There is a myth that Donald J. Trump, Plato’s original snake oil salesman, is unstoppable on his path to being the next President of the United States of America. The conventional wisdom is that this freak show is on its way to the White House as he is invincible. If you don’t believe Jay H. Ell just ask the Donald and he would confirm that he is the greatest blessing to mankind in two thousand years since, dare one say it, you know who walked on water.
This myth is being reinforced by the media who wax on and on with maps and meaningless polls….
The process which Trump will utilize to be able to relocate from Trump Towers to public housing is unclear. At the end of the day Trump will rely not on policy but on demagoguery using smears and personality attacks against Hillary on a level unimaginable. The latter tactic is the only election metric whose outcome cannot be measured and has been his successful modus operandi up till now.
WHY THE BELIEF IN TRUMP’S IMPREGNABILITY
The reason for this sad fatalism originates from the unbiased assessment of The Donald of himself and what he claims are his past miraculous achievements. More recently the fact that he predicted and won the Republican nomination when all pundits and the GOP mavens unwisely characterized him as a joke and a carnival barker, who had no chance of emerging triumphant, has sealed this perception. To this minute some still magically hope that he will go away, does not exist and refer to him euphemistically as the “nominee”.
Trump is the greatest communicator and the most persuasive salesman around. (Jay H. Ell is beginning to believe that Mexico will pay for that beautiful wall). He is an icon in business and in entertainment. His name recognition is up there with there with the President, Warren Buffett, Tom Brady and Bill Cosby. He literally is, as he has proved, “The greatest show on earth”.
The media moguls are really only interested in ratings. They are as interested in politics as McDonald’s is in hamburgers. If fishburgers became the rage McDonald's would make them their centerpiece. Both are just interested in making money. So they swarmed to The Donald like bees to honey giving him billions of dollars of free publicity and turned the Republican Primary into the Republican Derby to the ching ching of ratings. This ongoing coverage really helped Trump secure the nomination.
The media moguls are really only interested in ratings. They are as interested in politics as McDonald’s is in hamburgers. If fishburgers became the rage McDonald's would make them their centerpiece. Both are just interested in making money. So they swarmed to The Donald like bees to honey giving him billions of dollars of free publicity and turned the Republican Primary into the Republican Derby to the ching ching of ratings. This ongoing coverage really helped Trump secure the nomination.
Then The Donald intuitively read the Republican voter mind that has long ago been disconnected with the Republican Establishment. (Blog: America Spills its Guts in a Bloodless Revolution). Ironically they are more in sync with the erratic billionaire plutocrat than the middle class public servant and policy wonk, Paul Ryan. They want social security, Medicare, and jobs. They hate no action Government and corporations who have nation state status over their lives. The millennials don’t share the social values of their grandparents. The electorate has inner dark fears about “the others” which Trump gleefully and irresponsibly exploits in nationalistic and xenophobic fashion. There is also a section of the citizenry that are crying out for an authoritarian figure, a leader that “tells as it is” and shows the finger to the overlords. In so doing he promises to make America Great Again even if he has to waterboard and "even more" to get there.
So with his overbearing personality, the media’s sycophantic support, the fossilized GOP, and the disgruntled body politic, Donald predicted and won the Republican Primary. Added to all this he is prepared to say or do anything it takes to become President. He will contradict himself even on the same day, deny statements that are on tape, change policy at a bewildering pace so that it is impossible to rationally argue against him. All this seemingly makes no impact on his support.
He now predicts annihilating Hillary and who are those who belittled and laughed him off to argue? In fact if he claimed that after shooting the guy on Fifth Avenue he escaped by walking across the Hudson River who would disagree?
But Jay H. Ell still does not know, using conventional metrics, how he could be elected President. Because, unlike the petrified Republicans, his ecstatic supporters and the media who discuss him like he is for real, he knows that to become President one needs two hundred and seventy electoral votes.
WHY CONVENTIONAL ELECTION CAMPAIGNING WILL NOT WIN TRUMP THE PRESIDENCY.
There are several conventional approaches that are available for any prospective candidate. The Donald for better or worse will not or cannot use them effectively. Those include the following offensives:
Plan A is to get the Republican Party and its vast electoral machinery behind him to bring out the vote. In spite of all his bravado Donald J. Trump is very thin skinned and once offended goes ballistic. He also is a very mean man. He is a bully. His people skills, unlike his salesperson’s skills, suck. He is authoritarian and all this is not a recipe to weld a Party which consists of disparate groups which, with his nomination, are metastasizing into more and more power and interest centers.
Whatever happens with the hyped up negotiations to unify the party in their life or death struggle against Hillary the damage has already been done. (Blog: Trump is King - What Now?). In all probability by the time the election comes around the party will be "united" but in name only. In addition the maverick has made it clear that he isn't about to change his destructive winning stategy.
