My Thought Watching the Dems Bash Trump Tonight
Of the 16 candidates the Republicans started with, did they nominate the only one who can't beat a weak Hillary Clinton? @instpundit
— Coyoteblog (@Coyoteblog) July 28, 2016
Hillary is hugely unpopular and embroiled in one scandal after another. She is not statist enough for her own party and statist in the wrong ways for Republicans. She is dogged by scandal. But Trump has allowed everyone to stop having to sell Hillary -- they can just bash Trump.
From Kevin Drum's summary of the evening:
Tonight's speech roundup:
- Michael Bloomberg: Trump is a con man.
- Tim Kaine: Trump is a liar.
- Joe Biden: Trump is a sociopath.
- Barack Obama: Trump is an asshole.
Matthew Slyfield:
"But Trump has allowed everyone to stop having to sell Hillary -- they can just bash Trump."
All they are doing is preaching to the choir it will change not one vote.
Michael Bloomberg: Trump is a con man.
True, but his supporters won't care.
Tim Kaine: Trump is a liar.
Trivial, so is every other politician and political candidate on the face of the earth.
Joe Biden: Trump is a sociopath.
And proud of it, and so are his supporters.
Barack Obama: Trump is an asshole.
And proud of it, and so are his supporters.
July 28, 2016, 12:09 amMike Fritz:
Media bias is more significant than any one politician's platform. The media and DNC were very rigidly coordinated when they referred to the the GOP convention as "dark". All the news outlets used the term "dark" to describe the convention.
After day 1 of the DNC convention, the coordinated word of the day was "unity". Where's that unity now? Why isn't the DNC convention referred to as "dark"?
July 28, 2016, 3:59 amslocum:
Personally, I'm voting for Johnson and generally trying to ignore the nauseating spectacle. It's not my fault my fellow Americans nominated these bozos, and I feel no need to ratify their choices. But from a horse-race perspective, I'm not sure this analysis is right. With Hillary as their candidates, the Democrats would have been forced to focus mainly on bashing her opponent regardless of who he was (the current Republican nominee always reminds Democrats of Hitler). Yes, against Hillary, Trump has weaknesses that none of the other Republican candidates had, but he also has unique strengths -- in particular his ability to dominate the news cycle without spending money and his willingness and ability to skewer 'crooked' Hillary relentlessly and effectively. None of the other Republican hopefuls could do either of these things at all, really.
July 28, 2016, 4:09 amJohnnyreb:
Not sure if you have been watching the polls but Hillary went from 20+ lead in the polls against Trump to -7 in the latest poll. Just sayin.....
July 28, 2016, 4:31 amJ_W_W:
All I know is I used to be able to watch the Democratic convention. Now it is impossible to stomach. The 92 convention was a masterpiece of political theater. In 2004 the convention was only mostly unwatchable except for a riveting speech by a junior senator. Who knew at the time that every word of that speech was a cold cacluated bald faced lie of the highest order and that that man would proceed to usher in an era of division and "I won now I will punish my politicos enemies" government.
Obama was the first President in my lifetime who treated American citizens who did not vote for him not as citizens of his country but as enemies from some other place. As much as they hated Bush, Bush never put forth the notion that democrats were evil and needed to be subjugated in their own country. He just did things democrats didn't like.
Obama has sewed division like no Presidenf I can remember. Now half of the people label the other half of the people as villains. This isn't going to end well.
When Obama was elected we let a man who hated America and what it stands for run America. Is it any wonder that he turned it against itself.
July 28, 2016, 5:44 amkidmugsy:
Hellary is a gangster.
Hellary is an instinctive liar, even when it's probably not in her own interest. Lying is her way of life.
Hellary is a sociopath or a psychopath: I'd welcome advice on which she is.
Hellary is an arsehole and, in my view, treasonous.
July 28, 2016, 5:45 amCardin Drake:
A better way to put it is that the democrats nominated the only person incapable of beating Trump. Hillary is utterly devoid of likeability or humanity. This election is about change vs. no change, and the middle class wants
July 28, 2016, 5:52 amchange. They have been hammered for 8 years. Trump will win.
