Tag Archives: Trump

The “I’m Not a Racist!” Vote….

As of today, the presidential primaries are over. Our choice in November is between Hillary Clinton and the unthinkable. So it may be instructive to look closely at those who are thinking the unthinkable.

Trump’s recent attack on Judge Curiel is doing more than simply underlining The Donald’s utter ignorance of separation of powers–the bedrock of America’s constitutional architecture. It is driving a wedge between the unapologetic racists who back him–the KKK and white supremacists whose support he has pointedly refused to reject–and the much larger number of voters who deny racist attitudes and tell pollsters they like Trump because “he tells it like it is.”

These are the people who harbor “racial resentments” but are unwilling to admit (probably even to themselves) that they are responding to Trump’s way-beyond-dog-whistle rhetoric.

Recent data is bringing the drivers of Trumpism into sharper focus, and what we’re seeing is striking: Racial attitudes may play a larger role in opinions toward Trump than once thought. Economic concerns, on the other hand, don’t seem to have as much of an impact on support for Trump.

Two recent studies bear this out. In the first, Hamilton College political scientist Philip Klinkner analyzed data from the 2016 American National Election Study (ANES) survey (a representative sample of 1,200 Americans) to compare feelings and attitudes toward Donald Trump and Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. He explored how economic opinions, racial attitudes and demographic variables predicted an individual’s feelings toward Trump and Clinton. He found that one factor was much stronger than the other:

“My analysis indicates that economic status and attitudes do little to explain support for Donald Trump,” he wrote for Vox last week. More to the point, “those who express more resentment toward African Americans, those who think the word ‘violent’ describes Muslims well, and those who believe President Obama is a Muslim have much more positive views of Trump compared with Clinton,” Klinkner found.

In March, The Washington Post and ABC News conducted a similar survey, using data from a national poll, and came to similar conclusions. So did the Pew Research Center–pretty much the gold standard for survey research.

Those of us who have been watching Trump’s electoral successes with disbelief–who have been appalled by his boorishness, astonished by his ignorance of governance and both foreign and domestic policy, and repulsed by his consistent willingness to “go there”–to utter the sorts of racist, sexist, xenophobic invective generally considered inconsistent with civil society–apparently have an answer to the question “who could possibly vote to put this narcissistic buffoon in the Oval Office?”

Racists, sexists and xenophobes.

As Trump initially doubled down on his insistence that being Latino, Muslim or female is an “inherent conflict of interest” that should disqualify judges from ruling on cases that involve him, it was interesting to see the reaction of his supporters in the second category–those in denial about their racial attitudes.

We expected the KKK to applaud, but as these “second-category” voters experience discomfort in confronting the real reason Trump appeals to them, defense of the indefensible may come at a cost.

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Corrupt and Corruptible

I’ve always been a happy person, but I’ll admit to being very depressed these days.

The thought that Donald Trump is actually the Presidential candidate of one of America’s major political parties–a party I worked for and supported for 35 years– nauseates and frightens me. Without money, this man would just be dismissed as the ignorant pontificating asshole you try to avoid at parties, the guy telling  tasteless racist jokes and bragging about his latest con.

(If we had any doubts about the racism, a recent study has pretty much settled the issue: in a survey undertaken to identify the most likely Trump supporters, by far the most likely were people who still insist that President Obama is a Muslim.)

And there have been plenty of cons: his “send in your urine sample and we’ll send you supplements” diet scam, the Trump University fraud (Trump’s “not fair–the Judge is Mexican” sort of reminds me of the whiny undergraduates who complain that their poor grades are because the mean professor didn’t like them…), his refusal to pay people the full amounts of their contracts (he calls that “haircuts”), and so many more.

Now the AP has reported

As scores of students complained that Trump University was a ripoff, the Better Business Bureau in 2010 gave the school a D-minus, its second-lowest grade. State regulators also began to take notice.

The office of then-Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, a Republican, opened a civil investigation of “possibly deceptive trade practices.” Abbott’s probe was quietly dropped in 2010 when Trump University agreed to end its operations in Texas. Trump subsequently donated $35,000 to Abbott’s successful gubernatorial campaign, according to records.

…

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi briefly considered joining with Schneiderman in a multi-state suit against Trump University. Three days after Bondi’s spokeswoman was quoted in local media reports as saying the office was reviewing the New York lawsuit, the Donald J. Trump Foundation made a $25,000 contribution to a political fundraising committee supporting Bondi’s re-election campaign. Bondi, a Republican, soon dropped her investigation, citing insufficient grounds to proceed.

