As The Polls Turn

Late last week I told you that the polling data would begin to turn significantly early this week in Donald Trump's favor, as the tracking polls began to interview likely voters in the days immediately following the "townhall" interviews he and Hillary Clinton did with NBC's Matt Lauer last Thursday evening.  Or was it last Wednesday?  It seems so long ago that it's hard to remember exactly.

At any rate, that's exactly what happened.  We see it in the internals of the LA Times poll, the Reuters/Ipsos tracking poll and the Rasmussen survey.

The reason why this happened is simple:  Trump went on national TV with a hostile interviewer, held his composure, displayed good knowledge of the major issues, and most importantly, looked "presidential".  On the same program, Ms. Clinton looked like the extremely transparent habitual liar that she is.  Her eyes and body language give every lie away.  Even viewers who know nothing about reading body language can instinctively see she is lying her eyes out.

As we've repeatedly pointed out, the only thing that matters from here on out is whether or not Trump can give comfort to most undecided voters that he is not a danger to the country.  The only thing that matters where that is concerned is visuals, since probably 90% of Americans at this point are almost strictly visual learners with incredibly short attention spans (thanks, horrible education system and social media).

Trump's visuals last week with Lauer were great.  Probably the best he's had during the entire campaign season.  Hillary's visuals on the same program were god-awful, even moreso than they normally are.

Thus, the polling move towards Trump over the weekend was entirely predictable to anyone who does not get their news from ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, the Washington Post or the New York Times.

What I didn't know when I wrote that piece late last week was that Hillary would exacerbate her own terrible week with her "basket of deplorables" remarks the next evening, and that her situation vis a vis visuals would shortly become infinitely worse, as it did when she physically collapsed at the 9/11 memorial on Sunday.  Unlike the bad visuals with Lauer, which her agents in the fake media moved away from as quickly as possible, that video - naturally not captured by any of the fake reporters who follow her campaign, but by a bystander with an I-Phone - has been played millions of times to date, and will be played millions more times prior to November 8.

The result of piling those events atop her terrible, horrible, awful, no-good evening with Matt Lauer has been to turn what would have been a significant polling move towards Trump into a polling tidal wave.  Barring another Clinton collapse, that wave will likely play itself out by the end of this weekend, but the damage is now done.  Trump leads now in every reputable tracking poll - and even in the disreputable Reuters/Ipsos sham poll - and not even the NY Times was able to dummy up a poll showing Mrs. Clinton with a significant lead.

There was another very significant and telling event that took place this week in Flint, Michigan.  As Trump was speaking to an African American church audience, he was heckled and then rudely interrupted by the church's female preacher when he began to make remarks about Mrs. Clinton.  This was an obvious pre-planned effort to provoke him into a stupid back-and-forth with the preacher, as he did with he Kahn family following the Democrat National Convention.

But this time, Trump didn't react to the shiny object like a cat chasing a laser pointer.  This time, he reacted calmly and gracefully ceded control of the podium to the hostile preacher. 

Smart.

We are now in our fifth week of Trump not chasing any shiny objects or doing anything stupid.  This is the key to the entire campaign.  If he can keep that up for eight more weeks, this election will not be close.

Remember:  despite all efforts by the Clinton campaign and her supporters in the fake news media to convince you otherwise, this campaign is about one thing and one thing only. And at this point, Trump is on the way to winning big.

For Hillary, Nothing Is Ever "That Big A Deal"

Hillary Clinton appeared via telephone - presumably from her pneumonia-ridden sick bed - on Anderson Cooper 360 last night, and told a bunch more lies about her health issues, among other things she lied about.  (To be clear, I did not see the entire interview, but I know she was lying the entire time, simply because her lips were moving.)

When asked by Cooper why, if she had been diagnosed with pneumonia on Friday, she didn't just come clean with the American people and let them know about it then?

Her answer:  "Well, I just didn't think it was that big a deal."

This is the lie Hillary invariably trots out when the initial effort to cover things up has failed.  And make no mistake, there is always, 100% of the time, an initial effort to cover things up whenever she has done something unethical, controversial or illegal.

