Donald Trump has won the Indiana primary. This makes him, according to The New York Times, the "overwhelming favorite" to win the Republican nomination in June. The Democratic primary results are still too close to call. UPDATED 5/4/16
While Fox News starts the inevitable slobbering over Trump, there's this, also from The Times:
As remarkable as Mr. Trump’s achievement is, his expected nomination also poses undeniable peril to the party he is poised to lead. Republican leaders, few of whom have fully embraced his candidacy, are watching him with great trepidation, for good reason.
Mr. Trump starts the general election campaign with a still-unfurling roll of incendiary proposals and provocations that are the stuff of dreams for opposition researchers. He made his name in the last presidential campaign as the country’s most prominent birther, fueling debunked conspiracy theories that President Obama was not born in America; he has used hostile and hard-edged language about Hispanics, suggesting that Mexican migrants are rapists and murderers; and he has not backed off his proposal to ban all foreign Muslims from entering the United States, effectively creating a religious test for immigrants.
No one is more eager to talk about those positions than Mrs. Clinton, who made clear on Tuesday that she wanted to sharpen her focus on Mr. Trump as soon as possible because the fight against him was likely to be bruising.
I, personally, do not think beating Trump will be a cakewalk for Clinton or Bernie Sanders, should he be the nominee.
Share your thoughts, below.
UPDATE: Ted Cruz has dropped out.
UPDATE: Bernie Sanders won Indiana.
UPDATE: John Kasich will reportedly drop out of the campaign today.
Donald Trump caricature by DonkeyHotey, via Creative Commons license.
It would be candid to see what all things he does for the part he is leading. The highlights of the news remain this matter for a quite a long time..What still remains unclear is his action plans for the employment..both native and international. Employment ratio in Indiana is fair enough, yet to find jobs in Indiana visit: : http://www.jobsaviator.com/
Top companies of Indiana have posted their jobs as they have huge openings. Somewhere the election result is reflecting the employment rate..and the job prospects…
With Kasich now out of the race, the GOP is having to settle for Donald Trump full-on. There is always a chance he could somehow overcome his negatives or try to boost Clinton’s higher (the more likely approach he’ll take). I remember clearly what happened in 2000. Nobody truly thought that George W. Bush was a serious candidate but he did manage to get the GOP to fully rally behind him. Al Gore ran a lackluster campaign, apparently thinking the American people were not foolish enough to vote something like W into office. And we had Ralph Nader, repeatedly begging the Dems to take up his issues and stand on some kind of principle. The Dems refused to listen to Nader. Result? Left-wing voters chose in droves to give their votes to Nader rather than Gore, thus giving Bush a razor thin potential to take various key states like Florida. (The only full recount actually completed of Florida for 2000 showed that Gore actually won the state – but by less than 100 votes, and by the time anyone understood this, W had been making mistakes in the White House for 10 months and 9/11 had already happened.)
This time around, it seems to me, Hillary Clinton is smartly addressing Sanders’ issues rather than ignoring them. Any pivoting she needs to do will be minor compared to what Donald Trump will need to do in order to get most voters to choose him. And Clinton is not campaigning in the lackluster manner that Gore did in 2000.
Trump does have the potential to attract many voters due to his celebrity and his outrageous manner. But he still has an extremely serious problem in his alienation of most women and non-white voters. Hispanics will not forget or forgive his slurs of them. Muslims will not forget or forgive his statements that refugees from the Middle East should be turned away. African Americans will not forget or forgive the constant racism of Trump’s supporters or the condescension of his statements that he’ll get their votes. And any intelligent person listening to Trump can hear that he has no real plan to deal with anything in the event that he actually wins this office. So the only approach Trump is likely to take is to throw mud at Hillary Clinton. It’s clearly his hope (and the right wing’s hope as well) that he can rattle her and get her off topic. Fox News is clearly hoping to see Trump throw a bunch of insults at Clinton in their first debate and then see her lose her temper. I tend to doubt they’ll be satisfied with what actually happens.
The really interesting part of what happens over the next several months isn’t the obvious toxicity of the coming hijinks but rather how the various conservative voices react to Trump being their nominee. Some will hold their noses. Others will withhold any discussion – passively turning their noses up at him. Which makes sense in long-term strategy – if his campaign really belly-flops to its full potential, the smarter move for places like National Review is to stay out of it. That way, they can sagely discuss the matter after the fact without having done anything to embarrass themselves along the way.
