I will keep doing, but not worth it! The 2016 Presidential Primary Voting Thread

enticing him to stay in for the lols?

as far as i can tell trump has 3 main sources of support, on the level of ideas/motivations:

1. relatively non-ideological (and irreligious) republicans & right-leaners: people who like a tough guy businessman, like him from his tv-shows, thing prez needs to "get things done," know washington is a black hole and think things need to be shaken up (kind of the dark inverse of obama's 08 "change" slogan, which revealed and concealed a lot). a lot of the party's "moderates" fall here

2. revenge: get back for 8 years of obama -- and make good on the insanity of right-wing media under obama. the anti-PC stuff, continual fears about islam, the other -- generalized need to have someone ~finally~ kick some liberal pansy ass, and the normal republicans on offer won't do it. "he's an asshole but he's our asshole," etc. they want to beat up the enemy, foreign and domestic. you see a lot of the louder conservative types starting to fall in line along these lines. pure backlash.

3. return of the repressed: immigration restriction has been kept off the table by the management end of the GOP, the Kochs, the "donor class". it was always waiting for someone to pick it up and run with it. this is the window through which the alt-right, white supremacist and other excluded far-right and old-right weirdos have come rushing back (his shit-talking of bush and the iraq war is crucial here - anti-neoconservatism)

trump is quick enough on his feet and untethered enough to reality, with a huge amount of fame to start with, to tie these all together pretty effectively

djp, the Revolution needs you

i was a total Trump guy for the GOP primary, but he clearly doesn't need my help. think i'm going to throw it to Cruz, who might actually be more unattractive against Hillary in the general than Trump.

enticing him to stay in for the lols?

not for the lols, more for the minuscule chance he could do something to hurt the actual frontrunners

however I will graciously accept any lols that come my way

djp, the Revolution needs you

The Revolution needs the entire country really, otherwise it's going to be Just Another Democratic Presidency (which, in and of itself, is a desirable thing IMO)

Robert Reich has endorsed Sanders. That's the obvious and logical endorsement, but good for him for following through rather than just angling for another Clinton cabinet post (he seems to have moved well beyond the political sphere the last decade or so anyway).

2. revenge: get back for 8 years of obama

yeah. like Eastwood reprimanding an empty chair at the GOP convention in '12 was some crazy old man shit, but certainly spoke to lots of people. i really think there's scary large segment of the population that harbor this delicious fantasy of Trump really giving it to That Boy on national television. i wouldn't be surprised if some think he'll actually get (and take) that opportunity on Jan 20 2017.

neocons for Hil, if necessary. I find the last sentence entirely plausible, because liberals have shown no prolonged or effectual objections to wars conducted with a "D" stamp on them.

Donald Trump’s runaway success in the GOP primaries so far is setting off alarm bells among neoconservatives who are worried he will not pursue the same bellicose foreign policy that has dominated Republican thinking for decades....

Max Boot, an unrepentant supporter of the Iraq war, wrote in the Weekly Standard that a “Trump presidency would represent the death knell of America as a great power,” citing, among other things, Trump’s objection to a large American troop presence in South Korea....

Even when Trump echoes certain elements of neoconservative orthodoxy – he repeatedly and emphatically calls for strengthening the military – he does so in a unique way. He talks not about spending more money but defying the “special interests” who make the Pentagon order “missiles they don’t want because of politics….Because the company that makes the missiles is a contributor.”

Jacob Heilbrunn, author of “They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons,” suggested in July 2014 that neoconservatives might be preparing to ally with Hillary Clinton.

With Trump’s ascendancy, it’s possible that the parties will re-orient their views on war and peace, with Trump moving the GOP to a more dovish direction and Clinton moving the Democrats towards greater support for war.

https://theintercept.com/2016/02/29/neoconservatives-declare-war-on-donald-trump/

welcome to the 30s...

I personally think that Trump's support is mainly economically-motivated, perhaps based on faulty logic, but economically-motivated nonetheless. Middle class wages are stagnating and people are looking for scapegoats. Sanders offers up Wall Street which resonates with many people who lean liberal, but for those of a more conservative bent, immigrants and outsourcing seem like more likely culprits. Admittedly, many people are also tired of coastal liberal elites looking down at them and calling them racist because they don't like Obama or illegal immigrants, and Trump is vindication for those resentments as well. But I don't think he'd be anywhere without that core economic backdrop.

"people are frustrated…and they are in desperate need for somebody who is a voice for the people." Can someone please direct this guy to the Sanders campaign's donation page?

Trump, representing the little guy

By that I mean his penis

"We need a voice of the people, not some dirty Socialist!" <-- America in a nutshell

That's the irony of the thing- that a big-shot, New York businessman is the messenger of this outsider message. But Trump has rather brilliantly courted media outrage to position himself as the authentic scourge of the elites.

otm. it's very frustrating watching people (itt and elsewhere) fall back on the experienced comfort of comedy redneck words and joy at hill's supposedly inevitable victory. i'm p sure hillary's got it too but sorry i'm just not chill enough to remain sanguine at the sight of a right-wing populist who's anti-iraq, anti-bush, anti-nafta, anti-muslim, anti-black, anti-immigrant, and pro-domination running against the brittle, intervention-loving face of neoliberalism. this idea that the gop is doubling down on 2012-style dog-whistle-ornamented plutocratic paternalism just isn't true. trump is building a new american right and it's gonna last a long time unless people fight it and mocking its troops as stupid or demographically doomed is the opposite of fighting it. hard to satirize a guy in shiny boots.

that's a lot of hyphenates.

that otm was for o nate

"mocking its troops as stupid or demographically doomed is the opposite of fighting it"

otm

this is good http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/dont-assume-conservatives-will-rally-behind-trump/

Feel like this article makes a good case for "significant numbers of Republicans may reject Trump" but ignores the possibility that significant numbers of Democrats may vote for Trump.

which Democrats?

angry, economically fucked white ones

I agree with dlh that it's going to take more than just sitting back and enjoying the demographic tailwind... more than just figuring people are going to wise up.