Why didn't you tell the truth about a U.S. Ambassador and three other dead Americans in Benghazi?  "Well, I just didn't think it was that big a deal (at this point, what difference does it make?)."

Why did you tell your staff to erase 33,000 emails and "clean" your private server with acid?  "Well, I just didn't think it was that big a deal."

Why did you choose to use that illegal server while serving as Secretary of State to begin with?  "Well, I just didn't think it was that big a deal."

Why did you try to cover up all the special access you were granting to Clinton Foundation donors while serving as Secretary of State?  "Well, I just didn't think it was that big a deal."

Why did you accept millions of dollars in speaking fees from the same big Wall Street firms you demonize on the campaign trail?  "Well, I just didn't think it was that big a deal."

Why did you try to cover up your and your husband's illegal use of confidential FBI files of your political enemies while serving as First Lady?  "Well, I just didn't think it was that big a deal."

Why did you lie about bilking Whitewater investors out of hundreds of thousands of dollars during the 1980s?  "Well, I just didn't think it was that big a deal."


To Hillary Clinton, nothing is ever "that big a deal", especially if the public knowing about it might stand in the way of her collecting bags of money or grabbing political power.

This is why she must not be elected president in November.  Because to her, nothing - literally nothing, not even the death of American citizens - is ever "that big a deal".

Trump Wins The Persuasion Battle

To listen to and read all the fake media reports today, last night's forum was basically a wash for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.  Because the fake media continues to report on this race as if it were a conventional race, they would have you believe there was no winner.  Trump's optics were a little better, while Hillary predictably displayed a superior grasp of details, they would all have you believe.  A tie.

I believe this is, like 1980 was, a completely non-conventional race.  The details on foreign policy issues don't matter.  Hell, the issues themselves don't matter.

The only thing that matters in this race at this point is whether or not Donald Trump can convince enough undecided, independent voters that he is not a danger to the survival of the American Republic and everyone in it.  It's the exact same challenge Ronald Reagan faced against incumbent Jimmy Carter 36 years ago.

Hillary spent her entire time with Clinton Foundation Fellow Matt Lauer trying hard to convince you that Trump is indeed such a clear and present danger to your very survival.  Given that she decided about six weeks ago to make this the entire basis for her candidacy, that is not surprising.

Trump, on the other hand, spent his time with Mr. Lauer looking and sounding nothing like a danger to the survival of the country and its inhabitants.  He actually was pretty well versed on the issues as well - indicating he has finally decided to do the homework he should have done a year ago - and that's great.

But again, the issues don't matter, because everyone who gives a damn about the issues has already unalterably made up their minds about who to vote for. 

What mattered was how Trump looked and sounded to those who haven't made up their minds.  Again, he looked and sounded presidential, and really pretty safe compared to his unrepentant felon of an opponent.

Make no mistake about it, last night was a clear, big win for Trump from the only standpoints that matter.  That clear, big win will begin showing up in the polling data early next week, when you will see Trump's lead in the non-TV network affiliated polls expand.

Once you start viewing this race from a persuasion standpoint, none of what happens from here on out will surprise you.  If you, like the fake news media, keep looking at it as a conventional presidential race, you'll be surprised pretty much every week.

Your choice.

Trump Takes The Lead

While Hillary Clinton coughed her way through a speech in Cleveland yesterday, Donald Trump was taking the lead in the new poll from - get ready for it - CNN.

Yes, friends, the Clinton News Network, which has blatantly made itself nothing more than the propaganda arm for the Clinton campaign for the last year and a half, is no longer able to dummy  up a poll that could credibly give their gal the lead and has finally given up that ghost.  Heads must literally be spinning right now in their morning meeting to review the talking points the Clinton campaign has fed them overnight, as they desperately attempt to find some way to report this latest CNN/ORC poll as positive news for Hillary.

But wait, it gets better.  Trump also took the lead over the weekend in - are you sitting down? - the REUTERS/IPSOS tracking poll.

That is not a typo.

