With all of these risible "war on women" non-issues being hurled at the Trump movement over the past week or so, it's worth remembering how not damaging these things have proven to be this primary season -- all the way back to Megyn Kelly's lame attempt at a feminist gotcha! question in the first Republican debate, which Trump shut down effortlessly and made the crowd roar with laughter and applause.
Forgetting the lessons they should have learned by now, the talking heads are still wringing their hands about what Trump can do to get a higher percentage of the female vote. But perhaps he took the opposite look at the situation -- how to consolidate more of the male vote. Since your typical crop of Republican candidates are limpwristed milquetoasts, it shouldn't be that hard -- and as he is proving, it is not.
In the 2012 primaries, the winner of a state won a similar share of both the male and female vote, whereas the exit polls this time are showing much more lop-sided results, where Trump gets 5 to 10 points more of the male than the female vote. And since the sex composition of the electorate has not changed, and since it is more male than female (a little over 50% male for most states), Trump's greater consolidation of the male vote has delivered one win after another.
Although the sex composition may not have changed since 2012, the class composition has. Trump's focus on economic and political issues relevant to blue-collar men -- particularly immigration and trade -- as well as his aggressive, get-down-to-business personality, has allowed him to lock up more of the male vote than if it were the usual group of GOP men voting. Out with the country club dads, in with the "spank your children" dads.
This also bodes well for the general election, where Trump would bring yuge turnouts of white working-class men, which any other GOP nominee would not. Hillary is unpopular with male Democrats, who prefer Bernie by double digits. Those who are voting for populist economic policies could very well turn out for Trump if Hillary were the Democrats' alternative.
The new influence of the male vote is related to the death of the culture war, since women are more into the airy-fairy values-voter topics, as opposed to "getting down to brass tacks" issues like keeping American companies in America, kicking out the illegal immigrants, and getting the rest of the world to pay up for our military protection. And outside of MRA whiners, men are not an aggrieved minority, so distracting identity politics will play less of a role in what topics resonate with voters. Notice that Trump is not consolidating the male vote by talking about divorce laws, sluts, or other "red pill" topics.
Looking over the exit polls in chronological order, it seems that Cruz has picked up the chick vote after the nice guys Rubio, Bush, and Carson dropped out. Now he's letting his inner-beta white knight shine by trying to score points about Trump being afraid of "strong women" (only real men are secure enough to take it up the butt from their woman's dildo). Expect this womanish blubbering to only grow worse -- but also expect it not to alter the course of the primaries, since men are still a larger chunk of the electorate, and being more blue-collar they are not exactly excited to pull the lever for a m'lady-supplicating nerd.
Hopefully the Establishment's relentless "war on women" bullshit will clear all of the feminists and other identity politics types out of the Republican party. I'm hoping that the great re-alignment will mean that the identity politics / PC / culture war / values-signaling types all go to the Democrats -- Mormons, feminists, bitter ethnic groups, and the rest -- while those who have concrete bread-and-butter goals will migrate into the Trump-led Republican party, both defecting Democrats and non-voters who come out of the shadows.
There are a lot more of these would-be converts than there are would-be apostates, so we win by alienating the crypto-SJWs lurking among the Republicans. Trump is no fool about how to win, and just look at who his greatest target has been, aside from Jeb Bush -- Megyn Kelly. He knows exactly who the biggest threats are to the project to Make America Great Again.
Cruz is trying to exploit this now http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/donald-trump-abortion-foe-eyes-%E2%80%98punishment%E2%80%99-for-women-then-recants/ar-BBr9tP6?li=BBnb7Kz&OCID=DELLDHP
ReplyDeleteI'm at the point where I can't stand the sight or sound of Cruz. He's a weasel and a creep.
ReplyDelete"crypto-SJWs lurking among the Republicans"
ReplyDeleteI noticed this trend maybe 20, 25 years ago. These pompous, self-righteous scumbags will fight dirty to throw rivals and right-wing strong men under the bus, but then they turn around and take it up the arse from the Left every fucking time.
