My previous posts about Trump being the Republican nominee were all about the fear that he could win.  And he can.  But, here’s why, in November, he really is going to take the mother and father of all tooth-scattering curb stompings.

Don’t bring tweets to a knife fight

For all Hillary’s flaws as a candidate, she’s been front and center in national politics for twenty-four years. And for most of that time she’s been targeted by venomous and well-funded right-wing attacks. Remember when they suggested that she and Bill killed Vince Foster?  Whitewater? Ken Starr?  The list goes on. If you are gonna go low-road against Hillary, you had better bring your lunch.  And a lot more than one jackass with a smart phone.

Humiliator-in-Chief

 President Obama has demonstrated his ability, most recently at the White House Correspondents Dinner, to be presidential, aloof, and, yet, devastatingly funny.  He’s a Carson-Letterman-level talk show host. He’s likely to spend the next six months making a fool of Trump and pointing out how unqualified he is to be president. There are rooms full of joke writers working on this stuff.  He’ll make him a fool, and Trump will take the bait.  If you don’t believe it, watch this from the correspondents dinner five years ago. He gets to Trump at about 3:30 in the clip.  And, I mean gets to Trump. The Donald is not good at laughing at himself.

One billion dollars

Trump’s Republican primary opponents gave him a pass.  I guess, they just hoped he would go away. But, in the few debates where they stood up to him, he looked like a fool.  He’s about to get nailed with a billion-dollar barrage of multi-channel attack ads, tweets, posts, videos, wild postings, and 24/7 of Democrats on television coming at him from every direction.

He barely has a staff.  Meanwhile the Hillary war room is up and running.  And it won’t just be Hillary.  Sure, he’ll hire some people, but at some point organization counts, and you can’t just be some guy in his bedroom doing phone calls and tweets.

He could rely on the Republican establishment for help, but . . .

The GOP takes a walk

A lot of Republican office holders are starting to line up behind Trump in public.  Because they have to. A lot of them are currently running for election or re-election or will be in two years. They are all currently trying to find their footing.

Check out Senator Kelly Ayotte yesterday in New Hampshire.  I hope that Governor Maggy Hassan defeats her in November, but Ayotte is a good politician and a good senator.  She said yesterday, after listing all of Trump’s flaws, that she supports Trump, but doesn’t endorse him.   I almost wanted to give her a hug.

And I would bet real money that Ayotte votes for Hillary. And so will John McCain.  And Lyndsey Graham.  And a lot of other Republican office holders.

My parents have been involved in local politics in Pennsylvania for forty years.  They can tell you that just because someone looks you in the eye and tells you they support you, doesn’t mean it’s true. Early signs are that the GOP is taking a walk.

Watch the retired Republicans                                    

Republicans holding or running for office have to say that they are supporting the nominee.  To understand where Republican voters are going, keep an eye on the retired Republicans.  For, example, last night, former long-time Republican congressman Mickey Edwards from Oklahoma, when asked who he would vote for, said that he wouldn’t vote for Trump, but instead said, “I have to live with myself. Look in the mirror. Explain myself to my grand-children.”

And, oh, yeah, both former-president Bushes wasted no time saying that they wouldn’t endorse Trump. Starting the Retired Republican Watch now.

Following up on Laska’s post this morning about HRC and the woman card.  Specifically, the Woman Card.

As Laska notes, this is a pretty decent campaign idea. It’s a clever enough way to thank a woman who just made a donation. Although it would have been even better if the card gave you a free coffee at Starbucks or something.

Obama pioneered social media marketing. Trump is the ultimate triumph of cable t.v. where content and advertising are all the same. And he’s mastered tweeting insults from his bath tub. Hillary continues to employ traditional advertising tactics.

The Woman Card is a good campaign element of the type that traditional–and increasingly digital– agencies produce. But even consumer marketers realize that this stuff doesn’t work.  If this cycle has proved anything it’s that the :30 second spot and similar traditional campaign tactics continue to decline in effectiveness. Go back to 2008, and cable news channels routinely reported on new spots that were produced by the campaigns.  Back then, the original media buy for a spot was almost irrelevant. They were produced so that cable news could pick them up and provide free media exposure.