The notion of Cruz running again for President sounds like his ego talking again. He was just humiliated in a memorable fashion. There are many differences between Cruz and Reagan, not the least of which is that Reagan was a popular man both inside and outside of the GOP. Cruz, on the other hand, is widely disliked both inside and outside of the GOP. Should he attempt to run for the highest office again after he’s primaried in 2018, it would be more akin to Gary Hart’s second presidential run, and probably even more humiliating for him than what just happened. I strongly believe his initial intent was to build up his “brand” so that he’d be an attractive name for Fox News to bring in – like Huckabee was in 2008. He forgot that Huckabee is still popular at Fox News and will jealously guard his turf there. And at this point, Cruz has been blocked by Huckabee’s return there.
It will be interesting to see who Trump allows to speak at the convention. I believe Cruz had hoped for a prime time spot where he could, again, build his name. Given how the campaign went, given the totality of Cruz’ failure, and given all the bad blood, I now doubt that Cruz will even be given a daytime opportunity. I do expect that Chris Christie, Mike Huckabee and Ben Carson will be given opportunities – and that Christie will campaign to get the VP nod from Trump.
“Mother Jones” did a reasonable job of covering Hillary’s original gaff and her re-explaining what she ‘really meant’ to West Virginia’s Joe Manchin who likely stroked out over her original statement:
http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2016/03/hillary-clinton-will-probably-regret-comment
But it isn’t just me making the connection between her personalizing her statement as in “We’re going to put a lot of coal companies and coal miners out of business” and her proposed green energy policies. “Mother Jones” thinks her gaff is connected to Obama’s Clean Power Plan. Because Hillary’s context, IMHO, is that the government investing in green energy will replace coal jobs so we need even more government spending to offset the subsequent dirty coal job losses.
“Mother Jones” points out her folly is not pointing out the coal jobs are dying from competitive natural causes anyway. So why open up her green agenda to conservative attack ads? I imagine the answer is she didn’t realize this trend and actually frets her environmental policies building upon Obama’s will lay off many workers who will need to be transitioned.
Even if Hillary thinks she has some policies to transition people through training or government ‘investment’ it creates lots of angst because the affected people are smart enough to know there’s a huge risk to their personal prosperity likely requiring them to pull up stakes in communities dependent on coal.
This is a rare case of policy wonk Hillary not being so much of one. However, I think the deeper issue on this topic is Hillary is checking off a checklist. Her liberal to-do list she needs to work through to get the nomination over Bernie who’s attracted much of her base which is to the left of her.
In fact, even though I’m a Hillary supporter, I think this is her real weakness. What does she stand for? Health care was her genuine big passion until Obama stole it when they ran against one another. Now I don’t think she really has one. Maybe women’s issues broadly but even there I get the impression she’s stealing Progressive checklist items to get past Bernie. I think her core belief is more diverse government leadership will lead to better government (to which I’m sympathetic) but it’s tough to build a campaign just around that.
We’ll find out when she pivots after the convention. I hope.
Meanwhile, Trump doesn’t need to sell policy but personality. I’m hoping that shtick runs out of gas soon.
As I understand it, the last part of her sentence that is so often quoted (out of context) actually provides the justification for a strong focus on restructuring the economy in coal country in order to address the adverse effects of going green.
Bernie’s win indicates to me the Democrat Party’s poorly timed far-left Progressive march bodes poorly for November. Nobody needs to be reminded Bernie was so left-wing he refused to join the party for decades until he needed the party machinery behind him to run for president. While hardcore Progressives who dominate liberal blogs like Think Progress and Daily Kos have the boner of a lifetime over this trend it’s not electable nationally.
Who cares as ‘inevitable’ Hillary limps to the nomination? Well, it’s shoved mainstream Hillary to the left and it’s going to be tough for her to pivot without driving her sky-high negatives even higher but pivot she must.
Need a solid example? Give Hillary credit for visiting Appalachia after thumping her chest she’s going put coal companies out of business to appease the Greens. Of course, she got savaged by the citizens there not impressed by her pivot that she didn’t really mean what she obviously meant. States like West Virginia aren’t make it or break it for her but once upon a time West Virginia was in play for Democrats. Probably kiss that goodbye. (Trivia: I have family there. They’re all registered Republicans and quite optimistic.)
People here (and everywhere else) speak of Hillary not being trustworthy. Well, a big pivot on coal isn’t going to help. Hey, I’m a Hillary supporter and even I’m doing a head slap over her embarrassing flip-flop. I expect it’s just one of many to come as she re-explains her way to attract mainstream voters who to the dismay and disgust of party base voters determine elections every four years. In other words, Hillary is about to pull a McCain. You see where that went.
The wild card, of course, is mercurial Der Furor. Laughed off from day one Trump’s support keeps building (hence my angst) and anyone who thinks most Republicans who hate the Democrats so strongly will stay home because their candidate is a complete jackass don’t understand the Republican base. “CBS This Morning” is saying Trump – the guy who supposedly turns off women – ran away with the female vote in the Republican primary. Yeah, I know we’re talking Republican woman voters but still.