I have a Tory, country club Republican background--but I've always found the street-fighting Nationalists to be better company.
Part me wants Cruz to squeeze it out and get crushed.
ReplyDeleteWill Trump get swept in Wisconsin? What about Indiana? His message practically seems tailor made for the Mid-West more than any other region.
ReplyDeleteI hope he wins them both, as he should, and that the current Wisconsin polls change. But if he loses both then the Mid-West Loomis as cucked a region as any, 5/6 of 7/8 voting against Trump and the only region to vote for Rubio.
It's fun to troll Bernie supporters about the demographic hurdles they're up against, with so many blacks and Hispanics voting for Hillary and making up large chunks of the Dem electorate in many places.
ReplyDeleteBut a deeper irony is that he tends to win with men and lose with women, by decent margins. If there had been no 19th Amendment, he would have rode into the nomination like William Jennings Bryan -- who was fortunate enough to campaign before the era of women's suffrage.
#NotAllWomen are values-voter dupes, but they are far more easily led by hysterical emotional appeals, whether on the Left or Right. If only men voted, it would be Trump vs. Bernie, no identity politics allowed.
The exit polls also show that around 60% of Dem primary voters are female, way more than the 48% of GOP voters. That looks too lop-sided for them to overcome anytime soon.
Sorry Bernie bros, if you want a populist who won't back down, it's time to ditch the witch and jump on the Trump train.
Almost as much fun as trolling Trump chumps about the increasing likelihood of a 3rd party run by either Trump, Cruz or someone the GOP establishment picks. It's gonna be hot fun in the summertime...
ReplyDeleteWon't happen, but we wouldn't mind even if it did. We're serious about flushing the garbage down the sewer where it belongs, however that happens.
ReplyDeleteIf only the Dems had the sack to clean up their own house...
Hillary by all means has to have had a bad month, but has the special knack or incredible luck not to have it actually affect her. She may not be so lucky in the general, we shall see. At one point in the summer of 88 Bush was trailing Dukakis by 13 points yet ended up winning 40 states in November. So it's not a done election, no matter what the Cruz supporters think the head to head polls suggest. I of course don't think you need an explanation as to why they're generally useless.
ReplyDelete"If only the Dems had the sack to clean up their own house..."
ReplyDeleteBernie is doing pretty well.
Sanders needs 65% of the remaining pledged delegates and 70% to make the superdelegates irrelevant.
DeleteHe's not doing well. He's just fortunate to be running against a nearly absent Hillary Clinton.
For a self-described Democratic Socialist running a campaign funded solely through small donors, he's doing exceedingly well.
Delete"For a self-described Democratic Socialist running a campaign funded solely through small donors, he's doing exceedingly well."
ReplyDeleteHe's not doing well. He's going to lose to a widely-hated shrew who is barely even bothering to campaign. If he'd done to Hillary what Trump did to Jeb, now THAT would be doing well.
In addition to women, the large "minority" component of the Dems makes true populism impossible, hence Sanders' pathetic immigration stance. Overall, he's very un-Jewish despite his purely Jewish background: not pushy or ostentatious at all, basically a corpse (Weekend at Bernie Sanders'?)
ReplyDeleteEh. He's winning states and polling pretty much equal to Clinton. You can rationalize those numbers all you like. His campaign is the very definition of a populist campaign in that it's funded solely through small, individual donors. For that reason alone, it's as groundbreaking as Trump's at the very least, and in my opinion, far more of a substantial shift. It's not yet another rich man buying his way to power or sucking up to the rich donor class. He won't be President, but then neither will Trump.
ReplyDelete"Bernie's winning states"
ReplyDeleteEven Marco Rubio won some states, before Trump blasted his political career to smithereens.
"You're rationalizing the numbers"
RCP has Bernie down by 700 delegates against a very weak candidate who is hardly even campaigning. The math is what it is, and he's getting his ass kicked.
