Trump: can he win in November?

[John F]

All last year I rooted for Donald Trump to be the Republican nominee, thinking this would arouse Democratic voters and put off many Republicans and would elect the Democratic candidate. Now it appears I'm going to get my wish. But Trump has succeeded in getting a lot of votes from people who don't ordinarily vote, and that makes me worry.

Not that Trump is viewed favorably by "national Republicans," those expected to vote in November. Gallup puts his net favorability rating (pro minus con) at +15% on the day before Super Tuesday. (With independents, Trump's rating is minus 27%; with Democrats, minus 70%.) Trump was viewed most favorably in August, before the Republican debates began, and has fallen ever since. Ordinarily, that would seem to settle the question of his electability.

But if he is indeed attracting large numbers of new voters, it's a different ball game. New voters had a lot to do with Barack Obama's success in 2008, not during the primaries in which he very narrowly edged Hillary Clinton but in the general election. I'll be watching the polls closely this year for indications one way or the other.

On the other side, Hillary Clinton's favorability rating has had its ups and downs among Democrats. (Of course the Republicans don't like her at all.) But according to Gallup, it's now moving up, with a net rating of +55%. My worry is that when she is nominated in July, those who favored Bernie Sanders, many of them new voters, will "punish" her by not voting. Never in their lives would they vote for Trump, but in effect that's what they would be doing. How the election turns out may be decided by which party and which candidate is most successful in getting its supporters to the polls.

Another imponderable is whether Trump will be aided in this all-important effort by the Republican establishment who largely abhor him. He doesn't need their money, his own pockets are more than deep enough, but if the Republican movers and shakers move and shake against him, to save their party and if possible their Senate majority at the cost of losing the presidency, we'd be in completely uncharted waters.

[karlhenning]

The fundamental problem with the GOP establishment banding together "to stop El Tupé" is, that his appeal to his fanbase rests largely on his defiance of the establishment.

As Cillizza of the WaPo observed today, Romney's speech today is largely a gift to El Tupé.

Sombrely,
~k.

[rwetmore]

The real question isn't whether Trump will get a lot of Reagan Democrats and minorities (i.e. more minorities than Republican candidates typically get) -- he likely will, but it's whether the intellectual conservative base, who largely don't like or are distrusting of him on key issues, will turn out and vote for him. Many are least saying they will be staying home if he is the nominee. So it's really hard to know at this point.

If the number of additional minorities and Reagan democrats are significantly larger than the number of conservatives who stay home, then he could still fairly easily win. But we really don't know.

I also don't think he's necessarily going to win the nomination at this point. I mean, he may, but if there is anyway the establishment can deny it to him within the rules (or even by bending the rules), they are going to try.

The bottom line is there are just too many unknowns at this point to be able to make an accurate prediction. I do think Trump can turn around his unfavorable ratings, or at least reduce them quite a bit. But again, who knows? He did handle himself quite well in that Super Tuesday press conference and looked very presidential. Rubio -- not at all.

[rwetmore]

As Cillizza of the WaPo observed today, Romney's speech today is largely a gift to El Tupé.[/color]

It may be a gift, but it's just a big façade. As I've said, they -- i.e. the donors that support them -- don't want Trump, because they can't buy his influence. It's just that simple. Romney's whole thing today was a ridiculous obvious façade. Again, at least to those of us who know what's really going on.

[John F]

The fundamental problem with the GOP establishment banding together "to stop El Tupé" is, that his appeal to his fanbase rests largely on his defiance of the establishment.

Maybe so, but if his "fan base" doesn't take in a lot of people who regularly vote Republican as the party of, for example, Ronald Reagan, he can't get elected. And if the party regulars, who include the volunteers needed to get out the vote, sit on their hands, then the politically inexperienced Trump and his ad hoc campaign organization may be hard pressed to make up the difference. Or maybe not - we'll see.

[rwetmore]

The fundamental problem with the GOP establishment banding together "to stop El Tupé" is, that his appeal to his fanbase rests largely on his defiance of the establishment.

Maybe so, but if his "fan base" doesn't take in a lot of people who regularly vote Republican as the party of, for example, Ronald Reagan, he can't get elected. And if the party regulars, who include the volunteers needed to get out the vote, sit on their hands, then the politically inexperienced Trump and his ad hoc campaign organization may be hard pressed to make up the difference. Or maybe not - we'll see.

Agreed. We just don't know. Too many variables and besides we don't know what will happen -- both in the country, the world, and the campaign -- between now and November.

