“A Rational Outcome Can’t Be Taken For Granted”: Democrats, Don’t Celebrate Trump’s Nomination. Fear it.
I know the polls say Donald Trump cannot win. But what if we are looking at the wrong poll question?
What if Trump’s overwhelming negatives don’t matter? Or, to put it another way, what if the country’s negatives matter more?
Right now, about 6 in 10 Americans have an unfavorable view of Trump, and only 36 percent view him positively.
But the country is faring even worse. In the most recent average of polls calculated by RealClearPolitics, 26.9 percent of Americans think the nation is headed in the right direction and 64.9 percent think we are heading down the wrong track.
So what if even voters who respect Hillary Clinton’s competence reject her as the embodiment of business as usual? And what if even voters who do not like Trump’s bigotry or bluster care more that he will, in their view, shake things up?
Sure, these voters might tell themselves, he may be crude, or inconsistent, or ill-informed. He may insult women and Hispanics and other groups. But it’s part of a shtick. He probably doesn’t mean half of it. He’s just an entertainer. The desire to send a message of disgust or disapproval, in other words, could lead voters to overlook, discount, wish away or excuse many Trump sins.
Meanwhile, Clinton cannot shake free of the status quo. You may remember how this bedeviled Al Gore when he asked voters to give the Democratic Party a third straight presidential term in 2000. The vice president managed to achieve the worst of both worlds, alienating Bill Clinton and his most ardent supporters without establishing himself as an entirely new brand.
Unlike Gore, Hillary Clinton is not an incumbent. But she is no less associated with the establishment, having served as first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state over the past quarter-century. Even if she were inclined to do so, she could not afford to distance herself from President Obama, whose backers she will need to turn out in large numbers.
I know there is an element of irrationality in these fears. I understand that not every dissatisfied American will vote for Trump.
About two-thirds of the country may think we are on the wrong track, after all, but Obama’s approval rating is 51 percent and rising.
Meanwhile, only 4.7 percent of eligible voters have actually cast a ballot for Trump in the party nomination process so far, as an analysis by FairVote shows. Many of the remaining 95.3 percent, no matter how unhappy most are with the performance of their government, will take their responsibility seriously enough that they will not vote for someone who casually threatens the faith and credit of the United States, breezily posits the merits of nuclear proliferation and cheerfully espouses torture as an instrument of U.S. policy.
Republicans are divided, the economy is improving, the demographics are increasingly in Democrats’ favor. The likeliest result of a Trump nomination is a Republican washout up and down the ballot.
I do get all that.
Still, when I hear smart people explaining why Trump cannot win, all I can think is: Aren’t you the ones who told us that he couldn’t top 30 percent, and then 40 percent, and then 50 percent in the Republican primaries? Weren’t you confident that he was finished after he called Mexicans rapists, and insulted prisoners of war, and dished out a menstruation insult?
Did you predict his nomination? If not, we don’t want to hear your certainty about his November defeat.
Nor is it reassuring to read how happy the Clinton camp must be to be facing such a weak opponent. They need to be running scared — smart, but scared — now and for the next six months.
I do have faith in the American voter, I really do. But when two-thirds of the country is unhappy, a rational outcome can’t be taken for granted.
By: Fred Hiatt, Editorial Page Editor, The Washington Post, May 8, 2016
“Why Do Some People Respond To Trump? It’s Biology 101”: Conservatives Respond To Fear-Inducing Stimuli
As humans, we are first and foremost programmed to survive. Millions of years of evolution through natural selection have sculpted instincts and intellect aimed at staying alive. Fast, sudden movements instantly capture our attention, and unexpected noises cause us to jump back reflexively. It only takes common sense to see that survival requires a certain degree of sensitivity to threat. A desire to feel safe is part of our hardwiring, and as such, we tend to want people and rules in our lives that are going to help protect us from harm.
For some people, Donald Trump and his policies are seen as that protection. Afraid of the radical Islamic terrorists who are out there plotting attacks? Don’t worry—Donald Trump is going to ban every single Muslim from entering the country. Do you fear the Mexican immigrants coming across the border that you heard were “drug dealers, murderers, and rapists”? Fear not, President Trump is going to build a wall to keep out all the bad guys.
It is clear that those politicians who are best able to exploit our most basic biological traits, like our instinct to survive, are going to occupy a timeless niche in the political environment. The effectiveness of fear mongering in politics is no real secret to anyone anymore. But there were many GOP candidates who were great fear mongers, like Ben Carson and Ted Cruz, whose success flailed in comparison to Trump’s. That is because fear mongering alone isn’t enough.