"Bernie raises money from small donations"
So does Trump (those MAGA hats aren't free). But Trump is the true populist: his policies are pro-worker and pro-middle class. Bernie is weak on illegal immigration like all the other Chamber of Commerce shills.
"Trump is buying the election and sucking up to rich donors"
LOOOOOOL are you schizo or something? Trump has dramatically underspent his rivals in most states and his votes-per-dollar-spent are off the charts. Jeb is the one who tried to buy the election, and Trump crushed him with his populist grassroots appeal. Trump has also repeatedly thumbed his nose at the donors, who have spent hundreds of millions explicitly trying to stop him.
"Bernie won't be president"
But but but I thought he was doing such a wonderful job? Or is he just trying to lose gracefully, like a Republican cuck would?
"Neither will Trump"
Asserting it doesn't make it so. He's the clear Republican frontrunner and may clinch the nom on the first ballot. Establishment may try to derail his run, but they've been trying for months and how's that worked out? More importantly he's been doing well in purple states and his platform has broad appeal. The future is uncertain, but so far Trump has made fools of everyone who said his candidacy was DOA.
"LOOOOOOL are you schizo or something? Trump has dramatically underspent his rivals in most states and his votes-per-dollar-spent are off the charts."
ReplyDeleteI was referring to the other candidates, not Trump. He's the "yet another rich man buying his way to power" in my comment.
"The future is uncertain, but so far Trump has made fools of everyone who said his candidacy was DOA."
No one thought Bernie would go nearly this far, either, including me. His campaign is an unqualified success. You can disagree with his platform, but you can't deny that. He doesn't have to win the nomination (I never thought and still don't that that was possible) in order to have shifted the conversation on the Dems side a bit to the left. Mission accomplished.
Laughable, I'm not completely sold on Trump, but he's been horribly outgunned financially in the primaries.
ReplyDeleteNo one disagrees that Bernie is doing better than we would've thought last summer, but he still vastly underperforms, given the current climate.
ReplyDeleteFirst, he let the BLM girls take over his microphone and hector the progressives about their racism for nearly an hour, despite being only partly black themselves (high yellow). He caved into a militant identity politics group, in a way that Trump never would have if a bunch of Judeo-LARP-ers stormed his stage and wanted to rant about the hellfire awaiting those who don't obey the Ten Commandments.
Then he not only declined to push Hillary on her secret email server, he righteously thundered to the whole world to shut up about it. Despite the fact that it revealed her rank corruption -- making her server secret so that nobody would get wise to her selling political influence to the highest bidder, particularly through the Clinton Foundation.
In fact, he still doesn't beat her up over the Clinton Foundation. It's a total sham, only 10% goes to actual charity work, and the rest goes to line the pockets of the Clinton cabal, in exchange for them rigging the political system in favor of the mega-donors, whether billionaires or foreign governments like Saudi Arabia.
He only talks about Wall Street donating to her campaign, and getting favorable policies afterwards -- but that's true for every politician. Hillary has gone far beyond that with the Clinton Foundation, their own private corrupt empire, and yet Bernie refuses to bring it up.
And why doesn't he go after her lesbian partner, who she seduced as a 19 year-old intern -- worse than Bill and Monica -- and whose family has deep ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and other extremist groups? That, combined with the Saudis being one of the top contributors to the Clinton Foundation, just might explain why she's so hell-bent on destroying Syria, which would really plunge the Middle East into chaos.
Not to mention her attacking the female victims of her sexual predator husband, over all the years.
Bernie, aside from being a wimp, is just too abstract -- he wants to debate the competing philosophies, rather than target Hillary's distinct and specific actions that prove how corrupt, sociopathic, and destructive she has always been.
Only Trump can bring down both of the would-be dynasties in American politics -- the Bushes are already dog meat, and once Trump outmaneuvers the RNC, he can nuke the Clintons as well.
Bernie is a foil to Hillary, he'll bow out gracefully and endorse her in an attempt to deliver some hipster votes to the D ticket.
ReplyDeleteBernie is really a protest candidate in a way for many Democrats. The Bernie Bros are loud, but there aren't nearly as many as there seems to be.
