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Since Trump’s only real ideology is self-worship, this campaign is going to focus largely on personal attacks from both sides.  You can expect to see the following:

From the Clinton campaign:

1.  Trump is a loser, not a winner.  Since the whole rationale for Trump revolves around him being a winner, there will be plenty of discussion about his business failures and his privileged upbringing.

2.  Trump doesn’t have the qualifications or the temperament to be President.  Do you really want to live in a world in which nuclear war is viewed as a bargaining chip?

3.  Trump is an obscenely rich guy who doesn’t care about working people.  His comments about wages being too high at one of the debates, his tax cut plan, and his use of eminent domain will feature prominently here.

4.  Nothing Trump says can be trusted.  There will be plenty of evidence about lies, flip-flops, and questionable business practices.

5.  Trump will take away your health insurance.  That’s his plan, anyway.  I suspect he will back off his latest pronouncement on the subject and just revert to his promise to replace Obamacare with “something really great.”

6.  Trump is a misogynist and a bigot.  No elaboration necessary.

7.  Trump’s protectionist plans will be a disaster for American workers.  There should be some discussion about price increases for foreign goods that are a staple of American life.

8.  Trump and the GOP will launch a war on women’s rights.  Trump’s list of potential Supreme Court nominees will be important here.

Trump will respond with the following:

1.  Hillary is a warmonger who will drag us into pointless conflicts in the Middle East.  The evidence to support this:  the Iraq War vote and Libya.

2.  Hillary enabled her husband’s mistreatment of women.  I don’t think this will resonate with anyone who doesn’t already despise her.

3.  I will make great deals all over the world, based on my record as a developer.  No elaboration necessary.

4.  Hillary doesn’t have my business experience and thus knows nothing about creating jobs.  I’ve discussed the “run government like a business” theme on several previous occasions.

5.  Hillary is running for a third Obama term.  We need something different.  In the final analysis, this is the one that matters most.

6.  Benghazi and the e-mails.  Yawn.

7.  I’m completely independent; Hillary is owned by big donors, especially on Wall Street.  Of course, this argument is harder to sell if Trump is soliciting huge sums from GOP donors, as he almost certainly will.

When it is all said and done, the outcome of the election will ride primarily on two unresolved questions:

1.  Will minorities go to the polls in large numbers to vote for a white woman out of fear of a Trump victory?

2.  Are Americans so dissatisfied with the current state of events (5% unemployment, a stock market just below 18,000, no large scale conflicts, etc.) to take a chance on someone without the qualifications or temperament to be President?

During the 2012 campaign, Grover Norquist made a comment to the effect that the only thing he asked of the GOP nominee was to have enough fingers to hold the pen that would sign the Ryan budget.  Trump has enough digits, and they appear to be large enough to hold the pen;  the question is, would he sign?

On its face, no; Trump clearly has serious differences with Ryan on his spending priorities, particularly on entitlements.  That said, a President Trump would be under enormous pressure from the leaders in his own party to ignore his campaign commitments and cut entitlements, and these are people with whom he would otherwise be making his amazing deals.  Would we then see Don the Dealmaker, or Don the Demagogue?

The honest answer to that question is that I don’t know, and neither does anyone else, probably including Trump himself.  One thing is for certain:  any voter who blindly relies on his promises not to cut entitlements is making a mistake, given Trump’s willingness to change course on virtually every issue under the sun, and his need to get along with the leaders of his party to get anything done.

The Democrat maverick named Bern.

For a far left wing party he yearns.

He’s going to Philly.

His platform’s a dilly.

They’ll let him talk when it’s his turn.

Brooks wrote a column in Saturday’s NYT in which he attributed a substantial part of our ongoing inequality and wage stagnation problem to the increasing lack of mobility of American workers in areas with few or low-paying jobs.  He then suggested some remedies for this problem that, for me, were pretty thin gruel.

