You got what you deserve, Republican Party...

[A Black Falcon]

I honestly can't understand Trump supporters. I'm not proud of this at all. I usually am able to understand the "other side" of things. I may not agree with them, may see their ideas as harmful, but I can at least see why they believe what they believe and why they support who they support. I can get into the head space of people who support their own oppressive dictatorship, but I can't get into the head of a Trump supporter. I totally understand the mind of a Bush supporter, or supporters of the other popular republican candidates this time around, but Trump supporters escape me.

This is likely a result of limited world experience. I know Bush supporters and have lived with Bush supporters. They're like me, middle class Americans with middle class American concerns. Trump supporters though, they tend to come from harsher backgrounds and most notably from a background that completely lacks any political knowledge. Trump speaks "like they do", apparently.

Here's the thing that confuses me the most. How can anyone look at Trump on stage, claiming that he's "the best" at everything from the military to "knowing the system", and not immediately see it as empty boasting? He sounds like a Saturday Night Live character from the 80's. Specifically this one:

I can't understand the appeal he has either, but the core of his support isn't just poorer people; it's also the white middle and lower middle classes. It's people who see how they aren't doing as well as their parents were, that so many jobs have gone overseas, that America is slowly becoming a less anglo-white nation, etc., and fall for someone offering "solutions" that blame all of America's problems on minorities and liberals. Of course, the actual end result would be Republican economic policies which would help big business even more and continue the downward slide of the American middle class, because those jobs aren't coming back, but people don't care to actually read up on things, they just believe it because it's easy or something. Economically, at its core, It's yet another example of that classic "What's the Matter with Kansas" problem, just here with explicit racism as a core part of the appeal, instead of "just" hating abortion, gays, etc. And yes, it is sad that people are so incurious, that they'd rather stay in a conservative echo chamber than look at if there is any truth to anything that echo chamber is saying.

Everyone in the media is calling the past week or two "Trump's meltdown". What a weird way to frame it. Trump isn't doing anything now that he hasn't already been doing his ENTIRE campaign. He's been just as insane from the day he came down to earth on a golden escalator and said all (excuse me, most) Mexicans are rapists. Further, his base is defending every single thing he's said in the past few weeks just as much as they have every other thing he's said, and they mean it.

However, and this is important, Trump dropping his campaign would be terrible for the democrats. Hillary can beat Trump easily for the same reason literally any democratic candidate could beat Trump easily. Trump is Trump. Hillary may seem to have a new scandal every month, but Trump says something worse every single day, enough to make me forget about whatever Hillary did (I think she sent some e-mail to a Nigerian prince or something?).

Yeah, Trump has been saying stuff just as bad as any of this all along... but people pay more attention to presidential campaigns once the conventions roll around. That's the biggest difference here, that Trump is saying this stuff to a national audience that is actually starting to pay attention, instead of only to the core base of people who follow politics closely.

However, I'd be hard pressed to see anyone take an "anybody but Cruz" stance to the same degree. (I'm pretty sure since he came in second, he'd get the nomination, unless they had to do a second primary vote across the country, I'm not sure about their party rules.) Sure, Ted Cruz lacks that conscious he was telling republicans to vote with (psychopaths are aware of feelings like guilt at least, they just think of it as some "bad feeling" like pain or disgust), but he at least acts like a president, so mostly he'd just be killing his political opponents, not everyday citizens. Anyway, the democrats have to know they've basically been handed the presidency on a silver platter with Trump, so they better hope he doesn't manage to get himself arrested between now and the election.

If Trump were to officially withdraw from the Presidential race, which I don't think is something his ego will allow (and there's no way to get him out without him withdrawing, the Republican Party can't just get rid of him on their own), the party itself would probably pick a nominee, I guess? It'd be an unprecedented situation, so they probably would be making up the rules as they went along. So it may be Cruz, but it'd probably be more likely to be someone like Paul Ryan or something... and yeah, just about any normal Republican would be a much stronger opponent. I do think Hillary would still win, but it'd be a real race, even starting at this late date. Fortunately for us though, I don't think it's going to happen.

So anyway, yes, I'm specifically talking about Hillary's attempt to secure an endorsement from Kissinger. Exactly who is she trying to reach out for, and why? It's entirely the wrong direction for her campaign to go in! Stop trying to win over the bible thumping war-monger crowd and focus on keeping your base! There's not even a reason to try and win over people who are almost certainly going to vote for Trump anyway, because Trump is losing! What it DOES do is alienate the progressive side yet again by showing that she doesn't care how it looks because she takes the progressive vote as a "given". (And why shouldn't she? Look at her opponent, the least qualified candidate in American history perhaps, but I don't know, you tell me.) I used to think of Kissinger as a funny celebrity cameo on Futurama, but now I realize just how much evil he was responsible for. That is NOT the sort of "reaching across the isle" that helps anyone. You don't court with evil like that. You repudiate it. She doesn't need him!

Hillary has added Georgia and Arizona to her battleground-states list, and just wrote an op-ed in the Mormon church-owned paper in Utah. She's aiming for a broad anti-Trump coalition, which is achievable if polling continues to go the way it is right now. And a big win would be good because the bigger the win, hopefully the bigger the coat-tails! I really, really want to win the Senate back...

This doesn't mean she can take liberals for granted of course, she most certainly cannot, and she should not make any kind of public appeal to Kissinger, have any event with him even if he did endorse, etc. And I'd rather if she didn't make a private appeal either; despite his success in opening China I can't stand Kissinger for the awful things he did. But so long as her opponent is Trump, she does have an opportunity to expand on the traditional modern Democratic voting base.