Yes, the Reuters/Ipsos poll, about which I wrote extensively in July, as its authors scrambled to revise their already heavily biased sampling method to make it even more friendly to The Most Corrupt Woman in America, now has Trump holding a 1 point lead.  I suppose we should expect an announcement from Reuters soon that it will, from this point forward, only poll Democrats in order to ensure Hillary keeps her "lead" over her execrable opponent.

Speaking of Trump, let's all remember that it was barely a month ago that everyone in the DC/NYC Establishment Axis of Propaganda was declaring the New York businessman to be officially dead in this race.  It was too late, they said, and Hillary's lead at that point was just too overwhelming for him to be able to make a comeback.

A few weeks later, here we are.  Trump leads not only in the CNN/ORC and Reuters/Ipsos polls, he also leads in the LA Times poll and the Rasmussen survey.

Of course, the Establishment people have made this same mistake of declaring Trump officially "dead" at dozens of points over the last 14 months.  One can only wonder how many more times they will make this same clownish mistake before finally learning what is really going on in the electorate this cycle.

Ok, the truth is that these people are so out of touch with real America, so solidly captive in their little insular bubble of stupidity and ignorance that they are utterly incapable of comprehending how ordinary Americans actually think.

The only good news for them here is that it is they, and not Trump, who are running out of time in this campaign.  So they can only be utterly, completely, laughably wrong a few more times before it's all over.

It's Trump's Election to Lose

Sorry the postings have been so sparse lately, but we've been involved in job changes and a move to a new city, and it's been hard to keep up.

But after yesterday's events, I had to find the time.

Put simply, Donald Trump's trip to Mexico is the turning point in the campaign, all other things being equal.  Regardless of how often the fake news media repeat the Clinton campaign talking points and ridiculing the trip, it was YUGE for Trump.

First, he made the trip to Mexico City at the invitation of President Pena Nieto.  The first thing that tell us is that, despite all the rhetoric from the media and the NeverTrump pinheads, the President of Mexico thinks it is entirely likely that Donald Trump is going to be the next President.

Smart man.

The next thing it tells us is that Mr. Nieto is anxious to establish a working relationship with Trump, in the hopes of mitigating his intentions to actually enforce U.S. immigration laws.  Again, smart man.

Even though he had barely 24 hours notice, Trump smartly jumped at the chance to fly to Mexico City.  The opportunity to hold a joint presser with the President of another country is a rare chance for any presidential candidate, and it was doubly important for Trump.

At that event, Trump was firmly in command of the agenda and the message, so much so that even the tireless Trump-bashing Charles Krauthammer had to admit he had done well.

Trump's speech in Phoenix later in the evening was even better, focusing as it did - and should have - on simply enforcing the U.S. immigration laws that have been on the books for many years.  The truth is, nothing more need be done to solve every problem related to our southern border.  Every one of them have been created and exacerbated by 16 years of presidents who had no intent or interest in enforcing those laws.

It was an incredibly smart speech, a brilliantly choreographed day overall, and without any doubt a turning point in this campaign.  And there was literally nothing Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama could do about it.

As I've said since last October, this is and remains Trump's election to win or lose.  His one and only task in this campaign is to convince the public at large that he can be a credible president who is not a danger to the Republic.  Wednesday went a long way towards accomplishing that goal and will have him ahead in several of the myriad polls by mid-week next week.

He has now avoided doing anything real stupid for three weeks.  If he can continue that for two more months, he will be elected president and it won't be real close.  The vast majority of Americans don't want to vote for Hillary, but they need to be made comfortable in voting for Trump.

It's all in Trump's hands now and there really isn't anything Hillary can do about it.

Trump's Perfect Night

"He's going to win," my good friend, a very astute participant in politics, told me over breakfast this morning.

"Yes, he is," I replied.

Both of us have pretty much felt that would turn out to be the case since last September.  If you understood the mood of the electorate, the cluelessness in that regard of his 16 Republican primary opponents, and the incredibly flawed lifetime criminal the Democrats were intent upon nominating, it wasn't really all that hard to see it coming.