Not anymore. The cable news shows rarely cover this stuff anymore.  No more red phones at 3:00 a.m. or Swift Boat Veterans against Kerry. I would assume that by 2024, no one even bothers to make these things anymore.

Hillary should sweep all the Mark Penn’s and other traditional agency types out of her inner circle.  Move them to the “B” team, because the campaign does still need to produce video assets and print collateral. And it has to be well produced and effective. But, the people who produce this material shouldn’t have any role in driving strategy and messaging.

During the White House Correspondence dinner, Obama joked about Hillary’s attempts to use digital media.  It starts at around 2:00 mins into the clip. It’s funny because it’s true.

———

The other things she needs to stop doing is repeating pre-scripted zingers.  During an interview yesterday with Andrea Mitchell, she was candid and ruthless in her critique of Trump as a possible Commander-in-Chief, but, during an otherwise well-articulated response, she remembered to mention that Trump was “an equal opportunity insulter.” Clearly a pre-scripted line. Kerry, Romney, Hillary, all had a penchant for this stuff in previous elections.  Obama rarely uses this kind of pre-scripted zinger. And when he does, he goes all Johnny Carson on it, pausing, shrugging his shoulders, laughing at the banality of it even as he delivers the line. Which, of course, makes it actually funny.

Well, the Stop Trump movement collapsed and ran like a Civil War army that had its flanks turned.  And now, once it stops running and reforms its lines, what next? My guess, is that the Republican “establishment” lines up behind Trump with all the grace and coordination of football fans rushing towards just-opened turnstiles.

All over the country, there are Republican staffers who, even this afternoon, were working around the clock to whip convention delegates into the Stop Trump movement and are now suddenly erasing whiteboards, shredding the delegate tally sheets, and texting their spouses and significant others that they are finally coming home.  Dozens of local Republican office holders, who this morning were being offered jobs in the state department of transportation, are now planning their next race for county clerk of courts. 

They will fall in line despite the fact that, during his unnervingly measured and professional victory speech, Trump at times sounded like a Democrat from 1982:  “Bring back our jobs!”  “Keep the factories here!” “Keep the mines open!” On foreign policy, he sounded like a combination of a 1930’s isolationist and a post-Vietnam Democrat.

Principled conservatives and true believes on the right will all have to struggle with their conscience about what to do in November. But, congressional Republicans are almost entirely post-policy and Trump is non-policy, so issue dissonance isn’t going to be a factor.

I know that all the polls and demographic break outs show that Trump is headed for a shellacking on the scale of William Jennings Bryan or Barry Goldwater. And, he’s likely to bring down Republican senate candidates in places like Florida, New Hampshire, Ohio—and even puts guys like John McCain and Chuck Grassley in danger. But . . . as they say in sports, there’s a reason we actually play the games.

I do think that tonight increases the likelihood that Clinton might pick Sanders as her running mate.  Not only because he won—and is likely to win a few more smaller states in May—but, watching him tonight criticize Trump in a measured, detailed, but very effective way, suggests that he could do well playing the traditional vice president attack role. And, he gives Hillary credibility when she tries to start sounding like a change agent who really is outraged about income inequality.

Still afraid. Still very afraid.

 

I am trying to work up a “defense of incrementalism” post, but it’s not inspiring work, and it is Sunday afternoon, and raining, and I’m watching Fast Times at Ridgemont High. So, this will be some initial remarks with more to come.  A teaser of the week ahead. Cannily, building my audience.

Regarding Laska’s initial question, can someone be a successful incremental president? I’d say “yes”, but then, like Bill Clinton, you will leave a light footprint on history.  Is WJC the least-influential president to serve eight years?  Here’s the list:

1. George Washington
2. Thomas Jefferson
3. James Madison
4. James Monroe
5. Andrew Jackson
6. Ulysses S. Grant
7. Grover Cleveland (non-consecutive terms)
8. Woodrow Wilson
9. Franklin D. Roosevelt (served 3 full terms, died early in 4th term).
10. Dwight Eisenhower
11. Ronald Reagan
12. Bill Clinton
13. George W. Bush

I would rank WJC ahead of Ulysses Grant and Grover Cleveland. To be fair to Cleveland (although, why?), Gilded Age presidents were not expected to do anything. But, as a Democrat, he makes Clinton look like a member of the Red Brigades.