Milo Minderbinder:
Of the 16 candidates the Republicans started with, did they nominate the only one who can't beat a weak Hillary Clinton?
Do you really think George Pataki or Jim Gilmore could beat Hillary?
July 28, 2016, 7:06 amRewired actuary:
I understand Republicans' (and other non-leftists) unhappiness with Trump. It's part ideological, part stylistic. He is not ideological and therefore not a conservative or a libertarian. He is a braggart, a blowhard and a crass individual. He shoots his mouth off, he takes positions on trade and minimum wage that make a free-marketer cringe.
But he beat a field of 16 well-funded challengers pretty handily, while spending relatively little. With the exception of Ted Cruz, who I favored initially, none of the Republicans seemed to have the stomach and the strength to fight back against the media and the Democrats in the face of the inevitable racist/sexist/homophobic/Islamophobic slanders. Without this willingness to fight back, the Republicans don't have a chance. I am especially disappointed in people like Paul Ryan, who seems to have been neutered. What happened to him?
Who else but Trump would have the balls to point out that the Russians already have all the emails from Hilary's illegal server? She hasn't been Secretary of State and for three years and the Dems lie and accuse Trump of treason? We are not going to win by being scared of name-calling. People see that Trump stands alone in fighting this battle and realize that this is the only way.
Look on the bright side: if you don't like a Trump presidency, there will be lots of disaffected Republicans who would be happy to join with the Democrats in impeachment.
July 28, 2016, 7:08 amAugust Hurtel:
I think you have it exactly wrong. Trump is the one who can beat Hilary. None of those other guys have the political machine she has, nor do they differentiate themselves from her enough. They were all promising more war, more globalism, etc... He is different. I do wish he was like Ron Paul, but let's face it, not even Rand Paul was like Ron Paul.
I am also hoping some of the Republican elites that share your mindset are arrogant fools (the treatment of Ron Paul supporters appears to suggest they are) and that they will weaken the two-party system in attempt to return themselves to power in some way. We should be looking out for that- if they manage to change the laws in anyway that we can take advantage of.
July 28, 2016, 7:16 amPeabody:
Regardless of the Republican nominee the Democrat would focus on attack rather than selling Hilary. Remember the manufactured "War on Women"? If the attack points are weak, they just make things up until something stick.
July 28, 2016, 7:32 amMitch Parker:
Anyone has a link summing the deficiencies of Hillary as a candidate? This is not tongue-in-cheek, I am a foreigner and I know about the episode with the emails (my understanding is that any other person would likely have seen serious repercussions - perhaps even prosecuted, at least for neglect), but I lack a general view. Any help? Thanks.
July 28, 2016, 8:00 amNehemiah:
It will be interesting to watch the democrats deal with a lying, dishonest, manipulating candidate of their own ilk. Can they play defense against their own offensive playbook? The democrats are so used to running against establishment republicans that they won't know what hit them until January. Their only hope is that Trump really is a Trojan Horse unleashed by Bill Clinton to destroy the republican party. Will Trump dutifully fall on his sword at the appropriate time in exchange for a huge payoff? NYC Mayor for Don Jr. big government contracts for Trump's businesses and favorable SCOTUS imminent domain decisions where Donald needs a little help.
Or will Trump's out of control ego push him on now that the office is actually in his grasp? Stay tuned.
July 28, 2016, 8:38 amErikTheRed:
I find Trump odious and the only thing dumber than his policies are his supporters. That being said, I think he'll annihilate Clinton in the election, picking up the Reagan Democrats (who love mercantilism) and half the Bernie Sanders supporters (the main difference between the policies of Sanders and Trump is tone of voice).
July 28, 2016, 9:37 amCT_Yankee:
The speeches might actually be quite accurate about Trump's negatives, and yet, the only other choice is Hillary, and she is, for lack of anything worse to say, Hillary. As long as she remains Hillary, rather than inmate 590568986, voters will remember all too well the many times she demonstrated that the law just does not apply to her. Many of Trump's excesses would be held in check by the 3 part system of government, because he really is not part of either party, damn near everyone will relish each and every opportunity to exorcise the constitutional checks on his power, instead of granting that blank check on Dear Leader's exalted executive orders. He will do a single term marked by the greatest of deadlocks ever, providing the Coke and Pepsi parties the time to develop much better candidates (example, not felons, have paid taxes, someone the average voter would not spit on if the secret service glanced away). All the creative ways developed to thwart Trump's every mis-step might linger on for a while after he is gone, and he might end up having done something useful after all.