Still, isn't it shocking?  This one man, whatever you think of him, has completely overturned one of our two traditional major political parties, and essentially created a new one with a new mission by nothing more really than the sheer force of his will. 

He has demonstrated conclusively that our national politics doesn't have to be about who hires the most expensive consultants, who raises and spends the most money, whose consultants are able to come up with the slickest campaign ads, and who can most ably recite their 5 major talking points in response to any question they happen to be asked.  It's been this way for so long, we've all forgotten that it really doesn't have to be.

And think about what that meant this week for the Republican Party.  This is now a party at which a speaker can get up on the stage, talk about how proud he is to be a gay man, and receive a roaring standing ovation.  That is change.

The GOP is now a party at whose convention the nominee's daughter can advocate for more federal help for working mothers and receive a resounding round of applause.  That is change.

The GOP is now a party whose revised voter base - who turned out in massive, record numbers during the primary season - has put its elected representatives on notice that the excuse-making in which they have uniformly engaged for not getting anything done over the last six years just won't cut it anymore.  Going forward, there will either be results, or there will be new representatives getting elected.

All of this happened through the vision of Trump to clearly recognize the mood of the voters, and use that mood to his advantage through the force of his will.  No one else can take credit for this.

His speech was not perfect, far from it.  It was too loud, devoid of nuance, unsophisticated in its delivery.  But the messages it contained were spot on, exactly what he needed to deliver in order to unite the GOP voter base behind him and begin to expand that base with clear, unambiguous appeals to the independents who will ultimately decide the election.

Naturally, all of the "analysts" at CNN hated it, which in this election season is a pretty sure indicator that it was extremely effective.

Trump will definitely get the bounce in the polls he needed out of this convention, likely enough to take a lead in the polling data next week.  More importantly, he laid the groundwork to continue building on that bounce in the weeks and months to come.

"He's going to win."  Yes, friend, he is.

Protecting Americans vs. More of the Same

The more terrorist events that take place, the more cops that are killed on our streets here in the United States, the more this election boils down Protecting Americans (Donald Trump) vs. More of the Same (Hillary Clinton).  That's the reality faced by both campaigns.

Throwing out all other considerations around that reality, what this means is that the result on Election Day will depend upon two factors:

• How many American voters really do want real, tangible change from not just the last eight years, but the last sixteen years of American governance; and
• How many American voters can be convinced that Trump is not 'dangerous'.

That's it.  Nothing else really matters.  Yes, there will be tons of noise and efforts by the Clinton camp to distract you and make you think the election is really about something else, but in the end these two factors will decide the election.

Trump understands that Americans are sick to death of the chronic dysfunction coming out of Washington, DC, and sick to death of both major parties and the excuses they constantly make for failing to get anything positive accomplished for them.  Trump further understands that this means that millions of Americans are disenchanted not just with what has gone in in the nation's capital over the last eight years, but for the last sixteen years.

Which is why he has from the beginning run as the only true change agent in either party, and why he has campaigned against not only the policies of Barack Obama, but also against the policies of George W. Bush and the Republican congress.  Of course, those policies often bear so little difference that this task hasn't been all that difficult to achieve.

Trump also understands that millions of Americans are afraid:  Afraid of terrorism and the Obama presidency's steadfast refusal to address the true cause of the problem; afraid of the growing level of violence on America's streets and the president's blatant support of it; afraid of the last 16 years of economic stagnation and lack of economic growth and job creation; afraid of the breakdown of this country's institutions and the abject failure of both parties to address it.

Thus, every major policy preference Trump has chosen has been about protecting the American people.  Protecting them from non-Americans, protecting them from the leftwing radicalism promoted by the Democratic Party and funded by George Soros, protecting them from the growing government intrusion into their daily lives favored by both major parties.

The Clinton campaign has responded to Trump's strategy by attempting to convince the public that things are generally peachy in America, that the policies of Barack Obama are working just fine, that all we really need the next president to do is tweak things a little bit to make them work even better, and that the more radical change represented by Trump and Trump himself  are "dangerous".  Which is exactly how one would expect a conventional campaign like Clinton's to respond to the unconventional campaign being run by Trump.

