This is an amazing—if not frightening—election. Amazing that anyone as unqualified as Donald Trump is the presidential nominee of a major party. Amazing that Trump has no policies only stated goals, most of which are offensive not to mention unrealistic (e.g., deporting 11 million “illegals,” building a wall on our southern border, changing our foreign alliances like NATO, banning Muslims from entering the USA, etc.). Frightening because Trump has no government experience whatsoever. He is a New York City real estate developer, and he does not even have a good newspaper knowledge of what presidents can and cannot do with our highest office. He has virtually no true understanding whatsoever of how Washington works.
Frightening also because Trump is an authoritarian personality, which makes him unsuited for the Oval Office. Trump is so taken with himself he is unable to acknowledge that he is not qualified for the job; he thinks he can fake it until he figures it out. Or that he can hire people—of course having them all sign nondisclosure agreements—who can guide him until he understands the job. Unfortunately, it does not work that way and our nation’s enemies are not going to give him a grace period to learn on the job. Therefore, national security experts from both parties have publicly declared he must not become president.
The only reason that Trump has not been shut out of any chance whatsoever of winning the White House, and remains competitive with Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, is Republicans have spent the last 35 years trying to destroy Hillary Clinton. While they failed, they have confused enough people to seriously tarnish her. Trashing her began when she became the First Lady of Arkansas, the wife of the governor. When the Clinton partnership arrived on the national stage, and President Clinton gave his wife responsibility to develop a national healthcare program, she became a serious and more focused target of conservatives. Indeed, there was (and still is) “a vast right-wing conspiracy” devoted to destroying Bill and Hillary Clinton.
If Donald Trump wins the election, this country will have a national disaster of unprecedented dimensions. The blame for this calamity is on the mainstream media (e.g., The New York Times, The Washington Post, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News) which gave Trump endless free coverage during the Republican primary contests (where competent candidates were ignored to cover his more interesting shenanigans), coverage which has extended into the general election. And that same news media has made a great issue out of Hillary Clinton’s uses of a private email server as secretary of state, a totally bogus scandal of no consequence whatsoever, ignoring that her predecessor Colin Powell used private email and the Bush II administration “lost” 22 MILLION emails.
Voting is now underway, but no one knows for certain how it will end on November 8, 2016. For example, while Hillary is leading by varying amounts in all the legitimate polling, nobody thinks her victory is a sure thing. For example: Michael Moore: Here’s why Trump will win election – WND; Stop it with the Clinton coronation. Trump can still win – CNBC; Why Trump can still win and most likely will win this election – Daily Kos; Yes, Trump can still win this election – TheBlaze.com.
Donald Trump knows he is a longshot, yet he believes he is still very much in the race. We now have evidence of his thinking, why he is still in the game. He recently released an electoral map as part of his fund-raising efforts, which is instructive, and Bloomberg Businessweek was able to look inside the Trump bunker in San Antonio, where the number crunchers operate. Let’s examine both.
Examining Trump’s Map
[To avoid your eyes glazing in this section, where I wanted to check the electoral college numbers, I have highlighted in bold the important information:]
Trump’s electoral map shows the states he believes he will carry as well as the states he concedes to Hillary and those that are too close to call. Not surprisingly, Trump’s map reveals more optimism than current polling can support, not to mention historical trends of the states. For purposes of comparison, I have used the more neutral map site, 270toWin.com. (States in all the maps are deemed red or blue with a simple majority making the determination. Apart from Maine and Nebraska, all states award all their electoral college votes based on a majority winner takes all.)
Trump States Conceded to Hillary: Trump’s map concedes the following states (and electoral votes) to the Democrats: California (55), Connecticut (7), Delaware (3), District of Columbia (3), Hawaii (4), Illinois (20), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (11), Minnesota (10), New Jersey (14), New Mexico (5), New York (29), Oregon (7), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (3), and Washington (12)—for a total of 197 electoral votes for Democrat Hillary Clinton.
By comparison, 270toWin.com finds that Hillary will start with 258 electoral votes, which would include the following states that Trump’s map does not concede: Colorado (9), three quarters of Maine (3), Michigan (16), Pennsylvania (20), and Virginia (13) for an additional 61 electoral votes.
Trump’s Perceived Safe States: Per Trump’s map he believes he has a lock on the following states (and electoral votes): Alabama (9), Alaska (3), Arizona (11), Arkansas (6), Georgia (16), Idaho (4), Indiana (11), Kansas (6), Kentucky (8), Louisiana (8), Mississippi (6), Missouri (10), Montana (3), Nebraska (5), North Dakota (3), Oklahoma (7), South Carolina (9), South Dakota (3), Tennessee (11), Texas (38), Utah (6), West Virginia (5), and Wyoming (3) for a total of 191 electoral votes.
Again, Trump’s analysis is more optimistic than the consensus found at 270toWin.com, which does not place Arizona (11), Georgia (16), Maine (potentially 1 of 4), and Utah (6) among safe states for Trump.