So, we know Trump is sleazy and corrupt. But apparently, there are officeholders who are equally corrupt. Or at least, easily corruptible. Maybe that explains the willingness of so many in the GOP to obediently “fall in line” and support the candidacy of this massively unqualified jerk.

I’d love to believe that Trump’s candidacy will go down in flames–that Americans will reject this fascist buffoon, that–as a friend puts it–he is not what is meant by Orange is the New Black….But I keep thinking of a (possibly apocryphal) story about the woman who approached Adlai Stevenson after he’d made a speech, and said “Oh, Mr. Stevenson, no intelligent American could fail to vote for you after that speech.”

Stevenson reportedly replied, “But Madam, I need a majority.”

My stomach hurts, and I think I’m getting hives.

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Within Normal Parameters

Attention, Hillary haters…

I disagree with much, if not most, of Charles Murray’s scholarship, but he–and the (very) conservative publication National Review– have done something I’ve been struggling with: in a pointed essay debunking attempts to equate the Presidential candidates, they have provided language that explains the reality of November’s ballot choices.

In his response to those who assert that “Hillary is no better” or “Hillary would be even worse” Murray begins by acknowledging what most political observers know, that we have rarely if ever elected people who don’t have serious flaws. After listing several examples, he says

Candidates who lie? This is a little more complicated. Yes, many candidates for president have lied. Hillary Clinton has — with stupefying ineptitude — told and continues to tell whoppers. But Trump takes first prize for sheer bulk, averaging one factual untruth every five minutes, according to a systematic fact-check of over four and a half hours of stump speeches and press conferences….

It’s one thing when a candidate knowingly deceives the public on a few specific topics. Hillary Clinton has knowingly tried to deceive the public about her flip-flop on gay marriage and her misuse of her e-mail server. That’s bad. It should be condemned. This aspect of her character should affect one’s deliberations about whether to vote for her. It’s another thing entirely when a candidate blithely rejects Pat Moynihan’s (attributed) dictum, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not to his own facts.”

Trump’s indifference to facts is an example of why he is unfit for the presidency — not dispositive in itself, but part of a pattern. That pattern is why “Hillary is even worse” misses the point. P. J. O’Rourke recently announced that he is voting for Clinton. “She’s wrong about absolutely everything,” O’Rourke said. “But she’s wrong within normal parameters!” Similarly, I am saying that Clinton may be unfit to be president, but she’s unfit within normal parameters. Donald Trump is unfit outside normal parameters.

I encourage you to click through and read the entire essay–especially if you are a political conservative who is trying to convince yourself that Donald Trump is an acceptable recipient of your vote (or a “purist” whose vote for a third party candidate is effectively a vote for Trump.)

Unfortunately, it is an increasingly rare occurrence when informed voters go to the polls enthusiastic about voting for someone. But the fact that there may be reasons to be unenthusiastic about our choices is not the same thing as saying that there isn’t a lesser of two evils.

In this case, for rational Americans, no matter what one’s opinion about Hillary Clinton, a vote for Donald Trump– the far, far greater of these “two evils”– is simply unthinkable. It is not just a vote for a dangerously ignorant narcissist, it is a vote for abandonment of the American ethos.

Thanks to Charles Murray and P.J. O’Rourke, I now have language to express my conviction  that we must recognize and act upon differing degrees of risk, and vote for the candidate whose flaws fall within normal parameters.

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Tupperware Trump

Oh, Donald. Tacky, tacky, tacky…..

We’ve all become familiar with the various kinds of pyramid schemes operating in the U.S. Most aren’t as monumental as the Bernie Madoff ponzi-scheme variety, and some even sell arguably useful products, but they all share certain characteristics: they’re based on recruiting an increasing number of “investors,” and typically, those new recruits pay a sum of money to join the “program” and become a distributor of a product or service. They’re told they’ll make money based on the number of new recruits they bring in. The basic idea is that the higher up on the pyramid you are, the more money you’ll make.

In reality, what happens is that only the originators of the pyramid scheme make money and the rest lose theirs when the pyramid scheme collapses.