If one looks back through history one finds that this is exactly, precisely, 100% the way the conventional campaign of Jimmy Carter responded to the unconventional campaign being run by Ronald Reagan in 1980.  It's like deja vu all over again, to put it in Yogi Berra terms.

In 1980, the Carter campaign - helped by many 'establishment' Republicans - portrayed Reagan as a loose cannon, a cowboy, a know-nothing and a racist who was just too dangerous to be handed the reins of power by the American people.

Sounds familiar, huh?

With the exception of a big Reagan bounce coming out of the party conventions, Carter held an otherwise uninterrupted polling lead throughout the 1980 campaign.  The final Gallup poll released the Friday before Election Day showed the race essentially a dead heat.  Over that final weekend, all three major broadcast networks worked hard to convince the public that the polling data was trending in favor of Carter.

On Election Day, Reagan received 51% of the national vote to Carter's 41%, a landslide by any measure, as the late-deciding public decided that Reagan was in fact not too dangerous to be handed the reins of power to implement the radical change that the public desired.

The objective of the Trump campaign will be to produce a similar result.  Trump faces a far less effective and more damaged opponent than Reagan faced, but he also must convince a voting public whose demographics and voting trends are far different than in 1980.

Hillary, on the other hand, really has no choice but to run an almost 100% negative campaign against Trump.  Were she a different person, one could propose that she could influence the outcome by trying to prove to the public that she's not a crook and a pathological liar.  But those ships have irrevocably sailed.  She is who she is.

So this campaign will be about one thing:  Is Trump too dangerous to hold power?

That's it.  Nothing else matters.

The Presidential Campaign Began Today

This morning, Donald Trump gave the speech Republican voters have been longing to hear from a Republican - any Republican - candidate about the Clintons for 24 long years.

George H.W. Bush wasn't willing to tell the unvarnished truth about Bill and Hillary Clinton in 1992, and he lost.  Bob Dole was too frightened of the Clintons and their media protectors in 1996, and he lost.  George W. Bush suffered from the same fear of the Clintons and the media, and the result was his being blamed for the 2008 banking collapse which in fact was caused by idiotic policies enacted during the Clinton Administration.

 Today, Donald Trump demonstrated why, out of the original 17 Republicans who sought the Party's nomination this year, he was the only one who would have any chance of defeating Hillary Clinton in the general election.  The simple reason why is that Trump has no fear:  No fear of the Clintons, no fear of their army of highly paid liars, no fear of our fake media establishment which functions as little more than the propaganda wing of the Democratic Party.

The GOP had to have a Honey Badger as its nominee this year.  Where the Clintons are concerned, Donald Trump is that Honey Badger - he just don't give a damn.  Honey Badger Don't Care.

It has been 36 years since the Republican Party had as its nominee a candidate who had the personal intestinal fortitude to tell the unvarnished truth about the opposition party and its nominee.  In this regard, Trump is so alien to the traditional GOP cower-in-fear-of-negative-press approach to politics that many members of his own party simply do not have any idea how to deal with it.  As Trump said yesterday in an interview, he is almost having more trouble with leaders in the GOP than he is having with the Democrats.

The reason for that is that establishment Republicans don't know how to react to the Honey Badger in their midst. They have become too accustomed to nominees who more resemble head-in-the-sand ostriches or plodding sloths.

In any event, what we saw from Trump this morning is in fact the beginning of the campaign.  This is the campaign that must be run if the Clinton/fake media machine is to be defeated.

It's going to be tough, it's going to be nasty, it's going to be incredibly unpopular among our pop culture, it's going to be hard for the squeamish among us to watch.

But make no mistake about it, the Honey Badger approach is the only way the GOP can win the presidency this year.

And Donald Trump is that Honey Badger.

Game on.










 

Trump's Wasted Week that Was - Or Was it?

