Donald Trump: Come Kiss the Ring

I don't think you really understand critical or secular realignments.

 

In a shock to me, even though polls predicted it, Democrat John Bel Edwards beat David "Diaper Fetish" Vitter in a runoff to become Louisiana governor.

John Bel Edwards defeats David Vitter in Louisiana governor’s race

 

Makes you wonder why they didn't stick with what had been successful.

 

In the past 35 years, Democrats have won with two personalities who fooled the easily fooled. That is all. They couldn't even win in 2000 with the vice president of a very popular (though scandal-ridden) president. Meanwhile, the GOP now owns state governments with an incredibly deep roster of players that are going to be the up-and-comers for the next two decades. The Democrats have no bench at all, which is why they're running Hillary against Bernie right now.

Governorships: GOP 31, Dems 18, Independent 1
State Legislatures (both houses): GOP 30, Dems 11, split 8 (Nebraska has only one house and it is supposedly non-partisan, though we know the state has gone Republican in presidential elections every time since 1968)

 

It's worth noting those two personalities each fooled the easily fooled twice. Agree about the weak bench though. Say what you want about the tea party movement, but it cleared out a lot of dead wood in the GOP. I don't know where the next generation of Dem leadership in the House is going to come from. The Dems got smoked in 2010 and re-elected Pelosi (75) and Hoyer (76). There aren't a lot of well-funded independent PACs willing to buck the Dem party leadership and fund party challengers.

 

For this presidential election, of the top 22 Super PACS in terms of raising money, guess how many are conservative-leaning? Try 18 of them.

Super PACs | OpenSecrets

When you can buy your way to influence, that can keep your candidate in a lot of races.

 

It also helps to be in power when the census resets the Congressional districts, so you can gerrymander the hell out of them.

 

Now Trump says he'll torture the Syrian refugees.

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/11/don...ding-to-stop-the-syrian-refugee-trojan-horse/

 

At this point he's taking bets with his buddies on whether or not he actually has to utter the words "concentration camps" to get himself out of this race.

 

All of which are cancelled out and then some by union money.

Top Organization Contributors | OpenSecrets

 

Except that's not what's happening.

Why Democrats Can't Blame Gerrymandering - Bloomberg View

 

I think you're on to something here. It would not surprise me if Trump got into the race as a vanity project, never thinking he'd actually be a front-runner. Now he's got to find a way to get out with the least amount of embarrassment. I don't see Trump as such a community- and country-first kind of person that he'd devote four or eight years of his life to public service -- especially at his age -- when he could instead be jetting around the world for vacation-type activities.