After you succeed in making them afraid, you must also convince them that everything will be A-OK if they have you on their side. First you create the need for a hero, and then you pretend you are that hero. Donald Trump is the candidate who is offering the most extreme measures for protection. He’s strong and the other candidates are weak or “low energy.” It is only he who can save the day.
So an obvious question is, why does Trump’s tactic work on some people but not others? Don’t we all want to feel safe? Why is it that liberals and progressives feel like Trump is the actual danger and not the protector? Neuroscience and psychology research supports one clear explanation: Conservatives are hypersensitive to threat compared to liberals, and thus respond more fearfully.
For example, a 2008 study published in the journal Science found that conservatives have a heightened physiological response to threatening stimuli. Researchers tested this by showing participants threatening images—like spiders on faces or car crashes—while they measured skin electrical conductance, and presented loud bursts of white noise while they measured the strength of their eye blinks. The data showed that those who held conservative values startled more easily and had increased electrical skin conductance, which indicates a heightened state of arousal. Those with liberal views did not seem to be affected by the stimuli.
Additionally, an MRI study published in Current Biology in 2011 found that self-described conservatives had larger amygdalas than those who identified as liberals. The amygdala is the region of the brain that is involved in threat processing. Generally speaking, as the strength of the electrical response of the amygdala increases, so does the sense of fear we feel in response to a stimulus. As a result, stimuli that might seem neutral to most people, like Muslims or Mexicans, might appear threatening to conservatives.
Trump is popular amongst the right because he can tap into irrational fears and amplify them. Then, when threat seems imminent, he offers the most drastic solutions. And when danger is on the doorstep, there’s not much time for rational thinking.
One might be inclined to point out that not all Trump supporters appear to be fearful. In fact, at Trump rallies many of the attendees are angry and aggressive toward anti-Trump protesters. But hostility is a natural response when one feels threatened, and the anger that fuels their behavior stems from deep-rooted anxieties.
It is also important to remember that we aren’t just programmed to survive. We are also hardwired to flourish. It is in our nature to vigorously compete for success. In essence, we are constantly trying to win. It’s part of the mentality that drove so many civilizations to conquer others.
As such, we shouldn’t expect all Trump supporters to be fearful or irrational people. Some are just Americans who acknowledge that all of the countries in the world are contenders in one big game of power, and that most of them are not going to play by the book. Are nations like North Korea, Iran, and Russia always going to follow the rules and act according to what is fair? Absolutely not, and to some it would seem unwise and even flat out foolish for us to do so when everything is at stake.
Trump told a journalist what he’s constantly telling the world: “I always win. Knock on wood. I win. It’s what I do. I beat people. I win.” For many, Trump is a president who is going to do everything in his power to ensure that we get ahead as a nation. He will be tough. He will wheel and deal. And he will definitely play dirty when the situation calls for it. Whatever shady dealings Trump does, he is doing it for us, and we should be thankful to be on the winning team.
The rise of Trump has defied almost all logic. But he isn’t appealing to logic. He is appealing to our most basic survival instincts. Those include fear and the natural tendency to thrive and conquer. This presidential election will be an important test for our nation. We will see if we are evolved enough for our logic to overcome our instincts.
By: Bobby Azarian, The Daily Beast, May 6, 2016
“The ‘Wait and See’ Republicans”: The Idea Of Sending A Narcissistic Bully To The White House Should Be Unthinkable
Republican reaction to Donald Trump as their presumptive presidential nominee is all over the map. Of course there are those who are lining up to support him, some are digging in their heels and saying #NeverTrump, and a few are simply planning to remain silent. Regardless of how you feel about Trump’s candidacy, it is possible to make a case that those are principled positions. But the most bizarre (and unprincipled) reaction comes from those who are saying that they’ll “wait and see.”
That is apparently the case that Joe Scarborough made this morning. But its most ridiculous (and unprincipled) form came from Sen. Susan Collins.
“Donald Trump has the opportunity to unite the party, but if he’s going to build that wall that he keeps talking about, he’s going to have to mend a lot of fences,” said Collins. “He’s going to have stop with gratuitous personal insults.”
“You mean, like saying Ted Cruz’s father killed JFK,” the host interjected.
“Yes, that was the most bizarre yet, I think,” responded Collins, adding Trump needed to now articulate what his presidency would look like through policy, plans, and programs beyond his slogan.
