Scattershooting While Wondering if There is a Way to Stop the Kardashians From Reproducing…

Trump and the Governor

Donald Trump goes to New Mexico and gratuitously insults Governor Susanna Martinez, and everyone thinks his campaign is suddenly doomed.  It’s not.  We’ve seen this film before, and it always ultimately fades away.

Want proof?  Marco Rubio announced yesterday that he would be happy to speak on Trump’s behalf at the GOP convention.  A few hours later, Trump was urging Marco to change his mind and go ahead and run for re-election to his Florida Senate seat.

Huh?  Wasn’t it just a couple of months ago that Rubio was doing his best imitation of Don Rickles, hurling insult after insult on the debate stage and for a week after?  And wasn’t Trump responding to 

“Little Marco” with his own imitation of Triumph the Insult Dog?

Why yes, yes it was.

This is How The World Turns in this year’s GOP presidential campaign.  Get used to it, because it’s going to keep happening, and it’s all going to turn out ok.

The Trump/Sanders Debate Proposal

Oh, please God, let this happen.  This would be the political event of the century.  They should put it on pay-per-view.  Seriously – what better way to raise money for charity than charging $50 bucks a head to watch the thing and steering the proceeds to the charities of the candidates’ choice?

A friend expressed exasperation yesterday at the idea, saying it would turn the campaign “into a circus”.  Huh?  What campaign have you been watching, buddy?  This has been an unending three-ring circus since last July.

In Ring Number One, you have Hillary Clinton, the life-long criminal who without any question whatsoever allowed classified U.S. secrets to be shared with hackers and foreign governments over her illegal email server while she served as Secretary of State.  This is now not just an allegation – it is a clearly documented fact, and yet, the Democrat Party appears set to put her forth as its nominee for the Presidency.  Imagine how much damage she can do to national security in that office.

Isn’t that circus enough for you?

In Ring Number Two, you have The Commie.  Seriously, an avowed Marxist, Bernie Sanders, has now won 11 of the last 14 contested states on the Democratic side.  So the Democrat Party voters can’t decide between a criminal and a commie. 

Isn’t that Circus enough for you?

And in Ring Number Three, you have Donald Trump, who can’t decide if he’s running against the Democrats or any Republican who happens to pop up on his radar screen.  Donald Trump, who won every single debate against the 17 other Republicans arrayed against him despite having the detailed policy knowledge of the average hammerhead shark.  And the personality of one, come to think of it.

Isn’t that circus enough for you?

And you’re worried about a debate between the Commie and the Hammerhead making it even more of a circus?  C’mon, where’s your sense of fun?

In all seriousness, this is a can’t lose situation for Trump, and a can’t win situation for Hillary.

For Trump, Sanders is already now seen as anxiously responding to his suggestion, desperate to find a way to work it out.  If it gets worked out, all Trump would have to do in the debate would be to keep asking the Commie how he plans to pay for all of his idiotic proposals.  It would be the easiest debate in the history of mankind.

If the thing can’t be pulled off, Trump still looks like the bold candidate for proposing it in the first place.  If the reason it can’t be pulled off is because none of the networks are willing to let much or all of the proceeds/ad revenues go to charity, then Trump gets the win of making his enemies in the networks look like a bunch of money-grubbing sleazeballs, which most of them actually are.

No matter what happens, it all makes Hillary look like the odd-woman out, marginalizing her even more than she already has been over the last couple of months as the final round of primaries approach.  And if the debate actually happens, both candidates would have a prime opportunity to go after her with impunity.

Mid-day yesterday, one of Trump’s staffers indicated he was “just kidding” when he tossed the idea out there on Wednesday’s Jimmy Kimmel Show.  But late Thursday night, representatives of both campaigns said negotiations were ongoing.

As he always does, Trump has, with a single throwaway line in an interview, dominated a news cycle for the next 24 hours, and set up a process during which he has no chance to lose and several ways to win from a public perception standpoint.

If he would focus on this kind of thing, instead of tossing out gratuitous insults at his fellow Republicans, he would be literally unbeatable.

Trump is Elvis, Hillary is New Coke, and Bernie is the Backup QB

So, I was in a meeting earlier this week when the subject of discussion turned to analogies for the remaining political candidates.   This is a good discussion, because to a large extent it explains where we are in this race.