[rwetmore]

I will say though as I have before that anyone who thinks Trump won't be a formidable candidate and his nomination basically guarantees a Hillary landslide, is not paying attention. Trump will be hard to beat, and even has the potential to win big. I don't see much potential for Hillary to win big -- yes, even against Trump. But again, I have no crystal ball and don't really know what's going to happen. Not the least of which is whether Trump will actually be the nominee, which is still no where near certain. If he wins Ohio and Florida -- maybe then, but if Kasich wins Ohio (I expect Trump to win Florida fairly easily), there will still be a long way to go.

[karlhenning]

Maybe so, but if his "fan base" doesn't take in a lot of people who regularly vote Republican as the party of, for example, Ronald Reagan, he can't get elected. And if the party regulars, who include the volunteers needed to get out the vote, sit on their hands, then the politically inexperienced Trump and his ad hoc campaign organization may be hard pressed to make up the difference. Or maybe not - we'll see.

Republican voter turnout has been very high for the primaries.

[John F]

True enough. Republicans have had a lot of candidates to choose from, and that in itself should cause more of them to turn out and vote. But how many who voted for Rubio or Cruz will turn around and vote for Trump in the general election? Trump has insulted their favorites so often and so offensively that he may have poisoned that well. So many incalculables.

Looking at the vote totals in Virginia, a swing state in which the numbers of registered Republicans and Democrats are nearly equal (Republicans have a slight edge). Barack Obama won Virginia comfortably in 2008 and 2012; George W. Bush likewise in 2000 and 2004. In the 2016 primary, Trump received 355,960 votes, Clinton 503,358. But many more voted Republican than Democrat, 1,024,913 to 782,895. Virginia's is an open primary, meaning that a voter need not be a registered Republican to vote in the Republican primary. How many of those million Republican votes were cast by non-Republicans? How many were more anti-Trump than pro-Rubio or Cruz? It's beyond me. But I'm anything but reassured.

[karlhenning]

No, there is not much reassurance available at present.

[John F]

Can Trump win the general election without minority voters?
BY Daniel Bush
March 2, 2016

ATLANTA — On Sunday, in an interview on national television, Donald Trump refused to denounce David Duke, a former leader of the Klu Klux Klan. Two days later, the real estate developer moved one step closer to clinching the Republican nomination with a commanding performance in the Super Tuesday primaries yesterday. How he handled the David Duke question added to a track record of controversial comments toward minorities, further weakening his already negligible support among non-white voters, and highlighting a critical question that has worried Republican Party leaders for months: can Trump win the general election with virtually no support from minority voters?

If Trump doesn’t start making inroads with minority voters soon it could spell trouble for him in a general election showdown against Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee. Mitt Romney won just 17 percent of the nonwhite vote in 2012, and Republican Party strategists agree that this year’s GOP nominee needs to do significantly better to be competitive in November.

“Donald Trump is a clown,” Delores Walthall, 62, who is African-American, said in an interview after voting yesterday at a polling precinct near her home in College Park, a suburb just south of Atlanta. Black voters who were interviewed for this story said they were alarmed by Trump’s rhetoric, and the bigotry that has bubbled up to the surface of American politics as a result of his campaign. “I can’t understand it. At first I thought [his candidacy] was just a joke, something he was doing to be in the limelight,” she added. “But then people started backing him. I think it’s payback for having Obama as president.” In interviews across South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama over the past week, dozens of black voters expressed a similar sense of frustration and anger with Trump, who has also made incendiary comments about Hispanics and Muslims.

Whites in the Deep South who voted for Trump were much more forgiving. Some, like Brian Lamb, an operations manager at a stamping facility in Cusseta, Ala., said they disagreed with Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric, but it didn’t stop them from backing him at the polls. “I think he needs to watch what he says,” Lamb said at a poll location in Opelika. But he added, “We need somebody’s who’s not a career politician.”

For other whites, Trump’s views on race and ethnicity seemed to be a positive. “I like Donald Trump because he tells the truth. We got a lot of folks jumping the border,” said Chandler Hazen, 19, an auto mechanic in Phenix City, Ala. Hazen said he wasn’t bothered by the controversy over Trump and the KKK. “Stuff like that ain’t going to change my vote.”