Kevin, NPR’s “Morning Edition” might have the answer to some of your questions.
Cruz? They report he’s laying heavy hints at pulling a Reagan and running again in 4 years. While I don’t think Cruz and his Tea Party right-wingers have a prayer of winning a national election, that’s where he sits. So even if the Republicans make the awkward choice of defeating Cruz in 2 years which risks cheesing off millions of his Tea Party followers nationally, he isn’t going away quite yet.
Republicans staying home? They did interview one Cruz supporter literally crying over his loss determined to stay home but the overwhelming evidence they provided is Republican Trump-haters are going to hold their nose and vote for The Donald. Of course, Trump has the same problem as Hillary: Building beyond the base.
Hillary needs to build upon her strong advantage in female voters, obviously. Just as obvious, Hillary needs to keep the large Democratic natural advantages in minority demographics, both blacks and Hispanics. Doable. However, she’s got to motivate all these folks out in huge numbers. As always, Democrats depend on large turnouts.
Which is a problem. Who expects a large turnout with two huge stinkers with 50+% negatives?
I would, however, suggest that the dis/mis trust of Hillary may be understandable and overblown. Understandable because she’s been in the public limelight for over 20 years, during which time she’s had the gumption to take a position on many issues.
Overblown because her record is not all bad, starting with that failed attempt to introduce universal health care in the USA, the only developed country to deny that right to it’s most vulnerable citizens.
I don’t think she got everything right but I also think it would be unreasonable (utopic) to expect anybody to do that. She’s not Super Woman. For the same reason, I have a more positive opinion about Obama who’s far from being the omnipotent Messiah touted by the Foxies. (There’s only so much that one can do when the previous administration got so much wrong and stubbornly refuses to admit that possibility.)
Anyway, although I may have not always agreed with Hillary, I believe she acted mostly in good faith. It also seems (to me) that many of her positions were already in line with Bernie’s messages even before he started pushing. She would of course have preferred a more suble approach and I’m grateful to Bernie for bringing those issues to the forefront. Hillary has more hands-on experience on the international stage, while Bernie seems to be just a tad overly isolationist.
Like it or not, America needs to finish the job of cleaning up the messes left by the GWB administration: i.e. a war that disrupted a whole region, the deepest depression since the Thirties, and an insidious nibbling away at basic human rights, all in the name of the Holy Dollar and Might is Right. Trump may turn out to be a chameleon but that would only mean that he’s ready to say anything and everything in order to get elected.
Moving on from unimportant matters, Ellen raises a very good point. What do the regular GOP supporters and funders do, given that they’ve already announced their disgust for Trump? We had an interesting moment today when one of McCain’s people announced he’d rather have Hillary Clinton, and that went with one of the Koch brothers saying the same thing last week. It is quite possible that there will be many influential GOP voices that will privately push for Clinton while publicly staying neutral. I could see the National Review declining to endorse anyone for this election. I could also see many traditionally GOP outlets similarly refusing to make any endorsement. That way, they don’t push for Hillary but don’t soil themselves with Trump.
It’s certainly possible that Donald Trump will somehow prevail, but he will need to find a way to get a much larger percentage of all groups who are not angry white males. If he can reverse his negatives, maybe he could have a chance.
I would strongly recommend anyone concerned about Trump v Clinton to make sure that they vote. It’s extremely important that these people are not simply voted down. They need to be decisively repudiated and sent packing. If any concerned voter opts out of the situation and stays home, it will be interpreted as more support for Trump’s hateful self-promotion. I realize that many people are not fans of Hillary Clinton. But the serious question now is whether those people are willing to watch something like Trump become the President.
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You can see the increase number of open positions after this news..This shows the job prosperity in Indiana.
It’s every rat for himself on the stern of the Titanic.
Screw them. It’s the culmination of Richard M Nixon’s southern strategy(in reverse). Except it is biting the republican ass now.
The GOP deserves every second of the Donald.
Also, I did not hear Cruz say he’s throwing his support to Trump. Couldn’t he continue making trouble from the sidelines?
Lastly, is it possible the GOP establishment will figure that a Hillary presidency is better than a Trump presidency for them and sabotage his campaign – i.e. find a way to get rid of him without going the brokered convention route which would probably cause more trouble for the party? I’m thinking something Swift Boatish, maybe with Ted Cruz’s help?
Or is everyone in the GOP just resigned to Trump and throwing in the towel?
But Cruz has made being a spoiler into an art form. Boehner didn’t call him a miserable SOB for nothin’.
Stay tuned.
But I think Hillary will beat him like a rented mule.