[Trump’s] constant harping on his polls is not simple narcissism, but a sped-up version of a quarterly earnings report: he is reassuring his supporters that they are with the smart money, in on the ground floor of a big thing.
Even so, there were a few silver linings for Mrs. Clinton. While Mr. Sanders bested her among all age groups younger than 45, the two candidates polled evenly among voters aged 45 to 64. And Mrs. Clinton won the support of voters 65 and older. And, though Mrs. Clinton lost nearly every income group, she did carry voters in families earning over $200,000 per year.
Not only did Trump somehow win a debate he didn’t go to, instead he had an event where the ‘08 and ‘12 Iowa caucus winners - Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum - gave auxiliary speeches from a lectern bearing his name.
As, in the language of political stagecraft, endorsers do. With nothing to gain and everyone coming for him, he somehow left everyone bruised and in his debt by running away and tricking HIS OWN OPPONENTS into endorsing him.
The ironic thing is that today’s actual New York City values - moneyed, credentialed, cautious and middlebrow - are exactly what people meant by “country club” Republicanism.
John Kasich would make sense as the nominee of a Christian Democratic party, on European lines. (If you know only one Christian Democratic politician, it’s Angela Merkel.)
But the Republican Party of America is not, and has never been a Christian Democratic party. It’s been within one realignment of such, I think Bush the Younger got elected intending to make it, but the attempt failed and it’s no longer even that close.
Guy’s running like the last ten years never happened. Shame, and when you consider how it implies he’s trying to live out a carefully planned rise-to-power fantasy conceived decades ago, verges on poignant.
Could be worse, Jim Webb was running like it was still fucking 1992.