Bill Johnson, a retired farmer and crop insurance salesman from Lumpkin, Ga., linked his frustration with politics to the election of Barack Obama, a commonly held view among many Trump supporters in the South. “What I’m going to tell you has nothing to do with color. I’m not a racist, but the blacks have taken over this country,” Johnson, 89, said in an interview yesterday outside of the polling precinct in Lumpkin. “Obama was put in office by someone to ruin our credibility.” Johnson would not say whom he planned to vote for, but he praised Trump at length before stepping inside the Stewart County Courthouse to cast his ballot. “I like Trump,” Johnson said. “He’s the only one who ain’t already bought off.” He added, “He’s a very smart man. He inherited millions, and he made it into billions.”

Black voters who were interviewed for this story said they were alarmed by Trump’s rhetoric, and the bigotry that has bubbled up to the surface of American politics as a result of his campaign. “Their theme is, take our country back,” Regina McKnight, a retired county administrator in Kingstree, S.C., said of Trump and his top Republican rivals. “But the way I see it, they mean take it back from an African-American and put it back in white hands.” Lincoln Glover, 18, said there was no way Trump could win over blacks and other minority voters in the general election. “How does he expect us to vote for him?” said Glover, who lives in Orangeburg, S.C. “We’re not dumb.”

Many anti-Trump Republicans said they recognized that he would face significant opposition from minority voters in the general election. “I’m definitely worried” that nominating Trump could hurt the party, said Anna Nolan, a school teacher in east-central Alabama who voted for Senator Ted Cruz. Nolan, who is white, said she was appalled by Trump’s slow response to the KKK comment. “That was a big issue for me.”

Other white Republicans said they believed that Trump was already responsible for hurting race relations in the country, regardless of what happens in the election in the months to come. “If the KKK stuff didn’t get everybody’s attention and make people vote against Trump, I don’t know [what will]. I just don’t know,” said Sybil Ammons, the coroner of Stewart County in Georgia. “I want to see us bond as a country and he’s not going to help that at all.”

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/can ... rity-vote/

[lennygoran]

Republicans have had a lot of candidates to choose from, and that in itself should cause more of them to turn out and vote.

They may be adding another one-Paul Ryan.

Republicans in tailspin, group forms to draft Ryan for U.S. president

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-e ... EC34IQ9V68

Regards, Len

[John F]

They're wasting their time: "He is flattered, but not interested," Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong said in an email on Friday.

Of course not. As speaker of the House, he has a deciding influence whether or not a law is passed or even voted on. As president, he would have to come to the House hat in hand.

If the Republican national convention is deadlocked, and many ballots fail to give any of the announced candidates the nomination, then a brokered convention might ensue and someone else be put before the delegates for a vote. Possibilities might include Ryan, Michael Bloomberg (the proverbial snowball in Hell), and any number of others. But the way Trump has been piling up the delegates, I'd say the odds against him winning the nomination on the first ballot are slim to none, and the odds in favor of a dark horse instead of, say, Marco Rubio are slimmer still.

[rwetmore]

If the Republican national convention is deadlocked, and many ballots fail to give any of the announced candidates the nomination, then a brokered convention might ensue and someone else be put before the delegates for a vote. Possibilities might include Ryan, Michael Bloomberg (the proverbial snowball in Hell), and any number of others. But the way Trump has been piling up the delegates, I'd say the odds against him winning the nomination on the first ballot are slim to none, and the odds in favor of a dark horse instead of, say, Marco Rubio are slimmer still.

I'm not so sure. My instinct is that Trump will fall a tad short of what's needed to win on the first ballot, but we'll see. Kasich has a really good chance to win Ohio, BTW.

[rwetmore]

Can Trump win the general election without minority voters?

The obvious answer is no, he cannot.

[John F]

And now a truly radical idea. What if Donald Trump becomes the Republican nominee, but Republicans who refuse to vote for him don't just abstain but instead vote for a conservative independent or third-party candidate, while (presumably) voting the rest of the Republican ticket? The idea is to deliberately split the Republican vote and lose the presidency but, they hope, preserve the Republican majority in the Senate, and more broadly, to save the Republican Party from Trumpism.

Anti-Trump Republicans Call for a Third-Party Option
By ALEXANDER BURNS
MARCH 2, 2016

Spurred by Donald J. Trump’s mounting victories, a small but influential — and growing — group of conservative leaders are calling for a third-party option to spare voters a wrenching general election choice between a Republican they consider completely unacceptable and Hillary Clinton. While he has gained intense popularity on the right, Mr. Trump has alienated key blocs in the Republican coalition with his slash-and-burn campaign. For many, his initial refusal last weekend to disavow an endorsement from David Duke, the white supremacist, was a breaking point. Two top Republicans, Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Gov. Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, said this week that they would not vote for Mr. Trump in November.

