen the country from “us” for the last fifty years.
@JKB: “…the middle class is fed up and using Trump to vent.” I congratulate you on apparently having made the journey through 14 comments (all but one harshly condemning conservative points of view) prior to ‘sam’ who’s very brief comment you quote in full. Of course, there was absolutely nothing in the previous comments or in the Original Post about Mr Trump or anyone in the Repub “field”. So your intellectual skills at grafting ‘sam’s’ comment from an OP concerning the distinction between ‘Silicon Valley democrats’ vs traditional ‘union member’ dems onto our current discussion of Mr Trump causing problems to the Repub side of the debate speak highly of your … um … imagination.
@humanoid.panda
Actually, all we are talking about is 20% of respondents in a random sampling of Republicans who answered their phone.
@edmondo: Wait a second, isn’t destroying Social Security as it is presently configured on Jeb!’s agenda too?
@OzarkHillbilly: He left out poor. If only he had used that word…
That’s because most Republican voters know good television!
@Just ‘nutha ig’rant cracker: I’m not a Republican voter but I know I want to see him on that stage.
@Tyrell:
Was Rep. Joe Wilson self indulged? Was Joe Wilson rude or boorish?
Were the 2000 Brooks Brothers Brigade, banging away on the windows where people were counting votes, protesting or were they rioting? Was Rep. John Sweeney decorous and a proper steward of the public order? Was Sweeney not animated by his own greed?
Please tell me the distinction other than the color of the skin of the person who is objecting.
11/10/99:
There are many different Trumps.
Test
Are you trying to reply to me and getting stuck in the spam filter? If so, I can tell how to fix that problem.
jukeboxgrad,
Exactly! Fill me in, dude!
Here is what I was trying to say (I’m going to drop the Reply To to see if that works):
What is the over-under that Trump was going through a bankruptcy when he made his tax proposal? Trump knows how to protect his assets.
I read your mind, and then you read my mind. There’s a bug in the Reply command here, and it’s somehow linked to my name. It’s been this way for a long time. Weird.
Good point, I never thought of that.
Doug: “If nothing else the poll, along with others that have come out in the last week, seems to demonstrate quite clearly that Trump’s remarks about John McCain last weekend, which were almost universally condemned by his opponents in the Republican field and even the Republican National Committee, have not had much of an impact on his campaign. It’s possible that they have blunted his rise in the polls to some extent, and that he’d actually be doing better right now had he not said what did is possible but nearly impossible to measure accurately.”
Krugman’s theory is that while The Village loves McCain, the Base doesn’t. The former were shocked; the latter was cheered.