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But I'm wondering if that will apply, given that Trump is a raving lunatic.

(Well Worth The Full Read - Explains The Post)

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2016

http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/

The last couple of weeks in American politics have offered an interesting confirmation of some of the main themes I’ve discussed on this blog. For that matter, those weeks would have come as no surprise to one of the thinkers whose work has guided these essays since this blog started a decade ago, the philosopher of history Oswald Spengler. I can all too readily imagine the hard lines of Spengler’s face creasing in momentary amusement as he contemplates the temporarily divergent fates of those two candidates for the US presidency that, less than a year ago, nearly everyone insisted would be facing one another in the general election: Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton.

Bush is in some ways the perfect poster child for the theme I have in mind just now. When he launched his campaign last year, it was a letter-perfect copy of the successful presidential campaigns of the last three decades. He lined up plenty of big-money sponsors; he assembled a team of ghostwriters, spin doctors, and door-to-door salesmen to run his campaign; he had a PR firm design a catchy logo; he practiced spouting the kind of empty rhetoric that sounds meaningful so long as you don’t think about it for two minutes; he took carefully calculated stands on a handful of hot-button topics, mouthed the conventional wisdom on every other issue, and set out to convince the voters that their interests would be harmed just a little bit less by putting him in the White House than by any of the alternatives.

That sort of content-free campaign is what got George Bush I, Bill Clinton, George Bush II, and Barack Obama onto the list of US presidents. What it got Jeb Bush, though, was a string of humiliating defeats. Some have suggested that his tearful exit from the race in the wake of the South Carolina primary was the act of a child who had been promised a nice shiny presidency by his daddy, and then found out that the mean voters wouldn’t give it to him. I think, though, that there was considerably more to it than that. I think that Bush had just realized, to his shock and horror, that the rules of the game had been changed on him without notice, and all those well-informed, well-connected people who had advised him on the route that would take him to the presidency had basically been smoking their shorts.

If anything, though, Hillary Clinton’s campaign offers an even clearer glimpse into the festering heart of the American political process. She did exactly the same things that Jeb did—it’s indicative that the two of them both splashed their first names across their equally banal campaign logos—and she also managed, as he never did, to get the apparatchiks of her party lined up solidly on her side before the campaigning season got under way. By the ordinary rules of US politics, she should have enjoyed a leisurely stroll through the primaries to the Democratic convention while Jeb Bush wrestled with his opponents, and then gone into the general election with plenty of money to spare, saturating the air waves with a deluge of advertisements designed to convince the American people that four years under her leadership would be ever so slightly less disastrous for them than four years under Bush.

Snip ...

Bookmarked that puppy.

"I doubt it has entered her darkest dream that the American people might just up and decide to cast their votes to further their own interests rather than hers." Just count how many times she says "I" to lend support to this idea.

Under this thinking, then, can Bernie be considered a Caesarist?

Here's the problem I see. Most people aren't like us. Most people aren't political at all and in fact a great majority of voters are apolitical. They may watch the evening news or read Sunday's paper, but they won't be found on the internet discussing it (maybe an occasional FB post though). Most don't care.

I don't believe most people care about politics until it impacts their lives. Even then very few of those care to learn the issues. They usually go with someone they know and like on a personal level regardless of their politics. That's why Trump is such a threat. People know him, some people like him, and he's an outsider to the system. That will be enough for many voters.

For what it's worth I think Trump beats Clinton handily if they're the nominees. Not because of a high turnout for Trump but because of very low turnout for Clinton. That's the way it's looking to me anyway.

In the meantime I'll do what I can to encourage people to just look at the data. And throw Bernie the occasional 50 bucks. Thanks for commenting.

But he likes Cruz, so go figure.

I just don't know how many of them there are. Besides, I can't figure how a small government tax-hating Republican would ever vote for a Social Democrat.

He sees income inequality as a huge problem. The thing he hates about Trump is his crass behaviour. He hates Hillary almost as must as Trump. If the election is between the 2 of them, he said he won't vote. But he likes Cruz and Rubio.