During the second half of March, Donald Trump pretty much unarguably had the worst two weeks any presidential candidate in modern times has ever had.  He was completely off-message, focused on the wrong things, constantly under fire from the mainstream [fake] news media, and just generally looked lost.  The "Trump is Hitler", "Trump is a racist", "Trump is a misogynist" memes were ubiquitous on all the talking head shows and across all social media.

The result of those two weeks came with a big-time loss to Ted Cruz in the Wisconsin primary.  This led all the "smart" people in Washington - like Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer and George Will and all the pinheads who write for The National Review these days - to declare Trump dead as a doornail, proclaiming with certainty that Trump could never, never, ever even hope to get to the 1237 delegate needed to win the nomination, and that the GOP would end up having a brokered convention out of which Ted Cruz would emerge victorious.

Remember all of that?  If you don't, go back and do a little review, 'cuz that's exactly what happened during that period of time.

So what happened next?  What happened next was Ted Cruz never won another contested primary.  What happened next was Ted Cruz and the crazy party guest who just won't leave, John Kasich, finally dropped out of the race following Trump's huge win in the Indiana primary.  What happened next was Trump ran his delegate total all the way to 1542 as of this writing, with still more on the way.  What happened next was Bill Kristol made a clown of himself by pushing some blogger no one had ever heard of as his own stellar independent candidate.  What happened next was Trump already consolidating support in the GOP to the same level Mitt Romney managed to put together in the 2012 race.  What happened next was Trump taking a temporary polling lead over Hillary Clinton, something none of the "smart" people thought could ever happen in a million years.

That's what happened next, all of it after Trump had experienced the most god-awful two week period in the history of American politics in March.

And now we sit here at the end of another lost week for Donald Trump.  He was focused on the wrong things, completely off-message, creating controversy where none needed to exist, pounded 24 hours a day by the [fake] news media, needlessly giving rise again to the "Trump is a racist" meme.  His lead over Hillary is now a thing of the past, his campaign is supposedly out of money, and his millions of dollars worth of free weekly airtime on the 24 hour cable networks has all but disappeared.

So now what's happening?  Why, all the same "smart" people who declared him dead in early April are now declaring him dead in early June.  Bill Kristol and his gang of #NeverTrump circus clowns are busy huddling with Mitt Romney concocting yet another scheme to steal the nomination from Trump at the convention in July.  Normal people who see Hillary Clinton as the personification of evil in our time and want desperately to support Trump as the only viable alternative to four or eight years of resident evil in the White House are walking around with their heads down, despairing that Trump is blowing this thing.

That's what's happening now.  Everything is right back where it was in early April.

Given what has happened during the course of this campaign season to this point, what do you think is the most likely thing to start happening next?

Get your heads up, Trump fans.  It's a long way to November.

Trump vs. Lapdog Media - a Day in Review, 5.31.2016

Let's quickly review the events of the day:

1. Donald Trump holds a free-wheeling, hour long press conference during which he details where the $6 million raised for veterans has been contributed or is about to be donated, excoriates the press in general for being inherently biased and dishonest - both of which accusations are 100% correct - and singles out one ABC reporter as being a "sleaze".  Also true.
   
2. Bernie Sanders calls a "press conference" about healthcare.  He speaks for ten minutes, takes no questions at all, and no one in the lapdog press corps covering his campaign objects.
3. Hillary Clinton studiously avoids having any meaningful, un-planned, un-staged interaction with the lapdog press corps covering her campaign for about the 180th consecutive day, and no one in the media will object.
4. Finally, at 12:50 p.m., CST today, I went over to the landing page for the very liberal Politico.com, and inventoried the various headlines there.  There were at that time 25 headlines in all, and the word "Trump" appeared in 17 of them, including 9 of the first 10 in order.

This is how Donald Trump has dominated this election season to this point, and how he will continue to dominate it through Election Day.  And neither the Clinton Campaign nor her lapdog press agents in the mainstream news media have the slightest clue what to do about it.

This is Donald Trump, Winning

As of noon today, Central Standard Time, 15 of the 26 headlines on the landing page at Politico.com contained the word "Trump".

#winning