To run a Presidential campaign you need an infrastructure that is beyond Trump’s imagination. There are fifty two States with four hundred and thirty eight congressional seats all of whom who have several offices and office bearers and volunteer workers. All these tiny bureaucracies have office bearers who have loyalties and relationships that go back way back when. All the Congressmen, that are the leaders of these constituencies, are running for reelection and a large number of them need Trump like a hole in the head. Some together with their Senators will in fact make it a point to distance themselves from The Donald. It is fair to say that the loyalty to this Johnny Come Lately amongst the movers and shakers, that are needed to get the vote out, is zilch. This antipathy to him is reflected in the fact that he could have lost the Presidency on second ballot as the delegates, the worker bees of the Party, preferred anyone but Trump. (Blog: Incompetent Trump's Victory at Risk).
To run a Presidential campaign you need an infrastructure that is beyond Trump’s imagination. There are fifty two States with four hundred and thirty eight congressional seats all of whom who have several offices and office bearers and volunteer workers. All these tiny bureaucracies have office bearers who have loyalties and relationships that go back way back when. All the Congressmen, that are the leaders of these constituencies, are running for reelection and a large number of them need Trump like a hole in the head. Some together with their Senators will in fact make it a point to distance themselves from The Donald. It is fair to say that the loyalty to this Johnny Come Lately amongst the movers and shakers, that are needed to get the vote out, is zilch. This antipathy to him is reflected in the fact that he could have lost the Presidency on second ballot as the delegates, the worker bees of the Party, preferred anyone but Trump. (Blog: Incompetent Trump's Victory at Risk).
Trump is unlikely to surround himself with a strong team to see his way through the election. He confided, in a moment of endearing humility, that the secret of his success was to surround himself with mediocrity. The reason for this Trump confessed to the crowd, that admired and looked up to him, was that he needed to be admired and looked up to. Presumably his administration will come from that crowd because those who are prepared to serve in the unlikely circumstance that he is elected are far and few between. He will have a shortage of prospective candidates to fill leadership positions as he has systematically disengaged himself from anybody who is anybody in the GOP. He is down to a few mediocrities - Sarah Palin, who when it was suggested that she could be his Vice Presidential pick, in a rare moment of insight, conceded that she wanted to do him no harm, Chris Christie, a sad almost pathetic opportunist who has crossed all his bridges and other “losers” such as Huckabee and Perry will be on the list with of course the shambolic Newt Gingrich. As he mentioned he has everything covered accepting politics,(sic), there are two female possibilities to cover another of his glaring weaknesses - Senator Joni Ernst and Governor Mary Fallin that have to be in the reckoning. (The most effective "lady" candidate would be Governor Nikki Halley from S. Carolina who has indicated that it would be over her dead body. So too have John Kasich and Ted Cruz who are both tipped by the bookies to be distinct possibilities. If either the latter accept Jay H. Ell will give up his faith in person kind).
So Trump who should have been making overtures to every section of the Party has told them, almost in so many words, he doesn’t see the need. He is the boss now. In addition if he gets to close the "Establishment" his support might dwindle.
Plan B, also favored by The Berne, is that their personalities represent a “movement”. Implicit in that argument is that their king size crowds who pitch up in their thousands and rah rah rah till kingdom come will translate into about sixty - five million voters rushing to the polls without an infrastructure to orchestrate it. As Eliza Doolittle said, “Not bloody likely”. Where these votes are going to come from is uncertain as The Donald’s unfavourability rating is at sixty - five percent.
The Donald will focus on this plan as the centerpiece of his strike come hell or high water. He has mocked the conventional election strategies and claimed that these mass meetings are where it is at - "If you win the pennant why change tactics for the World Series?".
The Donald will focus on this plan as the centerpiece of his strike come hell or high water. He has mocked the conventional election strategies and claimed that these mass meetings are where it is at - "If you win the pennant why change tactics for the World Series?".
Now The Donald is only ahead in one demographic, white males. Obama, (39%) lost the white vote by twenty percentage points to Romney, (59%) and the latter did not have a white woman problem. Even the majority of Republican women feel negatively about Trump. Obama,(55%), only beat Romney,(44%), by eleven percent in the women vote. Trump cannot count on the same number of white women to support him as they did Romney. He will not exceed the 27 percent of the Hispanic vote that Romney registered. So for practical purposes most of his votes must come from white males.To win Trump needs round about sixty - five million votes. (Romney received about sixty million). The total number of male white voters is estimated to be about 40 million. In other words there are just not enough white males in America to make The Donald The Commander in Chief.
Plan C is forget about voters and look at States. As argued in the blog, “Trump is King - What Now?”, even if Trump wins all the States that Romney won his chances of winning three or four of Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin is a pipe dream. The North East and Mid West suburban Republicans are embarrassed by him. He hasn’t his sixty five percent unfavorability rating for nothing and again there aren’t enough blue collared white males to swing it his way in these States. It is far more likely, with the growing Hispanic vote, that Hillary picks up three or four States more than Obama did in 2012.
Plan D is to abandon his self funded lark and collect money so as to be able to compete with Clinton organizationally and in the media. Besides all the implications of yet another flip flop to his persona, the big donors, other than Sheldon Adelson, are not falling over themselves to take advantage of this opportunity. Those with money have not only not come forward but even pulled back.