That said, it's still kind of LOLWUT that there's a bunch of people out there saying "Stick it to the snobbish Eastern one-percenter elites by voting for the billionaire Manhattanite who went to Wharton!"

the extra dumb ones

that's a lot of hyphenates.

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, February 29, 2016 11:50 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

technically i'm still a music critic

new Reagan Democrats xxxxp

I don't think any Democrat is gonna sit back and laugh IN November at the Trump Army, despite what despairing white Sanders supporters say.

lol hey

Is it hyperbole to say that anyone who self-identifies as a Democrat and votes for Trump in the GE should be euthanized? Asking for a friend.

november's prob gonna be fine but there will be lots of months after that

His very best voters are self-identified Republicans who nonetheless are registered as Democrats. It’s a coalition that’s concentrated in the South, Appalachia and the industrial North, according to data provided to The Upshot by Civis Analytics, a Democratic data firm.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/31/upshot/donald-trumps-strongest-supporters-a-certain-kind-of-democrat.html

http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BNTk1ODI3MTM5N15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNTgzMTY2Mw@@._V1_SX640_SY720_.jpg

"o.nate, you're going to find many things depend upon a certain kind of Democrat."

That said, it's still kind of LOLWUT that there's a bunch of people out there saying "Stick it to the snobbish Eastern one-percenter elites by voting for the billionaire Manhattanite who went to Wharton!"

― carry me a laser down the road that i must travel (Ye Mad Puffin)

ya'll need to get over this already there's a lot more to signifying class in America than where you went to school or how much money you have

I stand with dlh. There is much in Trump's message that is allealing to economically marginalized white democrats, especially compared to Clinton. It's very hard to predict who will come out ahead in that matchup, especially since we haven't seen how Trump is going to change his message in the general election.

dlh makes a lot of solid points.

trump is building a new american right

eh. it looks a lot like the old Reagan right coalition to me, except for the anti-Bush and anti-Iraq part, which seems to me more like a recapture of working class people who were firmly in the Reagan coalition, but who were arrogantly abused by Bush and the neo-cons in Iraq, but also abused by NAFTA and deregulation, which makes them just as rabidly anti-Clinton as anti-Bush.

Trump is (rhetorically) rejecting the oligarchic heart of the Republican party, which makes him wildly popular with the voters who've been shat on by those oligarchs for decades, but if he were in office it is more than likely he'll serve them by throwing them chunks of red-meat populist rhetoric, rather than by dismantling most of the oligarchic privileges that have been implemented since 1981.

Panicking isn't useful and it doesn't look cool, granted, but I am panicking a little bit

white guys with graduate degrees will be ok

My dad being a Trump supporter is the saddest thing (mom thinks he's insane). Idk maybe he thinks Trump can help him repay the 7k he owes me

Still don't want to be in a country that's beholden to whatever voting bloc Trump is half-intentionally forming

xp to kev

This "Is Trump the new right?" is reminiscent of 2008 debates where "is Nixon or Reagan the ideological ancester of the current GOP?" was the quesiton.

Yeah the tea party was scary, but this new thing is weirder and scarier potentially.

eh I don't know. Tea Party folks control my state legislature and lots of others. They've done more horrible shit than use orange rinse in their hair and yell at a Cuban American whelp in Papi's Brooks Brothers suit

The tea party succeeded in pushing Congress to shut down the government over nonsense budget nonsense

Yeah they've had a pernicious effect for sure. It's hard to tell what *this* will wnd up being. Maybe it's nothing, maybe it's a major shift in the Republican Party

btw, it worth remembering that Reagan was given a free pass by evangelicals, even though it was transparently obvious that, like Trump, his faith consisted entirely of lip service and his true convictions were wholly secular. Trump needn't fear that many of the Cruz/Carson voters will defect from him in the general.

I have Brooks Brothers glasses. Can I still be a progressive?

i think the tea party has peaked tbh, so much of their anger was so focused on such a non-existent problem and was so obviously formed because Obama won in 2008 (long before he destroyed america with--oh wait) that i think people are generally done with them. trump's success i think is a little bit of that leftover, a little bit of the weak republican field, and a lot of his celebrity power. not 100% worried it's enough to carry him to victory in November, not 100% worried that if he does win it does anything more than potentially be even more destructive for the republican party than a loss, not 100% convinced on either of the previous points though.

Yeah, one of the ironies of 1980 was evangelicals went for a Hollywood actor over a Sunday-school teaching born-again. xxp

The gradual process of a successful Trump campaign has been a horrifying development, but I'm trying to imagine how shocked I'd be if I somehow missed everything between his escalator-ride announcement and his current standing. It was supposed to be a joke. Like if Gary Busey ran or something.