Trump’s Too Close To Call States: Based on Trump’s electoral map, he believes the followings states are toss ups: Colorado (9), Florida (29), Iowa (6), Maine (4), Michigan (16), Nevada (6), New Hampshire (4), North Carolina (15), Ohio (18), Pennsylvania (20), Virginia (13), and Wisconsin (10) for an electoral total of 150 votes.
Using Trump’s numbers for the math, with 191 perceived safe states voting for him, he needs only 79 additional electoral votes of the 150 available to reach the magic number of 270 electoral votes. Notwithstanding the fact that virtually all polling shows Clinton winning Colorado (9), Michigan (16), New Hampshire (4), Pennsylvania (20) and Virginia (13) with 62 electoral votes, this polling merely shows that she has many routes to 270 while he has few. Here is his current strategy to win.
“Inside the Trump Bunker, with 12 Days to Go”
Writing for Bloomberg Businessweek, Joshua Green and Sasha Issenberg report the final days strategy of the Trump campaign, not from Trump Tower in New York rather from inside a digital consulting firm in San Antonio, in their piece titled “Inside the Trump Bunker, with 12 Days to Go.” Brad Parscale, the president of Giles-Parscale in San Antonio, has become the digital wizard of the Trump campaign operation.
Parscale started by designing the-price-was-right web pages for the Trump family, then the campaign, and as Trump’s campaign managers—Corey Lewandowski and Paul Manafort—fell to the wayside, Parscale assumed more and more responsibility, and developed a close relationship with Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. His San Antonio firm folded in the Republican National Committee’s digital operation, which arrived with Trump winning the nomination, and then the UK based Cambridge Analytica, when Steve Bannon became the campaign’s CEO. (Bannon is on the board of Cambridge Analytica, apparently watching the interests of investor Robert Mercer and daughter Rebekah, who have become big money players in the Trump campaign.) Parscale developed a database just for Trump, naming it “Project Alamo.”
In a rare interview, Steve Bannon told Bloomberg, when addressing the database, that they have built “the underlying apparatus for a political movement that’s going to propel us to victory on Nov. 8 and dominate Republican politics after that.” To win on November 8 the Trump campaign does not plan to get out the vote, rather than are seeking to suppress Hillary’s vote. Reporting by Green and Issenberg, and quoting a senior official with the Trump campaign, suggests they have only “three major voter suppression operations underway.” They are groups Hillary needs to win overwhelmingly: “idealistic white liberals, young women, and African Americans.”
In this report the suppression is being done by Trump raising Clinton’s emails and one-time support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership—both turnoffs to Sanders supporters. Trump is using the charges of sexual assault against Bill Clinton to turn off young women. And Hillary’s 1996 statement about African American men as “super predators” is being used almost subliminally to undermine Hillary’s support from black voters. The Bloomberg report addresses the problems with these approaches, while explaining them more fully.
What is not included in this report, I suspect, are the less subtle and unsophisticated efforts to suppress Democratic voting. Indeed, Republicans have been working for years in all the swing states to suppress minorities that tend to vote Democratic. At his current rallies, Trump is urging his supporters to become “poll watchers”—wink, wink, nod, nod—on election day. The poll watching/intimidation scheme is so blatant that the Democrats have gone to court to enforce the standing consent decree against the Republican National Committee prohibiting such activates, since this had long been Republicans’ standard practice.
As we head to the finish line of the 2016 presidential race the only way Trump believes he can win is to suppress the vote. Given the way he has run his campaign, it is impossible to believe he is going to limit his suppression efforts to merely more negative campaigning and nasty ads. So, Democrats must prevent Trump and his supporters from using physical intimidation to suppress the vote. Anyone who does not understand that Trump will bully his way into the White House if possible has not been paying attention to his campaign.
Insightful analysis from the perspective of the minimalist win in the electoral college. Useful, but I’m also curious about the breakdown of Trump’s voters. The hard-core fanatics are haters, and I wonder how numerous they are and how dangerous their enthusiasm will be. Perhaps more importantly, I wonder why they don’t alienate his other voting blocs.
For example, one of Trump’s major voting blocs is the “I always vote R” voters, but it’s hard to understand how they can accept being lumped in with racists and misogynists (though some of them have become “Never Trumpers”). There’s also the detail that most of them regard the GOP as the party of good government, while the government-hating wing of Trump’s haters’ bloc (largely former Dixiecrats) wants to burn the government down.
Maybe Trump’s real weakness is with his bloc of poorly educated men. Roughly half of them are married to smarter women, and if those women succeed in dissuading their husbands from supporting the Donald, that could lead to an epic blowout. Another weakness on this front is victims of sexual assault pushing their female friends to vote against Trump. However at this point I don’t think the Sphinx could explain the mystery of women who support Trump.