He vetoed Civil War pensions for Union veterans. He used the army to put down labor unrest. Vetoed drought relief for Texas farmers and generally just helped New York and Philadelphia financial houses put the screws to farmers in every state.  He stood around and mumbled about tariffs while a grinding depression gripped the country in his second term.

I would rank everyone else on this list higher than WJC in terms of the sustained influence of the actions taken during their presidencies or because of how they came to embody their times.

One thing not on Laska’s list of WJC’s accomplishments is his defeat of the Contract with America after the 1994 debacle.  It’s a defensive achievement, but significant nonetheless.

I recommend Nick Littlefield’s recent Lion of the Senate: When Ted Kennedy Rallied the Democrats in a GOP Congress. It’s about how Ted Kennedy (working closely with the Clinton White House) rallied the Democrats in congress in the months after the 1994 elections, When Newt Gingrich and team were trying to write the Contract with America into law.  It’s a terrifying reminder of how bad things were for the Democrats back then.  It also shows what a heavy lift it was to pass that minimum wage increase that is also on Laska’s list.

The Stop Trump effort has finally become farce, and follies, and Vaudeville.  And not even “big time” Vaudeville, but one of those circuits that takes long train rides to small cities and plays in venues that aren’t full-time theaters.

Here’s a link to Ted Cruz’s event in which he announced Carly as his running mate.  I don’t expect anyone to watch the entire thing. In fact, if you do find yourself watching the entire thing, you should call me immediately.  I can talk you down.  Get you in a program.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwSeuX3nXYY

But, if you just jump around and watch parts of it, the entire tableau becomes increasingly delusional.  This is a guy who is now mathematically eliminated from capturing the Republican nomination for president on the first ballot.  He’s so loathed by his congressional colleagues that it’s more likely that an open Republican convention would choose not to contest the election before they make him the nominee.

And now that I think about it, would that be the worst thing?  If they just said, we are going to focus on retaining our congressional majorities, and we’ll be back in 2020?  We haven’t had a non-contested presidential election since James Monroe, but it’s not unprecedented.  And, who wouldn’t want to restore the Era of Good Feelings?

Back to Cruz, you can see him in the clip talking about how solemn a choice it is to select a qualified vice presidential candidate. He tells stories about he and Carly forming a bond on the campaign bus.  And, Carly forming a bond with Ted’s daughters.  And then Carly, when she finally gets on stage—Cruz talks for like thirty minutes—sings a song that she apparently sings with Cruz’s daughters on the campaign bus. Because kids really enjoy it when CEO’s try to have fun with them.

All of this would be fine if this were the Republican convention in Cleveland.  But, this was a hotel ball room in Indianapolis in April.  It felt like high school kids running a mock election.  Or crazy people who think they are still running for president.

John Kasich, Losing Interest

Kasich is a smart guy and a good campaigner, but his recent campaign appearances indicate that he’s just killing time till the convention where he hopes that lightning will strike.  His remarks on the stump are increasingly odd and disinterested.  Check out Samantha Bee having fun with Kasich’s recent attempts to talk about “The Passover” in New York at a matzah factory.  Where he clearly just started talking and then realized that he had no idea what he was going to say or why he would say it or why he was standing there holding a pizza box full of matzah.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nE23uSUbraM

 

For the second day in a row, I’m writing about “Trump” and “foreign” “policy”.  This whole run to November is going to be much harder to watch than I thought it would be. Watching Trump step into the moment, start acting presidential. Republican office holders slowly coming around to supporting him.

It’s entirely possible that at any moment we’ll switch this blog over to sports or food or comparative religion. Any Democrats licking their chops at the prospect of Hillary running against Trump and dreaming of a 40-state romp in November had better wake up and realize what time it is. He’s going to be very hard for Hillary to beat.  The foreign policy speech demonstrates a few reasons why:

How low can you go?