July 28, 2016, 9:47 amherdgadfly:
Yep - all of those Democrats (and Michael Bloomberg) got it right about Trump.
July 28, 2016, 10:25 amMJ:
Is this the same Democratic Party that has been telling us that we need to "rise above hate" and that we're "better together"? Yet we see the first thing they do when they come together to anoint a candidate and set a platform. Nothing but bile and vitriol. What ever happened to hope and change? F them too.
July 28, 2016, 12:57 pmMJ:
There are many, but I'll just offer a couple of the bigger ones.
Apart from just being a rather unlikable individual, she comes across as dishonest and disingenuous. She has ridden her husband's coattails to power, parlaying her visibility as First Lady to a senate seat in New York despite not being from that state. The two of them have been dogged by scandal for quite some time. One of the earlier instances was the "Whitewater" scandal of the late 1980s, which involved some rather underhanded real estate dealings in vacation property while her husband was governor of the state of Arkansas.
She and her husband have also be rather prolific fundraisers over their careers as well, often taking money from foreign donors who were looking to buy government access and/or favors, especially when Hillary was Secretary of State. This has been well-covered by people like Christopher Hitchens and Todd Purdum at Vanity Fair magazine, as well by Peter Schweizer in his book (more recently made into a documentary film) Clinton Cash. It's also important to note that many of these donations were disguised as "speaking fees" for former president Bill Clinton, which just happened to start increasing dramatically when Hillary became SoS. Also, these funds have been directed to the Clinton Foundation, a large, amorphous non-profit run by the Clintons which has had notable accounting irregularities which make it difficult to understand what this organization actually does, other than serve as a vessel for money-laundering by the Clintons.
More recently, there has been the issue with the e-mail server, which may have compromised sensitive state information. The common thread in all of these cases is that the Clintons seem to stay one step ahead of the law. They're both lawyers by trade and understand the concept of "plausible deniability" quite well. Even when there is significant evidence pointing to wrongdoing, they cover just enough of their tracks to avoid prosecution. There is suspicion right now that the Obama Justice Department (and particularly Attorney General Lynch) is protecting her from prosecution on the e-mail server issue.
Beyond this, there is the matter that she panders to women to retain their support by foisting non-issues into public debate, like supposed threats to ban abortion or "rape culture" on college campuses. All this despite her own rather shabby treatment of women. Her husband was a well-know philanderer who cheated on her numerous times while in office. Her response was to publicly attack and shame these women (what is now commonly referred to as "victim-blaming") while denying the allegations in order to preserve her own career ambitions, which were closely tied to her husband's.
Despite all of these sordid events, she still publicly maintains that she is a decent and honest person, and that all of the allegations against she and her husband are lies orchestrated by a cabal of her political opponents -- in the 1990s she came up with the famous phrase "vast right-wing conspiracy" to describe the source of several of these allegations. The old saying "where there's smoke, there's fire" applies here, and it's why most people, including many in her own party, simply do not trust her.
July 28, 2016, 1:37 pmmesaeconoguy:
Hitlary is a known liar, and likely perjurer
Hitlary is a documented, dangerous managerial failure
Hitlary is a known criminal (multiple times, including obstruction of justice for failure to produce the Rose Law Firm billing
records, later found in the WH)
Hitlary is from a family known for shady political dealings and threats
July 28, 2016, 4:02 pmColoComment:
I have not yet watched the documentary "Clinton Cash," that MJ refers to in his comment, but plan to do so. It's gotten some good response (obviously from not-Hillary people.)
July 28, 2016, 5:52 pmhere's a link via Breitbart:
http://www.breitbart.com/clinton-cash-movie/
Mitch Parker:
Many thanks, that's really helpful.
July 28, 2016, 10:27 pmThane_Eichenauer:
At some point even those that have heard four more months of Trump bashing will look Hillary's way and ask "Do I want to vote for that woman?"