I’ve already written about my analogy for Bernie Sanders:  he’s the backup quarterback.  Right now, he’s the most popular of the three remaining major party candidates, according to the national polling data, just as the backup QB is always the most popular player on a football team with an under-performing starter.

But, like the backup QB, Bernie is popular because he has been largely unexamined.  He has essentially no chance to win, so neither the media nor the voters have spent much time analyzing what it really means to be a socialist.  Just as the fans inevitably cringe and stop cheering so loudly as soon as a backup QB gets on the field and demonstrates why he wasn’t the starter to begin with, so would the voters cringe were Bernie to actually become the nominee and they were forced to face the reality of exactly who he is.

My favorite analogy for Hillary Clinton is that she is just like “New Coke”.  You millennials won’t be familiar with this, but you can Google it for yourselves rather than have me explain was New Coke was.  Those of you who were cogent human beings in the early 1980s will remember the introduction of New Coke by the Coca Cola Bottling Company.  New Coke had a slightly different taste than Coca Cola, and it has this behemoth organization behind it spending tens of millions of dollars trying to convince the consuming public that they should love it and indeed be very excited about it.

The problem was, the more any normal human being tasted New Coke, the less they liked it.  This is Hillary Clinton in a nutshell.

Like New Coke, Hillary has this gigantic organization behind her spending tens of millions of dollars every week in an attempt to convince the voting public that they should love her and indeed be very excited about the opportunity to enjoy four years of her in the White House.  The problem with Hillary is, the more any normal human being becomes exposed to her, the less they like her.

Most politicians crave public and media attention and grow more popular with increasing exposure to both.  Hillary Clinton is exactly the opposite:  the more media and public attention she gets, the less popular she becomes.  This is nothing new – it has always been the case with her.

This is why the Democrat National Committee did everything it could to ensure Ms. Clinton would not have to endure any sort of truly contested race for the nomination.  They all knew it was vitally important to keep Hillary out of the public eye as much as possible throughout the campaign.   

Because the “idea” of Hillary – the U.S. is long overdue for its first female president, after all - is an idea that appeals to millions of Americans.  But the reality of Hillary, her unlikable personality, her fealty to all manner of far-leftwing causes, her obvious, blatant criminal activities over the last 35 years, and all the other baggage she brings along with her (including a big ol’ bag named Bill) is amazingly unappealing.

New Coke ultimately failed and disappeared from the shelves simply because the public, having been exposed to the reality of it, simply did not like it.  The same is likely to become true for Hillary.

Many people like to draw an analogy between Donald Trump and Ronald Reagan, but I don’t like that one.  While it is true that the circumstances of their respective races are similar in some ways, the two could not be more un-alike from a personal standpoint.

No, my favorite analogy for Trump is that he is a lot like Elvis Presley was in 1956.  When he appeared shaking his hips and singing this new-fangled rock ‘n roll music on the Ed Sullivan Show in September of that year, Elvis was a shock to the national system.  Many people in “proper” society thought he should be banned and his music should be banned with him.  Some even believed he was the anti-Christ (I’m not kidding). 

But Elvis had the exact opposite progression with the public that New Coke had:  the more he was exposed to the public, the less shocking he became as the public became acclimated to this new form of music and performance artist.  Within a year, lots of rock musicians were shaking their hips on Ed Sullivan, and teenagers were shaking their own hips on Saturdays on American Bandstand.  By then, no one thought Elvis was the anti-Christ, and no one feared the world was going to come to an end, and indeed, many of those teenagers’ parents were playing his albums in their living rooms.

This kind of progression, from an initial shock to the societal system to a gradual but steady acceptance and ultimate endorsement, is exactly what we have seen and continue to see where Trump is concerned.  True, the lunatic Glen Beck still thinks Trump is the anti-Christ, but no one else does.  Just three months ago, comparisons of Trump to Hitler were ubiquitous in the traditional and social media.  Think: when was the last time you saw that comparison made?

The hair is a lot different and you wouldn’t want to listen to him sing “Jailhouse Rock”, but Trump is Elvis, Hillary’s New Coke, and Bernie is and will always remain the backup QB.