From 20,000 feet, Brooks is largely right; I have little doubt that it would be more cost-effective to find ways to pay people to leave depressed areas than to make huge public investments in these areas with a very uncertain return.  That said, his column ignored some serious issues:

1.  It is perfectly natural for mobility to decrease as both the population and the country age.  It wasn’t terribly hard to people to leave places that their families had only inhabited for a generation or two.  It is much harder when your family has been there for five or six generations.  As time goes by, the US becomes more like the Old World countries that our forefathers decided to leave than the more dynamic country they arrived in a century or so ago.

2.  Housing is a big problem.  It is difficult to leave a place where housing is cheap to go to a new area where it is much more expensive.  A large part of the “Texas Miracle” is based on the fact that housing is inexpensive due to minimal land use regulation.

3.  The GOP makes the problem worse with its politically expedient nostalgia.  Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump don’t exactly encourage people to up sticks when they tell us that we can bring the good old jobs back just by getting rid of the Democrats.  I’m sure Brooks is aware of that, but he is a loyal GOP member, so don’t expect him to comment on it anytime soon.

This blog had its origins in a Lyle Lovett song.

I was watching an episode of Elvis Costello’s “Spectacle” on DVD one day, when Lovett sang a song about a guy who is watching TV and sees either a news story or a commercial (I don’t remember that detail) showing our armed forces in combat.  The guy’s reaction is to hope he was worth fighting for today.

I was taken aback by that; it was a way of thinking that had never occurred to me before, and I decided to apply it to my own life.  I fairly quickly concluded that I didn’t have the background, ability, or personality to do social work in any form, but that I could make a somewhat equivalent contribution to the world by coming up with at least one valuable original thought each day.  This blog is my primary vehicle for that purpose; as a result, all of the material that has been posted to date has been original, and I post every day, except when I’m on vacation or have computer problems.

With that in mind:

1.  I don’t have a lot of money invested in this endeavor (it is never intended to be a business), and my technical expertise with computers and software is minimal.  If there are issues loading or reading the blog at times, that is the reason.
2.  I’m perfectly willing to provide space on the blog for opinions from others in the interests of creating a useful dialogue so long as it meets my standards for quality.  I don’t have to agree with the opinion to make it valuable.
3.  I’m also willing to write for other blogs, or to write on particular topics, on  request.
4.  Anyone wishing to reach me directly can do so at Mattuhle@aol.com.
5.  I’m not on social media.
6.  Thanks to everyone who has written a supportive comment since I began in July.

1.  Fundraising:  The Clintons and the DNC operate a well-oiled machine.  Trump doesn’t, and his efforts to collaborate with big donors and the RNC will cut the legs out of his argument regarding his independence from the donor class.  In any event, many of the most important GOP donors won’t have anything to do with him.  Advantage:  Clinton.
2. Conventions:  Trump’s experience with reality TV will help him here. Expectations for his speech will be so low in the MSM that it is virtually guaranteed that he will get a favorable review.  The Democratic Convention will probably be a fairly traditional, staid event.  Advantage:  Trump.  Expect him to get a large bounce.
3. Attack Ads:  Beating the drum with worn-out material about Monica and Benghazi isn’t likely to move the needle very far.  Most Americans have not been exposed to Trump’s past beyond “The Apprentice,” and it is unlikely they will appreciate what they see.  Advantage:  Clinton.
4. The Debates:  Clinton is an experienced debater with a firm grasp of the facts.  Trump is good at making outrageous comments and insulting his opponents.  That may work in the primaries, but probably not here.  Advantage:  Clinton.
5.  World Events:  This is the big wild card.  Suppose we have a big terrorist attack between now and November.  Will the public respond to Trump’s belligerence, or prefer to rely on Clinton’s experience?  It’s hard to tell.  Advantage:  ????

Let’s just hope he doesn’t win in November.

At one point during my vacation last week, we heard Peter Gabriel’s “Big Time” on the car radio.  My immediate reaction was that it was a great subject for a song parody, but when I thought about it a little more, I concluded that the song was an almost perfect description of Trump just as it was.  There was very little I could do to make it more relevant.  If you listen to it sometime, you’ll see what I mean.

The Stones have apparently told Trump to stop using “Start Me Up” at his rallies.  If I were Gabriel, I would offer up “Big Time” as a replacement.