It is truly sad that such delusional people like John Dean are given a forum anywhere to attempt to smear the truth. Ms. Clinton is not the victim of “a vast right wing conspiracy”, she created her problems herself by putting national security and American lives in danger with her email use, has lied about it and other matters continuously, did not defend the U.S. Embassy in Behghazi which resulted in the murder of four Americans, has engaged in corrupt campaigning by colluding with the DNC to defeat her primary opponent, and colluding with CNN on at least one primary debate question, and the rampant pay to play corruption in the Clinton State Department in connection with the Clinton Foundation (a former governor of Illinois is serving 14 years in prison for pay to play on a much smaller scale than that of Ms. Clinton) (several of these corrupt dealings were exposed by WikiLeaks). Never in the history of America has there been such a known corrupt and indeed criminal (see 18 U.S.C. 793(f)) person who was the candidate of a major political party for president, and never has the mainstream media been so much in the tank for a candidate with such huge corruption. The Media Research Center is devoted to the mainstream “news” outlets’ coverage of politics and have done many reports which confirm the widespread media bias against conservative candidates (and studies, such as by Quinnipiac University, show that a vast majority of employees in these media outlets vote for Democrats; it should ideally be an even number for each major political party). And Mr. Dean claims that Mr. Trump is attempting to suppress voters? What an appalling, unsubstantiated statement.
Thank you for making ONE substantiated and honest statement. Has John Dean gone the way of Glenn Beck? Over the deep end?
No it’s your interpretation of the situation that reveals fatal flaws. There is most definitely collusion with Comey, FBI and Rudy Giuliani.
You better read the history of John Dean and his connection to Watergate.
Search on Google “John Dean and G. Gordon Liddy” and you can read on you own.
Knowing what Dean wrote about Trump, makes me more wanting to vote “Trump”.
I certainly agree and I was around when Watergate was starting up
This is, indeed, an unprecedented and alarming election. A presidential contender seeking, apparently with tacit approval of his party, to engage in illegal intimidation and coercive tactics to secure the election is hardly something to commend him to that office. When one adds to that public statements, like that made by former Illinois Representative Joe Walsh, that if Trump does not win the election, he intends to “grab his musket,” we see not only an immediate situational danger, but a far more widespread trend to violence within America. This is the mob mentality that is present among the lowest denominators of civilization, and certainly h no place among our leaders. The easiest solution, of course, is the follow-through on laws already in place to prevent such behavior in defense of a law-abiding public … but in today’s firestorm of emotion, such action could easily result in furthering tensions and necessitate martial law in an increasing spiral of violent civil unrest by those who disrespect majority rule. To say that I am disheartened, and disgusted by the devolution of American society would be an egregious understatement. This is NOT the country that our founders undertook to create, the republic that has stood for over two-hundred years as a shining beacon of enlightenment, and which so many have given their lives to defend.
Have you seen Michael Moore’s TrumpLand movie? His “emulation” of the mindset of a large bloc of irrational voters supporting Trump is extremely insightful to the point where many of Trump’s own voters are citing excerpts as evidence that Michael Moore actually endorses Trump. Of course not, but the movie proves he does understand them much more deeply than they understand reality.
The reality is that they are losers and they are angry about losing. The YUGE problem is that they are still going to be losers AFTER they vote for Trump. I think they will be angriest of all if Trump somehow wins and they find out that they are even bigger losers than they were before. Or maybe not? That ultimate realization will take a while to sink in, so it might be like the frog sitting in the gradually warming water. Eventually they will notice that they are worse off then ever, but just feel it’s too late and too hopeless.
Mr Dean overlooks the criminal acts perpetrated by Hillary Clinton.
May I suggest you study some criminal law and find out what it takes to be convicted of a crime … THEN re-evalute whether Hillary is a criminal or not. Because if she is, then you are too.
The term voter suppression needs defined because under P.L. 89-110, Sec. 11. p.(c), or popularly known as the 1965 Voting Rights Act that the Selma March was all about, voter intimidation is forbidden. If the suppression includes intimidation then it is a federal offense. Whether that includes removing Trump-Pence signs or vandalizing properties is included must depend on perspective. In addition, that law requires proper identification of all voters. As for lack of experience. That’s the point. We don’t want anymore experience that gave China to the Communist, seen Americans and Allies “Die for a Tie” in Korea, lost Cuba and a generation of bungling in Latin America that’s lead to our current immigration crisis because the socialist regimes have destroyed once vibrant economies, made Russia influential in the Mideast after engaging in wars with no end and an energy policy that did not benefit America or the Mideastern people but a select few globalist. If anyone thinks the globalist want peace they must be mentally challenged in war and peace. The globalist want internecine ethnic wars among the population while they live in ivory towers and reap the benefits. Thus they want no nation powerful enough to represent the people and challenge them. Depending on which side, people or rulers, Trump’s candidacy is viewed as a threat or promise.
It’s my firm belief that Trump never intended to be President. I think he ran in the Republican primary on a lark, but when he won it hands down, it spun his head around a few times and when it settled back down again, he was all agog and ready to run in the campaign for President. The closer he got to the reality of being President, though, the more frightened he became because he knows deep in his heart that he was totally unqualified for that office. So he deliberately became more and more radical, racist, ridiculous, repugnant and reprehensible in a deliberate attempt to lose the election. Fortunately for him and the nation, it’s not the people who elect the President. It’s the electoral college where he is far behind Clinton. What with him starting his own TV network, I truly believe he will take his misguided group of deplorables and become a televangelist of the worst sort. But he will NOT be President, for which I thank the gods of Olympus and all gods everywhere.