It has now becomes dangerous: Trump is clearly ahead. Hilary Clinton must score substantially if the country is not to fall into political raving.
Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump: With great probability, that will be the duel for which the U.S. can brace itself. After their victories on Super Tuesday — when the competition was well-beaten — the nomination can hardly be taken from either of them. One is as anticipated as the other was for a long time inconceivable.
Trump’s success shows that he is capable of appealing to voters across all echelons and in all parts of the country. Clinton and the Democrats must not repeat the mistake of the Republicans and underestimate Trump. For too long, too many laughingly shrugged off the New Yorker and his mad theories. Clinton knows from the experience of the primaries against Bernie Sanders how easy it is for an underestimated candidate to become a threat.
Trump’s advantage, which he will also play out against Clinton, is his anti-establishment stance. Businessman, instead of party insider, who tells it like it is and doesn’t hide behind hollow phrases — that’s how Trump stages himself, and his fans run after him without thinking. At the same time, no one is as easy to tear to pieces as Trump.
His platform is full of holes; his positions vacillate. Only hardly anyone stops long enough for a fact check in a primary battle that is becoming shriller and shriller. Those disappointed by Washington and frustrated by life prefer to cheer Trump’s plans for a wall, and applaud when the candidates sling mud at one another.
Clinton must not play along with this game. She is powerless against Trump’s political value as a newcomer. No one belongs more to the political establishment of Washington than the Clintons. She has felt the backlash of that since her candidacy. The former secretary of state can no longer score with surprise. She has to sell content.
Her election platform is detailed. Against Sanders — who forces her to it with explicitly left-wing topics — Clinton shows knowledge in every last detail. If she forces Trump into an argument about content in a possible one-on-one situation, she can most easily reveal his weaknesses. In any case, the negative campaigns will continue on both sides, but they have often enough ricocheted off of Teflon-Trump.
The U.S. stands before a decisive election about not only which party will govern the White House at the end, but also whether the country wants to give in to the political raving of a Donald Trump.
The Republican Party establishment’s loathing for billionaire plutocrat Donald Trump is actually based almost solely on his brazen style . Does Trump threaten the ruling class base ? Is he anti-war ? Was he ever in the past confronted with being a KKK type racist ? Are Republican conservatives so much more ” politically correct” than Trump ?
The Democratic Party also now contains the seeds of its own destruction. How can fans of ” socialist ” Bernie Sanders hand the fate
of his ” political revolution ” to very heart of the Democratic Party establishment, to Hillary Clinton ?
As a democratic socialist myself and a critical supporter of Bernie Sanders I would cringe to hear him endorse that darling of Goldman Sachs, Hillary Clinton. And ” love and kindness ” Hillary could at least oppose the racist death penalty.
A scorned but principled Bernie Sanders could probably team up with Jill Stein, the presidential candidate of the Green Party.Then the Democratic Party establishment will really ” feel the Bern “.
[ http://radicalrons.blogspot.com]
“Businessman, instead of party insider, who tells it like it is and doesn’t hide behind hollow phrases — that’s how Trump stages himself, and his fans run after him without thinking.”
O, they’re thinking alright. They’re thinking how lucky they are to have this chance to sock it to the Washington establishment. And they are fuelled by righteous anger – and who can blame them? Their government by the people, for the people, of the people has perished from the earth, and what they’re stuck with is a whole army of self-serving politicians whose main priority is seeing that 95 percent of the wealth created by workers who need to work two jobs to keep bread on the table is distributed upwards, along with the taxes struggling Americans are obliged to contribute.
I rather doubt that half of Trump’s fans will vote for him if he gets the nomination – not all Republicans are that stupid – but right now they’re enjoying throwing the party into crisis. And the more establishment figures the party sends out to warn voters against Trump, the more angry Republicans Trump wins to his cause.
What is his cause? This is his way of throwing a grenade into a party that has become a deep embarrassment to America – an international embarrassment, a “clown car,” a ship of fools that the rest of the world finds highly amusing. Those elites who try to convince Americans that Trump is no Republican only add to the hilarity. For Trump is indeed a Republican – but without the dog whistle, i.e., the trick Republicans have of coding their racism, misogyny, homophobia, Islamophobia, and all their other varieties of hate in language that gets it past the gatekeepers of propriety and political correctness and directly into the ears of Republicans, who know very well what’s intended. But Trump is infuriated by that kind of political correctness, so he advertises himself as the guy who “tells it like it is” and dispenses with the dog whistle. (Anyone who’s studied the speeches of the Fuehrer knows what I’m talking about – and it probably accounts for all the Hitler and fascist analogies zinging around social media during these primaries.)
Democrats make a big mistake when they assume a supercilious pose and claim some kind of moral high ground above the trashy Trump and his trashy following. For the Democratic party, while it isn’t quite as entertaining as the GOP, is one of the most useless political organizations in the US. But that is a whole ‘nother story.