Evidently, in-between bankruptcies, bottled water and steaks, Donald Trump engaged in a pyramid scheme to sell a “diet product” to the desperate/credulous:

The company’s flagship product was called the PrivaTest, which supposedly relies upon a mail-in urine test to determine one’s individual nutritional needs and create a custom vitamin formula (about $140 for the test; $70 per month for the vitamins; $100 to retest every 6 months).

From a scientific viewpoint, urine tests do not provide a legitimate basis for recommending that people take dietary supplements. Moreover, even if they could, the nutrients in the so-called customized formulas can be obtained far more inexpensively in retail stores. The Trump Network also acquired a weight loss program called The Silhouette Solution, which consisted of a book promising to lose the weight you want and have the silhouette you choose, which was included in the starter weight loss kit, all for a whopping $1,325. The package was marketed as “a complete eight-week program that contains everything you need to achieve your short and long term weight loss goals.” In it, they send you eight weeks worth of low-calorie food….

But it gets better….you could also purchase the $400 “business kit” and market the product to your friends and family, ala Tupperware. Trump sold Privatest and the Silhouette Solution in 2012 to a company called Bioceutica, LLC., apparently due to concerns about liability. Earlier this year, the Washington Post reported on Trump’s claim that his involvement with Ideal Health merely allowed them to use his name for marketing purposes and that he was not involved in the company’s operations.

But statements by him and other company representatives — as well as a plethora of marketing materials circulating online — often gave the impression of a partnership that was certain to lift thousands of people into prosperity. In fact, within a few years, the company fell on hard times, leaving some salespeople in tough financial straits. It ultimately was acquired by another firm.

But when Trump joined forces with Ideal Health, he was enthusiastic about its future.

“When I did ‘The Apprentice,’ it was a long shot. This is not a long shot,” Trump told a Trump Network convention of at least 5,000 people in Miami in 2009, his face projected onto a giant screen. “This is going to be something that’s really amazing.”

Yep. Amazing. You’ll be thin and rich.

And this is the charlatan who’s going to “Make America Great.”

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The Trump Doctrine

So, The Donald won Indiana’s primary, and is positioned to win the GOP nomination. Should he (God forbid!) win in November, he’ll have possession of the nation’s nuclear codes, among other unthinkable things.

So how much does he understand about foreign affairs (other than the sexual kind)?

Fact free and incoherent….That evaluation, from one actual foreign policy expert, was one of the nicer reactions to Trump’s ballyhooed “Presidential” foreign policy speech. The Guardian listed ten glaring contradictions within the speech–some within just a couple of minutes of each other.

At the Brookings Institution, trying for a more measured analysis, Thomas Wright noted that there was nothing new (or very specific) in the speech, but identified five “take-aways”from the speech. Those “take-aways” should terrify anyone who has even the slightest understanding of the world and the nature of our relations with other countries: Trump would simply end current U.S. alliances in Europe and Asia (make them all pay for their own defense); he would pursue an isolationist strategy (“He opposes democracy promotion, multilateralism, security guarantees, and, implicitly, keeping the global commons open for use by all nations”); he would “make a deal” with China and Russia (no details–just an assertion by the bloviating, self-proclaimed “dealmaker”). As Wright noted, the speech was intended for the GOP establishment–not the party’s foreign policy experts; and –surprise!–he views policy in this area, as in all others, as all about The Donald.

Trump spent quite a lot of time talking about how important it is that other leaders respect the American president. He complained about foreign leaders not meeting President Obama when he stepped off Air Force One. He spent a couple of minutes on Obama’s unsuccessful effort to win the Olympics for Chicago. This gave us a window into the temperament of a President Trump—he would read a lot into what others said about him and on his personal rapporteur with other leaders. He would likely to be drawn to men like him.

As I copied and pasted that quote, cold shivers went down my spine…..

At Dispatches from the Culture Wars, Ed Brayton also analyzed the speech, albeit a bit less dispassionately.

But even though it was a pre-written talk that has taken weeks and weeks to prepare, it was little more than a slogan: “America first.” ….

Boy, that’s original. Guess who used it first? Pro-Nazi Charles Lindbergh, who created the America First Committee to defend Hitler’s aggression and criticize Jews who were advocating that America get involved in WW2.

You expected more from a guy who retweets sentiments from Mussolini, and accuses a political rival’s father of complicity in JFK’s assassination?

Why did I come away from this “important” speech with a distinct impression that The Donald couldn’t locate–or spell– most countries with which we have strategic interests if asked to point to them on a map–let alone identify America’s long-term global interests?
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