Many will say no and vote for Trump. I imagine at some point in the next four months Mr. Coyote will read some posts by Scott Adams and might, just might alter his presumption that HRC will be elected president.
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/131749156346/the-case-for-a-trump-landslide-part-1
July 28, 2016, 11:04 pmThane_Eichenauer:
Jill Stein's campaign also seems to agree with me. A recent tweet:
July 29, 2016, 12:22 amhttps://twitter.com/DrJillStein/status/758855319464271874
Economist Bob Murphy retweeted it. He thinks it's worth noting.
TruthisaPeskyThing:
Coyote, you seem rather late to this comment. Many people have been wondering about this phenomenon for 5 months. However, the more I think about it in the last few weeks, the more that I conclude that the choice is relatively easy. For every character and background flaw that Trump possesses, Hillary also possesses the same flaw -- and typically worse. At this point in time, a vote for Johnson is a wasted vote, and a vote against individual freedom -- you can be confident that Hillary will appoint judges that are left wing and pro-government control.
July 29, 2016, 5:51 amQ46:
One of the first things I was taught when I started my job in sales was don't bad-mouth the competition - customers don't like it particularly if they are using a competitor product because then you are badmouthing them too.
Bashing Trump is only going to help him with his current support; his current support is not going to buy Hillary no matter how prettily she is packaged - they already got screwed when they bought Obama's in his extravagant gift box.
Hillary's supporters need no further selling.
The 'don't knows' will notice the absence of a sales pitch for Hillary, and only grumpy, shouty people on her side.
July 29, 2016, 8:09 amJohn Moore:
I think the analysis is a bit off. Polls show that Hillary badly needs selling. And, attacks on Trump don't do much - the press has already done it all.
July 29, 2016, 10:03 amJohn Moore:
I think this is key. Trump will be held in check by powerful forces. Hillary will have those forces behind her as she wrecks the country and the world.
July 29, 2016, 10:07 amJohn Moore:
I am glad Ron Paul isn't there. That loon might be enough to get me to not vote!
July 29, 2016, 10:13 ammlhouse:
THe more the "progressives" try to bash Trump, the more I support him!
July 29, 2016, 2:28 pmoneteam:
You could have shortened your post by saying "I want Hillary to win." Because that's going to be your vote.
July 29, 2016, 5:51 pmoneteam:
If you think Trump is going to lose, you truly do not understand what's going on in the American electorate this election cycle. There is a higher likelihood of seeing a Trump landslide than a marginal Clinton victory. Just watch. The polls are going to start showing the start of something almost unprecedented in American politics.
July 29, 2016, 5:55 pmRich Abbott:
Sorry, but Clinton will likely win. I'll be voting for Johnson, but if the Republicans had nominated a competent individual, I would have likely voted for that candidate. Trump has one demographic-uneducated, white males (and a few of the women who like to ride on the back of their motorcycles). Clinton's favorable demographics, especially given the makeup of the electoral college, makes it difficult for Trump to win. His only hope is that a large section of Hispanics, African Americans and women stay home Election Day in swing states.
July 29, 2016, 6:13 pmSineWaveII:
of course you completely miss the flip side. In order to win all Trump has to do is bash hilllary. And unlike all the other candidates plus Romney and McCain. He's willing to do it.
July 30, 2016, 5:05 pmmarque2:
Hillary Clinton is the war on women, and yet it gets projected to the GOP, by a willing press.
July 31, 2016, 9:00 ammarque2:
The Johnson vote is going Trump.
July 31, 2016, 9:01 ammarque2:
Thanks for your input Debby Wasserman Shultz, I will be sure to let my mother know what you said.
July 31, 2016, 9:03 amThane_Eichenauer:
The Johnson vote is going Johnson. What the other 98.5% of voters do is up to them.
July 31, 2016, 11:38 pmhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yVkuS1fIX4
Thane_Eichenauer:
Do you also think that most of the news media is unbiased? Take a look at this article and tell me what you think of it.
July 31, 2016, 11:42 pmhttp://blog.dilbert.com/post/131749156346/the-case-for-a-trump-landslide-part-1