“I think he’s perfectly capable of doing that,” Collins said. “It will be interesting to see whether he changes his style, he starts acting more presidential, and whether he brings people together.”
That is a bizarre position on a couple of levels. First of all, does Collins really need Trump to articulate in more specificity his proposals like banning all Muslims from immigrating to the U.S.? Or his plans to deport all undocumented immigrants? Or targeting the families of terrorists? Or reduce taxes by $1 trillion per year and balance the federal budget? Or his promise to torture prisoners? Or his plan to start a trade war with China? I could go on, but perhaps you get the point. Trump’s policy, plans and programs are absurd and dangerous. Getting into them in more detail over the next six months won’t change that reality.
Secondly, there is this ludicrous notion that the Donald is going to start acting “more presidential” and stop the “gratuitous personal insults.” What Collins probably means is that he will stop bullying Republicans and focus his attacks on Clinton. We all know that is coming. But the truth is that Trump hasn’t just been bullying politicians. He goes after anyone that he sees as a challenge to his ego. Over the last few months that has included Mexican immigrants, the disabled, reporters, women, etc.
I find it hard to comprehend how anyone would think that a man with a long history of narcissistic bullying is suddenly going to become “presidential” over the next few months. Contrary to what some people would have you believe, this isn’t an act that Trump has assumed since he became a reality TV star or decided to run for president. He has a long record on that front. Perhaps some people have forgotten about how he called for the death penalty for the Central Park Five before they were ever convicted. Recently we’ve been hearing about his attack on Native Americans when he was battling them over casinos.
The most egregious example of this came in 2000 in upstate New York, when Trump began bankrolling an ad campaign to stop a casino from being built in the Catskills. As the New York Times reported last month, the local newspaper ads showed “hypodermic needles and drug paraphernalia … [and] warned in dire terms that violent criminals were coming to town.”
“Are these the kind of neighbors we want?” the ad asked, referring to the St. Regis Mohawks Tribe at Akwesasne, which was planning to build the casino. “The St. Regis Mohawk record of criminal activity is well-documented.”
This narcissistic bullying from Trump is not an act. Its who he is. As I’ve said before, if you doubt that, go back and read what Mark Bowden wrote about the time he spent with Trump in 1996.
It just might be possible for Trump to keep a lid on things over the next six months (although I doubt it). But this is the temperament of the guy the Republicans will nominate to be our next president. No one needs to wait and see how all of that is going to turn out. The idea of sending a narcissistic bully to the White House should be unthinkable.
By: Nancy LeTourneau, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, May 6, 2016
“Donald Trump’s Ethnic Cleansing Program”: Openly Campaigning On Moral Atrocities
After a prolonged spell of missteps and atrocious press coverage, Donald Trump has regained his commanding lead in the Republican presidential primary. A week ago he swept five states in the Northeast by giant margins, and he leads every recent poll of Indiana, whose primary takes place Tuesday. The state is probably the last place for the anti-Trump faction to prevent him from winning the primary outright, and it doesn’t even look close.
It’s worth remembering what a grim development this is. Not only will his combination of open bigotry and utter lack of political or military experience be historically unique in a major party candidate, he’s also openly campaigning on moral atrocities — in particular, a plan of what amounts to ethnic cleansing.
Now, most people think of mass murder when they hear ethnic cleansing, but that’s not necessarily the case. Creating an ethnically homogeneous state can also be accomplished through deportation.
This brings me to Trump’s plan to put together a “deportation force” to remove the 11.3 million unauthorized immigrants living in the United States, an idea he justifies by reference to a somewhat similar program called “Operation Wetback” carried out in the mid-50s.
Perhaps the best way to begin to grasp what a horror this would be is to consider the sheer logistics of such an operation. First, one has to find the unauthorized population — no small task, as such people are understandably not keen on being rounded up and deported, and doubly so given the wide adoption of cell phones and internet service.
Though there isn’t a complete database for unauthorized immigrants, demographic estimates find that over 70 percent are from Mexico and Central America. That means a titanic amount of law enforcement rooting around in mostly poor Latino communities — probably starting with checkpoints demanding immigration papers from every brown person stopped along highways in states with high Latino populations, dragnet electronic surveillance, and huge pressure on employers. Absent a brutal secret police, it would be nigh-impossible.