ReplyDeleteMost voters, whether for Trump or Bernie are still partisans who will still vote for whoever is nominated.
ReplyDeleteBlax and "hispanics" don't respect Bernie's wimpishness or his hipster fag supporters. Cunton, for all her faults, is name-brand: white hipsters are the ones who look for authenticity (indie music, etc.) and live in "artsy" cities, "minorities" buy up Lil Wayne or Drake or w/e the top charting "music" is and they prefer big box cities.
ReplyDelete"Laughable, I'm not completely sold on Trump, but he's been horribly outgunned financially in the primaries."
ReplyDeleteSure, but he's also spent millions of dollars of his own money. I appreciate him operating outside of normal channels, but the way he's doing it requires a person to be very wealthy. Bernie is not wealthy and his campaign is funded 100% by small donors. That's unprecedented in modern campaign history and seems more populist than any other candidate. Although I don't really give a shit about populist bona fides. People can label all kinds of things "populist" that may or may not fit the actual definition.
"No one disagrees that Bernie is doing better than we would've thought last summer, but he still vastly underperforms, given the current climate..."
He said he wouldn't run a negative campaign and he's keeping that promise. I don't give a shit about a candidate's personal life outside of being a decent parent. I don't care that Trump's been married a bunch of times and I wouldn't care if Hillary is a lesbian. Doesn't matter to me. Bernie is sticking to the issues and it's taken him a long way.
It's been a good run for Sanders and, well, an interesting run for Trump. The both have a few more months of fun before Sanders bows out during the Dem convention and Trump either splits from the Republican Party or heads unto the general election running against a hand-picked 3rd party conservative candidate. Strap in.
It's not her personal life -- the Clinton Foundation, the secret email server as Sec of State, her closest aide with deep family ties to the Muslim Brotherhood -- those are all crucial parts of her professional political career and track record of corruption.
ReplyDeleteBut those are concrete facts about a specific person, rather than abstract ideas that any generic Establishment member would have, so it goes in one ear and out the other with Bernie.
BTW, not with most of his supporters -- they vent all the time about her record on Twitter, putting up info-graphics about how little of the Clinton Foundation goes to charity and how much goes to lining their pockets.
Like it or not, if his supporters want someone to truly take Clinton to the mat over her professional record, they will have to join the Trump movement.
Most Bernie supporters would much prefer Clinton over Trump, myself included. The number of Bernie supporters who migrate to Trump would be very small, I think. The vast majority will vote for Hillary, and a lot of the younger, first time voters who are all fired up for Bernie will just not vote. That latter group is Clinton's biggest concern.
ReplyDeleteVP would be a great position for a corpse like Sanders, he'll bring some hipster votes with him.
ReplyDeleteTypical Sanders supporters (excluding the blax) http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/protesting-trump-with-sit-ins-signs-%E2%80%94-and-thick-skin/ar-BBre5qt?li=BBnb7Kz&OCID=DELLDHP 'Fifteen years of community organizing had led Z! Haukeness to the lobby of the Holiday Inn Express here. Haukeness, who is 34 and transgender and prefers the “them/they” pronoun, wore red sneakers, white jeans and a white T-shirt printed with the phrase “First They Came for Queer & Trans People.”'
ReplyDeleteLast stat I saw was that 33% of Bernie's people won't vote for Hillary. Obviously that wouldn't mean much for California, Colorado, etc.
ReplyDeleteBut that could be huge for Michigan, which went for Bernie due to blue-collar whites rather than pink-haired tranny lib-arts majors with $100K in student loan debt. Trump already pulled in a lot of the blue-collar Democrats in Michigan, and a good chunk of those who voted for Bernie would defect as well.
Similar for other Rust Belt states.
Even if they stay home, that's fine -- we just need more votes than Hillary. We're working to accept as many blue-collar Bernie supporters, and if the rest stay home, that's less vote suppression we'd have to conduct.