There was been much discussion recently about how the Democrats should view what Ross Douthat cleverly referred to as the “Trumpenproletariat.”  From a practical perspective, any attempt to reach out to Reactionary working class white men results in a much larger loss of minority voters during the primaries. In the final analysis, that is the reason the Sanders Revolution had no chance.

Will it ever be possible for the Democrats to win the allegiance of these Reactionaries without losing their core supporters–in other words, to make the Democratic Party a class-based party, rather than a coalition of victims?  Maybe, but not for the foreseeable future.

There once was a woman named Hill.

The Bern keeps on fighting her still.

She’s already won

But he claims he’s not done.

It just means we’ve more time to kill.

 

The GOP nominee Don.

The prize is now his, fairly won.

He’ll go to the ‘land.

We won’t give a hand

To foes of whom we’re none too fond.

The new President of the Philippines, by all accounts, is a tough-talking nationalist with a dubious record on human rights, an attitude about Americans, and a plan to make amazing deals with the Chinese.  The analogy to Trump is obvious.  How do we deal with this situation?

Roll with it.  Our interests in the Philippines and the South China Sea are in peace, stability, and the freedom of navigation, not in containing Chinese expansion for its own sake.  If Duterte can lower the temperature in the area by accommodating the Chinese in a way that his countrymen can tolerate, so much the better for us; we have no good reason to press an aggressively anti-Chinese agenda on anyone in this area.  If not, which seems more likely, he knows where to find us.

His reaction perfectly encapsulates the reasons why we can’t possibly elect him in November. It is inappropriate for the US, or any other government, to express opinions about the cause in public until the investigation is at least reasonably complete.  For all we know, it could be a pilot suicide situation.

Just because we won’t have the excitement of a contested convention doesn’t mean there won’t be any drama.  Here are some of the questions to be answered in Cleveland in July:

1.  Who will appear with Trump on the podium?  This decision is going to be excruciating for Trump’s opponents, and it will be based primarily on self-interest, although there will be a moral dimension for some of them, as well.  On the one hand, for, say, Cruz and Rubio to refuse to join in a gesture of party unity will offend millions of Trump supporters and the GOP brass, will cast them into the wilderness in the event he wins, and will expose them to future allegations that their failure to support the ticket cost Trump the election.  On the other hand, appearing with Trump after making pointed statements about his unfitness to be President will make them look weak and hypocritical, and will forever make them accomplices in Trump’s obnoxious nativist agenda.   My guess is that tribalism will ultimately prevail.

2.  Will we see major battles over the platform?  There will be some of that, but I don’t think Trump really cares about the platform:  after all, his personal awesomeness is his platform.   He will simply ignore anything the party says that is inconsistent with his message.

3.  Who will be his VP?  I have written about this on previous occasions.  He needs an establishment figure with executive experience who can run the country while he is off making his amazing deals.

4.  How will Trump’s reality TV experience impact the convention’s production values?  Trump thinks conventions are boring.  Count on him to do everything he can to turn the show into “Celebrity Presidential Apprentice.”

5.  Will there be violence in the streets in Cleveland?  Since the outcome of the convention is already known, the danger of this is limited to the usual class of Trump protesters.  I don’t think it will be a big story.

6.  Will we have a reprise of Clint Eastwood and his chair?  No.

 

 

Trump is the closest thing to a pure Reactionary candidate we have seen in my lifetime, although his position on tax cuts for the wealthy and deregulation is PBP-friendly, and his interest in social issues is glaringly muted.  How will the different factions respond to him as the nominee?

1.  The Conservative Libertarians are a relatively principled group who will have enormous problems with a number of Trump’s positions.  Many of them will vote for Gary Johnson.
2.  The Reactionaries are, of course, a solid block for Trump.  A few religious conservatives will be appalled by him and will stay home in November.
3.  Most PBPs will support him.  Some women who are turned off by his attitudes towards women will vote for Clinton, as will a handful of businessmen with strong vested interests in free trade.
4.  Most of the Christian Democrats will vote for Clinton.  Some of them will leave the party permanently.  The few that stay and support Trump will do so primarily based on his opposition to abortion.