PLAN E - TRUMP’S TRUMP CARD - GET INTO THE GUTTER
Plan E is to change the narrative and concentrate on smearing Hillary off the face of the earth and is already in full swing. This is obviously the plan of choice together with the mass rallies. Hillary isn’t too popular herself and has over thirty percent negative ratings. She has been around a long time and "stuff" occurs. His strongest argument, apparently, is Bill’s behavior twenty years ago and it is all Hillary’s fault. He has a ton to reveal about Bill’s dallying that Hillary enabled.
This type of approach has really been The Donald’s m. o. throughout the Republican Primary why should he abandon it? Now if the birther campaign is anything to go by the truth is irrelevant. To date Trump has lied to the extent that the saturated public don’t even blink or even comment on the fact that seventy percent of his examined statements are proven lies. (Blog: Enter Lying Presidential Nominee Donald Trump).
This type of approach has really been The Donald’s m. o. throughout the Republican Primary why should he abandon it? Now if the birther campaign is anything to go by the truth is irrelevant. To date Trump has lied to the extent that the saturated public don’t even blink or even comment on the fact that seventy percent of his examined statements are proven lies. (Blog: Enter Lying Presidential Nominee Donald Trump).
Trump’s genius is when proven wrong he just comes up with another lie. When all was lost on the drama he had created about Obama’s birth certificate he lied that his investigators had found stunning evidence that he would reveal to the nation. He unashamedly announced at the eagerly anticipated Press Conference that the investigators had found nothing but society owed him a debt for bringing up the issue. (Incidentally Trump promised, in 2011, to release his taxes if Obama produced his birth certificate.)
To this day he maintains that he is not so sure where Obama was born “but he doesn’t want to go there”. He deftly moves from lie to lie and the ratings seeking media rather than pin him on the most recent one fight to report the next ratings lifting outrageous lie. The media have failed society by not holding Trump’s feet to the fire and by treating his behavior as the new normal. In the teeth of all this mendacity they discuss his Vice Presidential picks!
To this day he maintains that he is not so sure where Obama was born “but he doesn’t want to go there”. He deftly moves from lie to lie and the ratings seeking media rather than pin him on the most recent one fight to report the next ratings lifting outrageous lie. The media have failed society by not holding Trump’s feet to the fire and by treating his behavior as the new normal. In the teeth of all this mendacity they discuss his Vice Presidential picks!
This stratagem, which is magnified by social media, is novel to say the least. To conduct a two year campaign on literally no policy other than sound bites that change when they become counterproductive and rely on bad mouthing is to date unprecedented. When Kenneth Starr spent 80 million to find dirt on the Clintons and all he found was Monica, Jay H. Ell, is sure he wishes he could have just produced a tissue of lies. It will much be easier for Trump to try and smash the Clintons as he just makes it up. Hillary as yet isn’t even going there recognizing that this is a dangerous tactic and hoping that it will backfire.
Now anything can happen between now and November but it might impact The Donald more than Hillary. He must still avoid an embarrassing flop at the convention, dodge a potential third candidate and fight an election with, at best, an as yet half funded half hearted army. The FBI has all but announced to the world that they can find no evidence of wrong doing in Hillary’s e mail saga. In contrast The Donald’s class action suits against him for defrauding students in his now defunct University are on track. (He had to have been short of money to try that stunt).
He has not as yet produced his income tax filings and Romney et al are convinced it is because it might expose his well spun narrative, such as his wealth and charitable donations or even expose criminal activity. This coupled with the fact that he has not self funded his campaign, he has just loaned $35 million to it, and that he is not going to fund his Presidential run at all, is going to further dent his credibility.
He has not as yet produced his income tax filings and Romney et al are convinced it is because it might expose his well spun narrative, such as his wealth and charitable donations or even expose criminal activity. This coupled with the fact that he has not self funded his campaign, he has just loaned $35 million to it, and that he is not going to fund his Presidential run at all, is going to further dent his credibility.
AT THE END OF THE DAY
So much depends on how Hillary adapts to this new form of electioneering. In all probability she will continue with her carefully crafted message and keep looking presidential. She will avoid answering his scandalizing as far as she can. The former Secretary of State will then contrast Donald as the "risky" alternative. Her Super PACS, meanwhile will pour on a ton of you know what onTrump. (Can you imagine what is out there over his sixty - eight megalomaniac life? In fact it has already started in the media. Hillary may get a reciprocal two billion in free attacks).
Disgracing is a double edged sword. Bill Clinton, at the moment, is a respected leader. Two House speakers that impeached him landed in the gutter - Ken Livingstone and Newt Gingrich who together with Congressman Barr exited as their own smut was exposed.
Disgracing is a double edged sword. Bill Clinton, at the moment, is a respected leader. Two House speakers that impeached him landed in the gutter - Ken Livingstone and Newt Gingrich who together with Congressman Barr exited as their own smut was exposed.
As to the question whether The Donald can walk on water the answer is no. But he can swim in a sewer.
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