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What if he Actually Wins?
One of the constants of the political coverage this last year has been “Donald Trump cannot win because… ” Anyone who offered a scenario contrary to the cited “because” was self-delusional, a wishful thinker, or just plain stupid. And through it all, Trump just kept advancing, advancing, and advancing right through to the nomination. The conventional wisdom may still hold and he may yet lose in a landslide in November. But what if he does win? What if the conventional wisdom is actually a conventional delusion?
There will be plenty of theories to be sure. It was a year of historically horrible candidates. The vote was too fractured. Too many of this or that faction stayed home. Too many of this or that faction showed up. But like the financial commercials say, past results should never be seen as a guarantee of future returns.
In all honesty, I don’t think anyone knows. Circumstances constantly change. There were newspaper-only elections, radio elections, television elections and, now, internet and social media elections. In 1896, the winning candidate never left his house. In my lifetime alone, three major “that’ll never happen” presidents happened: We elected a Catholic, a divorced man, and a non-white.
The truth is that every election is unique and the circumstances that align the electorate are hard to repeat or predict. I don’t know what kind of president Donald Trump would make, I only know that if he gets a chance to show it, there’s a lot of people who make their living professing to know how to win elections are going to look unconventionally stupid.
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What if he does win? What if the conventional wisdom is actually a conventional delusion?
There will be a fleet of rescue ships dispatched to pick up survivors of the National Review Cruise.
More likely there will be many articles written that something should be done to rescue the poor folks, but we may have other priorities, and we should wait for the proper globalist response. They should get themselves a UHaul instead of clinging to liferafts in shark infested waters all day, the lazy bums.
Frankly I think they already do.
I’ve said this many times, but the conventional wisdom about Donald Trump’s campaign revolved around the idea that a reality TV star with 100% name recognition couldn’t win a popularity contest.
Ha. I’m thinking his chances improved markedly over the last week. I’ll stay around Ricochet then just to watch a few people lose their marbles.
Those same people looked pretty stupid last time when they predicted that Obama would lose to Romney, too. Looking stupid doesn’t stop them from making predictions and taking money for same.
You Need To Know That U-Haul Is Here For You.
Return of Orca, The Killer Fail Whale, sighted off the starboard side of the NRO Cruise.
I remember years ago when a college football coach was having a pretty bad couple of seasons, some unhappy fans parked a U-Haul truck in front of his house. Just a thought.
The measures and methods of political pros have become less effective in direct proportion to the number of people in both parties who no longer feel represented by those they voted for.
To many unknown factors.
How well will 3rd parties do? If they get up to 10% which seems viable who will that affect? My hunch says it hurts Trump.
Voter participation. I have a feeling we’re going to have very low voter turnout. Generally helps Republicans.
Polling seems less reliable now a days.
I wouldn’t be surprised by any result at this point.
I don’t think conventional wisdom works with this election.
So the author of Dilbert really will have achieved his plans for World Domination won’t he? Perhaps he’ll buy National Review as a gag.
To me this seems like a simple question with an obvious answer but somehow people hate obvious answers and love insane answers.
I don’t buy the argument that he’s competent. I don’t by the argument that he’s insane and puts us in danger.
We know he’s not conservative or even right of center. We know he’s not liberal or left of center. We know he’s not moderate on that line either.
We know exactly what he is… a dope. Like all but about a half-dozen presidents have been. It’ll be fine.
However, if he wins, he’s shown how to win as a Republican. That is, the battle changes from More-Government-Liberals vs Less-Government-Conservatives to Us-In-Charge vs Them-In-Charge.
Since I’m not an us and I’m not a them, I figure I gotta get a new pair of complaining shoes.
The Mel Kiper of politics.
Well, it stands to reason that every election, at least half of the highly-paid consultants lose. But that doesn’t much matter, because sure enough, four years from now, the same crews are going to get hired again. They live in a world where results don’t really matter.
Creative Commons License at Flickr by DonkeyHotey
Which is why they work around government, which operates the same way.
Need to Row
I hope this doesn’t mean you won’t stick around if Trump loses. Whoever wins, we’ll need your sense of humor.
Hmmm. If the ‘dope’ wins, he will be the smartest ‘dope’ in the history of the republic.
I remember Obama was the smart guy , something to do with the crease in his pants, but a very credentialed smart guy told me.
You should have gone with the specified NRO descriptor of ‘buffoon, it makes the utterer sound elegant and pompous all at once.
If Trump wins there will be many articles written that say, “Deep down, I always thought he would win.”
A smart guy who had a massive campaign machine on-the-ground throughout the country.
If Trump had any ground game at all, I might be persuaded that he has a hope in Hades of winning.
All the “long-shots” of the past (the Catholic, the divorced man, the non-white) ended up in the winner’s circle because they were able to mobilize a surprisingly strong ground campaign. The winning candidate may not have left the house in 1896, but his large and well-paid ground campaign team sure did. Trump is not following that pattern, at all.
If Trump wins there will be people who insist they said “boffo”.
Ha. I’m going on a long long hiatus if that crone wins. I don’t think anyone who criticizes her is safe so I’ll let some other fool get audited.
Remember when WFB supported Joe Lieberman over the disaster that was Lowell Weicker in the Connecticut Senate race back in 1988? Well, Hillary is no Lieberman and Trump is no Weicker. National Review, I hate to say this, has become insular, as confused as its NRO layout, a tabloid of its former self. It failed. It became mainstream, no longer standing athwart history, but riding in the backseat with the rest of the crowd, just squeaking feebly but politely about deficits, entitlements, yada, yada, yada.
Trump spoke. Unchecked immigration is killing us for all the obvious reasons. Free trade has become a ticket to fleece us. While we vilify the domestic private sector and punish them with tax and regulatory burdens, other countries undercut us and production moves. We fight half-assed wars and waste lives and trillions in treasure. We tell corporations that if they move money from profitable foreign operations to the US, there will be taxes. They deploy these funds (where else?) overseas. Trump points out these things in colorful, impolite ways. We’ve been used and abused. He will stop the madness. In his own, inarticulate, colorful way, he is standing athwart history. WFB would be standing with him.
Trump has said, enough with the victimhood. Our skin is not as thin as cellophane. If we act like a bunch of toddlers, obsessed with fairness, coddled by bureaucrats who claim a deistic ability to kiss everything and make it better, things will not get better. We have to take it all back.
No, he’s not a constitutionalist. He’s not an originalist. But he does know what is wrong and he is a man of action. We’ve been limping toward a left-wing nirvana which is as unaffordable as it is unattainable. Obama’s transformation has been as polarizing as it has been debilitating and expensive. Trump will reverse much of that terrible trend.
DocJay: I don’t think anyone who criticizes her is safe so I’ll let some other fool get audited.
Nice medical practice you have there – be a shame if anything happened to it. In the meantime, perhaps you’d like to put this Hillary for President sign in your window…
Excuse me, but the response I gave was to Trump winning. If he wins with such a miserable ground game as you assert, will your head explode?
One more reason to hide if Hillary wins. I won’t feel like chatting with those who pushed her corpse across the finish line and 90% of the staff here is rooting for her for a variety of reasons.
All life as I know it will stop instantaneously and every molecule in my body will explode at the speed of light.