But suppose the Trump Troopers manage to root out every unauthorized immigrant, with a mere few thousand U.S. citizens caught up by mistake. Then they would need to transport them back to their places of origin. Even if we assume that he wouldn’t bother to figure out where people came from, even just dumping them in Mexico (1.5 million Asians and all) would be extraordinarily complicated and expensive. Forcibly packing up 1.3 times the population of New York City, holding them while they’re processed through some sort of legal bureaucracy, and moving them thousands of miles would take thousands of trains, trucks, planes, or ships.
Any method would cost billions in fuel, food, and logistics, and grotesque abuse would be an iron certainty. Here’s how that turned out back in the ’50s:
The boatlift operations back to Mexico ended in September 1956 after seven workers drowned in an apparent attempt to escape, sparking a riot on the vessel known as the Mercurio. There were conflicting reports of what led to the drownings and the riot, according to New York Times accounts of the incident. Congressional investigators later said the boat resembled “an ancient penal ship” and that some 500 Mexican nationals were crammed aboard a boat that was equipped with two lifeboats that could only hold 48 people, according to an August 1956 Times article. [CNN]
Let’s not mince words about why Trump and his followers support this idea: anti-Latino bigotry. In U.S. discourse, the general assumption is that all unauthorized immigrants are Mexican (in reality only 56 percent are), and Trump has been railing against Mexicans for the entire campaign — asserting that the Mexican government is deliberately sending “criminals, drug dealers, rapists” over the U.S. border. It’s not a coincidence this is just when he rocketed to first place in the GOP primary. Deporting millions of Latinos, immigrant or no — and thus restoring the white demographic majority to some degree — is basically the point.
Trump’s Operation Wetback II would be an ethnic cleansing on par with the post-World War II “population transfers” in Eastern Europe, when about 30 million people, half of them Germans, were hastily and often brutally shuffled across borders so as to create ethnically homogenous nation-states. Those too were heinous crimes, but one can sort of understand why Germans might be a bit unpopular in the region. Proposing such an operation in a peaceful and basically prosperous nation, where the target population is quite well-integrated (indeed practically model citizens) is grotesque.
By: Ryan Cooper, The Week, May 3, 2016
“Media Is Ready To Grant Trump A Mulligan”: As Though We Hadn’t Just Witnessed His Reality Show Of The Last Six Months
If The Apprentice was basically a boardroom version of Survivor, then it shouldn’t surprise people that Donald Trump sees the Republican nominating contest as a game, and that he approaches the game the way a smart contestant approaches an elimination reality game show.
I’m no expert on this kind of strategy, but some things seem universal and obvious, like going after your strongest competitor first, and making a lot of temporary alliances. In retrospect, it’s easy to see why Trump spent all his early energy on the well-funded Jeb, why Cruz chose to be nice to Trump, and why Trump initially returned the favor.
Winning the general election is a completely different kind of game, though, so naturally Trump needs a completely different strategy. And, yes, that means that he has to play a different role. He has to actually be someone else.
And that’s precisely what he’s now promising the Republican bigwigs that he will do. I think Steve M. does a fine job of explaining this, so I’ll refer you to him rather than duplicating his efforts.
The key is that the Associated Press obtained a secret recording of a meeting that took place yesterday between Paul Manafort and top players at the Republican National Committee.
Trump’s chief strategist Paul Manafort told members of the Republican National Committee in a closed-door briefing here Thursday afternoon that his candidate has been playing a “part” on the campaign trail, but is starting to pivot toward presenting a more businesslike and presidential “persona.”
“He gets it,” Manafort told RNC members.
And this introduces a question about our modern environment. Now that every single thing you do and say seems to be captured digitally, it’s harder than ever to get away with flip-flopping, or saying one thing to one audience and something completely different to another one. Something you said on the Senate floor a quarter century ago can be brought up and plastered all over social media to make you look like a hypocrite.
Yet, the diffusion of the way people get their news, and the way that digitization kills people’s attention span (listen to a whole album lately?), makes it easier than ever to spin the news or change the subject and move on from controversy.
These two factors will be in tension as Trump tries to remake himself in front of our eyes, as though we hadn’t just witnessed the reality show of the last six months.
The media’s readiness to give him credit for this is not a good sign.
Let’s try not to forget how this campaign began. It began with widespread boycotts of Trump and Trump’s businesses because his campaign announcement had been so racist against Mexicans.
We’ve gone from that to the media applauding him for “presenting a more businesslike and presidential “persona.””
That’s amnesia, right there, and widespread media-assisted amnesia is Trump’s best hope for November.
By: Martin Longman, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, April 22, 2016
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