Trump's oppenent will easily get the women's vote
One of my political beliefs is that it's never too early to think about the general election. We should be imagining a match-up between the front-runners at the very least, and it could end up being a choice between the first woman President, Hillary Clinton, and a new record-holder for bad treatment of women, Donald Trump. Here's a Nation Journal article running off a list of evidence for my claim that Trump might hold such a record, but don't worry if you don't have time to read it. There will be many more if Trump is the nominee. And if he isn't? Good; people of both genders will be able to forget this ever happened. And we'll all be spared the tawdry particulars of a press frenzy which will make Bill Clinton look like a piker in comparison. Excerpt:
The trove of incendiary and offensive things Trump has said about women during his decades in public life is seemingly endless. He’s disparaged women for their looks, ranked which female public figures he’d sleep with on The Howard Stern Show, and once said in an interview with Esquire, “You know, it doesn’t really matter what [the media] write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass.” In 2011, Trump called a female attorney—a new mom—who took a break during a deposition to use a breast pump “disgusting.”
The consequences are evident in Republican primary exit polling and national opinion polls, including a February CNN/ORC poll that found just 29 percent of registered women voters had a favorable opinion of Trump, while a whopping 68 percent viewed him unfavorably.
By comparison, CNN’s final national poll before the November 2012 presidential election found women evenly split in their opinion of Mitt Romney: 47 percent of likely women voters viewed him favorably, and 49 percent viewed him unfavorably. Romney ultimately lost women by 10 points nationally to President Obama, and lost them by an even wider margin in a handful of swing states.
It probably is a waste of time to relate these truths to some Trump supporters, but not all. I'm of the opinion that many of these people are truly good people who are just misguided followers of a raving strong man with a large ego and harem who has started a cult based on fear and bullying. I mean... we know plenty of good Muslims, do we not?
I think it's important to speak personally with those truly good people we know who are Trump followers. Based on the ones I know, they tend to shrink from Trump in political conversations with non-Trumpers -- it seems hard for them to look you in the eye and make the case for Trump.
ReplyDeleteSo I have the sense that supporting Trump is the kind of thing one does when alone (e.g., pissed off when at the keyboard) or with other Trumpkins. It's a little bit culty almost. Maybe that's why Trump hasn't done well in the caucuses so far.
There's no question that polling this political cycle is riddled through with preference falsification, as Hillary found out in Michigan. So people who poll that they're for Trump may actually be against him and vice versa. The latest unfavorables for Trump I found were at 67%.
ReplyDeleteBut personally, I find it hard to square being a constitutionalist with anything other than the belief that the peoples' ultimate choice not only is right for a constitutional republic America but in fact defines that constitutional republic America.
Anything else is simply a subliminal wish for kings. Our founders also understood that those ultimately defining choosers would routinely make better and worse choices, hence the reason for divided government and gridlock built in as a feature rather than as a bug in order to allow the worse choices not not only be contained but countervailed against.
I think I've probably made a comment like this one several times already, but under our system we always deserve what we get, good and hard.