People say all kinds of things to pollsters about what they'd never do. History has shown when the rubber hits the road, they either do those things or just sit it out. But we'll see, I could be wrong.
ReplyDeleteBTW, all this BS about "not conducting a negative campaign" is pure moral values signaling for the upper-middle class audience that Bernie and his supporters care most about -- whether they're already there, or are strivers aspiring to join it.
ReplyDeleteBlue-collar people don't give a flying frog's fat ass about the elite's moralistic affectations about civility, respectability, decorum, etc. (while they ruthlessly dismantle the American economy and sell it for scrap overseas).
And if the world is really going to hell in a handbasket like Bernie says, why fight with one hand tied behind your back? Oh wait, "decorum". It strikes most people as disingenuous, or at least that he's not the one who's willing to fight to stop the decline at all costs. We're just supposed to politely sigh while our ship goes under.
This is why the blue-collars in search of a populist are flocking in droves to Trump. Bernie and his crowd are too paralyzed by outmoded bourgeois notions about decorum, while the world blows itself up.
It's all well and good to signal civility but those who do tend to be the least civil when the rubber hits the road.
DeleteIt just shows that Sanders lacks even the most basic level of ruthlessness.
Okay, to be fair, he has gone after Trump, but he won't even use a bit of that against Hillary.
Maybe these millennials have reasons to idolize Sanders, but if he won't even fight for the nomination, or is at least too little too late doing so, who expects him to fight Congress or corporations if he were President?
If Bernie is so concerned about flipping those superdelegates into his column, he ought to make it as poisonous as possible for a person to be affiliated with Hillary and her corruption.
ReplyDeleteRight now, they're basically getting bribed by Hillary to be in her pocket. But if Bernie shone a great big spotlight on the Clinton Foundation, and cast aspersions on toadies who were bought off by Hillary, those superdelegates would start to fear for their jobs and livelihoods.
He's got a pretty energized grassroots movement -- why not sic them on these lowly superdelegates, threaten them with getting primaried out of office, etc.? Somehow I think they'd start to feel more inclined to vote for Bernie at the Convention.
Forget Bernie himself -- why aren't the grassroots supporters themselves organizing this siege of the superdelegates?
Wimps!
Trump ran against 7-10 estalblishment people and people from somewhat outside the usual estalblishment. Was wayyyyy outspent in terms of money.
ReplyDeleteBernie: Runs against one candidate. Spends almost as much as that candidate, and wayyyyyy more than Trump.
Who got way more votes? For just one example, running against a sitting Senator and 2 other clowns with a former governor and others still on the ballot in a purple/blueish state Trump got twice as many votes as Bernie. Trump has been outspent by Bernie and everyone and has faced more competition and still beats him. Your arguments lack some common sense, JV.
I'm not trying to rank the two campaigns, Trump and Sanders are doing two totally different things. I already said Trump's has been more successful in that he's the frontrunner. One thing though, the more people in the race, the less supporters it takes to be the frontrunner. But even so, Trump has been successful, no doubt. Bernie has also run a successful campaign in that he's basically toe-to-toe with Clinton when this time last year it was though Clinton would have an easy run of it and Sanders would fade quickly. That's all I'm saying.
ReplyDeleteOh, I'm also saying neither Sanders nor Trump will be President.
My wife doesnt exactly like Trump. Not because of his "war on women" or any of that crap. She doesnt like him because she says he whines like a baby whenever anyone attacks him. I suppose she thinks he should take the high road and ignore his opponents when they go after him.
ReplyDeleteShe still voted for Trump on primary day though. Not that she had a change of heart or anything. I think it was mainly because I told her if she didn't vote for him she could go find somewhere else to cook and clean.
I basically agree with your post, but you're somewhat off-target in your characterization of Bernie as a wimp. He is a wimp of course, but most of his supporters don't see him that way. Sanders is a masculine figure of sorts to them, essentially their grandfather if he were cool and enlightened instead of racist. His capitulation to BLM does not diminish this because they submission to aggrieved minorities the only moral course of action.
ReplyDelete