Mr. Trump has alienated voters from several wings of the party: mainstream Christian activists, who view his angry outlook as antithetical to their faith; centrists, who see him as the most divisive politician in a generation; and national security experts, who have recoiled from his praise for autocrats like President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and believe he should not control nuclear weapons.

William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard magazine, said he would work actively to put forward an “independent Republican” ticket if Mr. Trump was the nominee, and floated Mr. Sasse as a recruit. [Sasse has since said he won't run. / JF] “That ticket would simply be a one-time, emergency adjustment to the unfortunate circumstance (if it happens) of a Trump nomination,” Mr. Kristol wrote in an email. It “would support other Republicans running for Congress and other offices, and would allow voters to correct the temporary mistake (if they make it) of nominating Trump.”

Max Boot, a foreign policy adviser to Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, said that if efforts to block Mr. Trump fell short, he would vote against a Republican nominee for the first time in his life. “I would sooner vote for Josef Stalin than I would vote for Donald Trump,” said Mr. Boot, who expressed optimism that Mr. Trump could still be defeated. He added: “There is no way in hell I would ever vote for him. I would far more readily support Hillary Clinton, or Bloomberg if he ran.”

Among religious conservatives, too, anxiety about Mr. Trump is spreading. Russell Moore, head of the political arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, said he had been deluged by evangelicals asking his guidance on what to do in a race between Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton. A Trump-Clinton race would have no palatable choice, Mr. Moore said. He said it would be impossible for him to support any candidate “who stirs up racial animosity” or supports abortion rights. There had been widespread discussion, Mr. Moore said, of seeking out “a conservative independent or third-party candidate.”

Defections of any scale could prove lethal to Mr. Trump. He already trails Mrs. Clinton in general election polls, and polling already shows the possibility of mass desertions from the party. A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey this week found that 48 percent of Republicans who do not already back Mr. Trump [such as those who vote for other candidates in the primaries / JF] said they would probably not or definitely not support him in November.

But even as Republican leaders have denounced Mr. Trump in increasingly forceful terms, few of them have suggested they would shun him. Mr. Rubio has come the closest, describing Mr. Trump as a fraudster whom the party cannot afford to embrace. Still, when the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, rebuked Mr. Trump on Monday for his evasive response to Mr. Duke’s endorsement, Mr. Ryan added that he would support the eventual Republican nominee.

In a news conference Tuesday night, Mr. Trump dismissed the idea of a rogue Republican ticket: “They’ll just lose everything, and that would be the work of a loser.” But for others in the party, casting a protest vote is no remote prospect. Mr. Sasse, a first-term senator, set off a public conversation by declaring on Twitter that he would favor an independent “conservative option” over Mr. Trump. Representative Scott Rigell of Virginia, a Republican from a moderate district on the Atlantic Coast, said he, too, would vote for neither Mr. Trump nor Mrs. Clinton. “Not only could I not vote for him, but I couldn’t sit and be silent as I watched him advance,” said Mr. Rigell, who added that many of his congressional colleagues shared his reservations. “He is the antithesis of what I would want my son and grandson to be, and I will not associate myself with him.”

There is no obvious alternative on the right to Mr. Trump, but Republicans believe that an existing minor party, like the Libertarian Party or the Constitution Party, could serve as a viable vehicle, allowing crestfallen Republicans to show up on Election Day despite their distaste for him. Gary Johnson, a former governor of New Mexico who ran for president in 2012 as a Libertarian, is again seeking the party’s nomination.

There is precedent for Republican Party leaders rejecting a radioactive nominee, though not at the presidential level. In 2010, Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska won a write-in re-election campaign after a primary loss to a militant conservative activist. And in 1994, when Virginia Republicans nominated the Iran-contra figure Oliver North for the Senate, a former Republican state attorney general opposed him as an independent, collecting considerable support.

Former Representative Tom Davis of Virginia said he expected many Republican candidates to flee from Mr. Trump, as he had fled Mr. North in 1994. (“When Oliver North came to Fairfax,” he said, “you couldn’t find me with a search warrant.”) “It’s too early to see a mass exodus,” Mr. Davis said, “but a lot of this depends on Trump, and right now he’s not putting himself in a very good position.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/03/us/po ... ption.html

[John F]

As many predicted, this attempt to muster opposition to Donald Trump from the top isn't going over well with many rank and file Republicans. Their opinion of the Republican establishment, as represented in the House of Representatives at least, couldn't be lower; maybe it's payback time for being the Party of No and George W. Bush. Yes, I know, that's wishful thinking. One Mississippian, interviewed by the NY Times, actually said, "I want to see Trump go up there and do damage to the Republican Party." Like most people, Republicans don't like being told they're wrong and maybe also stupid (though of course those who are voting for Trump certainly are ). But it's still many months (nine) until election day, time for a lot of things to happen.