It would be literally impossible to set the bar any lower for Trump on foreign affairs.  He is getting enormous credit for just showing up, reading a teleprompter, and not sounding like a crazy person. When George W. Bush debated Gore on foreign policy, he made it through the debate without falling down or crying, and that was all it took to put him on equal footing with Gore. Anyone who thinks that she will run circles around him in a debate is kidding themselves. 

Close your eyes and listen

During the 2000 election, I was listening to a lot of NPR.  Which lead me to develop my radio litmus test.  Watching a candidate on television, you can’t help but viscerally respond to them.  But, on the radio, it’s just their voice. And if you suspend your policy preferences for a few moments, you start to hear how swing voters might assess a candidate.  In this test, Bush came across as the better candidate than Gore.  Listening to Trump’s foreign policy speech without looking at him . . . and he suddenly sounded very plausible.  That is all the average voter needs.

War! what is it good for?

On foreign policy, he’s going to run to Hillary’s left. And right. At the same time. She’s spent her entire career insulating herself from Republican neo-con attacks from the right.  And, now she’s facing a candidate who’s thoroughly denounced George W’s invasion of Iraq.  Disavowed all the neo-con adventurism.  But, he can also stomp around about strength and make her look weak and feckless.  She has a record to defend; he has nothing.  She’ll be on the defensive the entire time.

He can win. He really can

Carly Fiorina?  That’s all Cruz has left?  This is the stop Trump movement?  It was leaked earlier today that Cruz would be making a “major announcement.”  But, this is to major announcements what the naughty lamp in A Christmas Story was to major awards.  Cruz-Fiorina is like a B-list WWE tag-team that has just enough juice to be interesting, but is clearly just there to put the big stars over.

Cruz is many things, but I thought he was a smart politician. I can’t imagine what the strategy sessions where like that resulted in this decision.  Cruz is toast, but what possible argument is there that Carly will improve his chances?  Does anyone in Indiana even know who she is? They know who she is in California, and they didn’t vote for her when she ran for senate. Perhaps the reasoning was that the only way to make Cruz more likeable was to put someone even more unlikeable on the ticket with him. She’s a terrible campaigner.  Unsmiling. Angry. A multi-millionaire, failed CEO who was trying to run on a populist economic message.

This is such a non-event that I almost feel bad to blog about it.  Except that the hathos appeal is too much to resist.  So, on that level, I’m happy to have her back in the campaign.

She is utterly loathsome.  When she left Lucent to become CEO of HP—and this was at the peak of the ‘90s bull market, when CEOs were treated like celebrities—it was obvious her only objective was to be governor of California or one of its senators.  On the way to becoming the first woman president.

Hey, we all have our career goals.

But, she was a disaster at HP. At a time when rival IBM was transforming itself from a hardware company to a software and services company, Carly had HP buy Compaq, doubling down on PCs and commodity servers.

Lots of people are referring back to when Reagan, in 1976, picked Pennsylvania senator Richard Schweiker as his running mate before the convention. Schweiker was at least a sitting senator. And from a state where Reagan was trying to peel delegates away from Ford.  This makes no sense. She brings nothing other than anger and a bad resume.

Just watched most of Trump’s foreign policy address in Washington.  He was ill at ease with a teleprompter, but otherwise it was a strong presentation.  Or strong enough.  Someone wrote him a pretty decent speech and he delivered it o.k., without veering off into crazy land.  Folks, that’s all the average voter needs to hear.  He can win this whole thing.

Early this morning, Laska posted about possible Trump meltdown scenarios.  I’ll add to his analysis that Mr. Trump’s instinctive misogyny could be part of his undoing. I don’t think he can help himself.  This morning on Morning Joe, while phoning in his interview from his bedroom, he was asked about Hillary’s remarks in her victory speech.  He proceeded to talk about how she was screaming and that he couldn’t stand the screaming.  He all but said that the former Secretary of State and U.S. senator from New York was giving him a head ache with all her shrill nagging and screaming.

He started his campaign by calling Megyn Kelly a menstruating bitch.  I don’t think he can help himself, and when he’s losing to Hillary, or, she’s running circles around him on policy, he could go way over the top.  On the other hand, I thought his campaign was over when he was mean to Kelly in the first debate, but nobody cared.  Think Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtain on Point-Counter Point.  “Jane, you ignorant slut.”  That’s his debate prep.