07-28-2016, 09:04 PM
(07-28-2016, 12:57 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:(07-28-2016, 12:27 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: I will be using a different map next week. The ends of the two Conventions begin the real races for President, showing whether the nominees of the Democratic and Republican Parties have defined themselves and vilified the other side successfully. Convention speeches establish the themes of the race. As I see it, in a two-way race my current map fails to distinguish a spread of 49-36 from one of 41-36. In a binary race I have a cause for a distinction between a race in which one of the nominees is over 45%, both are over 45%, or neither is. Mass advertising begins next week based upon promises and doubts raised in the Party conventions. Should Johnson prove relevant I will accommodate him. Old maps may become irrelevant.
Republicans have tried to depict Hillary Clinton as shady; Democrats are trying to depict Donald Trump as a dangerous extremist whose experience has no relevance to governing America. The themes are set, and new themes are unlikely.
It is remarkable that in his speech last night President Obama excoriated together fascists, communists, jihadis, and home-grown demagogues, the latter implying Donald Trump. This takes swipes at totalitarian causes of the past (the first two), today (a better definition than "radical Islam", as solutions to violent movements in Islam may be newer currents of Islam that contain some radical elements), and our own home-grown extremists who would tear down the decencies of our heritage for their own radical agendas.
Republicans are still stuck on the questionable issue of whether President Obama is a genuine American. With less than half a year in this Presidential term, such is now ludicrously irrelevant as well as unfounded. They should have ditched this issue long ago... but when the faction with the greatest contempt for reason gets hold of the Party that is what one gets. Democrats have a better slogan "Stronger Together" than the vacuous "Make America Great Again". We are all in this Crisis Era together, or this Crisis may do great harm to America.
While the Drumpf Dummies obsess on "Messikans, Muzzies and Fagz," Chinese space vehicles capable of hoisting MIRVed thermonuclear warhead clusters undergo re-entries over CONUS. They have their heads stuck where the Sun don't shine.
White Anglo Americans have never harbored the hostility toward Latinos that they have had toward blacks at any time. Donald Trump has hurt several decades of Republican outreach toward Latinos (including even Cuban-Americans and Puerto Ricans who might hear "Oh! I thought you were Italian!" after some slur of Hispanics of any kind). There is much more assimilation between whites and non-white Latinos, the assimilation going both ways. White people aghast at their dear white daughter marrying and having children by a black man are far more lenient toward a Latino son-in-law who shows obvious First Peoples ancestry. Non-black Latinos can become 'honorary whites' and become welcome at the holiday dinner tables.
Donald Trump is going to lose the Hispanic vote far more severely than any Republican nominee since at least Goldwater... and that is a large chunk of the electorate. He can also lose many of the votes of people who have a Hispanic in-law. Many Texans and Arizonans fit that description.
I doubt that the Muslim vote will swing any state unless the state is so close that any minority (even a large occupational group) can make a difference. Same-sex marriage is decided once-and-for all.
...as for national security, Democrats may have taken an issue that usually favors Republicans. President Emeritus Barack Obama will be far more useful to President Hillary Clinton than to Donald Trump in a tough negotiation with the People's Republic of China on weapons systems. Donald Trump gets stuck with the elder Bush, who will quickly become irrelevant for reasons other than the competence that he has shown in the past on foreign affairs. (He is 91).
Hillary Clinton owns the Obama foreign policy. Effectively she also owns the foreign policy of her husband, the elder Bush, and what Ronald Reagan got away with. Donald Trump has cast about the idea of abandoning NATO, a position to the left of what the Nixon campaign was able to pin on George McGovern.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.