I won't quote more of the Times article, but for those who want to read it, it's here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/05/us/po ... party.html

I also won't quote a furious anti-Trump op-ed by Timothy Egan in the same issue, "The Beast Is Us." But again, it's here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/04/opini ... is-us.html

[rwetmore]

Cruz just killed Trump in Kansas and is now leading in Maine. I still think Trump is going to fall short of what he needs to win on the first ballot.

[John F]

In a story about the growing Republican opposition to Donald Trump, the NY Times says this:

Mr. Trump’s reed-thin organization appears to be catching up with him, suggesting he could be at a disadvantage if he is forced into a protracted slog for delegates.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/07/us/po ... trump.html

Not to mention a national campaign against a Democratic opponent supported by her party's establishment and its resources, when Trump appears to have little if any support from the Republican establishment.

Further, about what the Times calls Trump's "off the cuff" approach to campaign management:

The Trump campaign has no pollster, so it is governed by public polling and what the candidate himself observes while watching cable news.

When it comes to getting out the votes in a presidential election, the Democrats are proven experts, as in 2008 and 2012. Does the Trump campaign have any comparable experts on its staff?

The campaign manager is one Corey Lewandowski, whose previous experience is as manager of the failed reelection campaign of New Hampshire Senator Robert C. Smith in 2001. Since then he's worked as a lobbyist and the New Hampshire director of Americans for Prosperity, which had a lot to do with the Tea Party's electoral successes. Perhaps he and Donald Trump are expecting AFP to provide such services for the Trump campaign, but I haven't heard anything about that; Trump is anything but a Tea Party candidate. Lewandowski left AFP in January, and Trump's name does not appear in the AFP Wikipedia article.

[karlhenning]

I also won't quote a furious anti-Trump op-ed by Timothy Egan in the same issue, "The Beast Is Us." But again, it's here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/04/opini ... is-us.html

I will, though (a bit):

But as much as these “too little, too late” wake-up calls are appreciated, it’s time to place the blame for the elevation of a tyrant as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee where it belongs — with the people. Yes, you. Donald Trump’s supporters know exactly what he stands for: hatred of immigrants, racial superiority, a sneering disregard of the basic civility that binds a society. Educated and poorly educated alike, men and women — they know what they’re getting from him.

Worth repeating: Donald Trump’s supporters know exactly what he stands for: hatred of immigrants, racial superiority, a sneering disregard of the basic civility that binds a society. Educated and poorly educated alike, men and women — they know what they’re getting from him.

[John F]

And according to Egan, it's what they want.

[rwetmore]

Worth repeating: Donald Trump’s supporters know exactly what he stands for: hatred of immigrants, racial superiority, a sneering disregard of the basic civility that binds a society.

Except it isn't true, and repeating it over and over again isn't going to make it so (no matter how desperately so many apparently want it to be true). Nor is it likely to help your side make a credible case against him. He's against political correctness, as are his supporters, because look where it's gotten us? 20 trillion in debt and growing, the economy faltering, the world crumbling in many different ways, etc., etc.

[rwetmore]

IMO, an overwhelming majority of Republicans (who clearly don't want establishment this time) need to decide if they're going to support Trump in the end or not. If they are, then they need to make sure he has more than enough delegates to win on the first ballot. If they're not, then they need to unite behind Cruz and defeat Trump ASAP. Any other outcome is an absolute disaster waiting to happen, as far as I'm concerned, and nearly guarantees a Democrat or Hillary victory in November. Some say the establishment would rather have that, and I tend to think they are right -- they would. All the more reason a decision needs to made now. Given the results from Saturday and Trump's apparent inability to see that a lot his recent behavior hurt him a lot, I'm inclined to ditch Trump and go to Cruz at this point. I wonder if other voters are feeling the same?

Trump should have known and should know that by now he needs to tone down the antics significantly and start conducting himself more normally and running a more traditional style campaign. Maybe it's coming, but it's past due at this point, IMO.

[Chalkperson]

Trump should have known and should know that by now he needs to tone down the antics significantly and start conducting himself more normally and running a more traditional style campaign. Maybe it's coming, but it's past due at this point, IMO.

christ on a bike, you finally grasped reality. well done randall.