Tuesday, February 2, 2016

Iowa 2016

Michael L.
The Donald 

Donald duckTrump blew it... primarily because he is something of a scowling asshole.

I enjoyed his campaign for the same reason that I occasionally watched The Apprentice. I read an article a few days ago - G-d only knows from where - which compared the Trump campaign with Sanders and Rubio that I thought was very interesting. The writer suggested that Trump and Sanders had more in common than might appear on the surface.

Both are backward-looking guys.

Trump wants to return to the American "greatness" of the 1950s. He wants international American dominance and prosperity without the Jim Crow laws. He wants the America of his childhood back, without the down side, as do many millions of others.

He is not out of the running, but I think he blew his golden opportunity. Trump shot from the hip and many people applauded him for it because, even though they may have disagreed with him, they appreciated his apparent honesty and courage to call things as he sees them. The problem is that he can also be remarkably obnoxious in ways that cross the sexism and racism lines.

I agree with him that the United States government should put a near halt to immigration from the Arab-Muslim world - given their general tendency toward anti-Semitism, misogyny, and authoritarian al-Sharia, not to mention the probable infiltration of Jihadis - but he really lost me when he disparaged Fiorina's looks.

It made me want to punch him in the nose.


Cruz

It is a little hard to imagine, but Dershowitz once claimed that Ted Cruz was the most intelligent student that he ever had. Really? Even more intelligent than Barack Obama? 

That is very impressive.

I barely even heard of the guy before this election cycle and just figured him for yet another Texas redneck, more or less in the mold of George W. The truth, obviously, is that Cruz is turning out to be far more formidable than many of us assumed at the start of the race. He has a sort-of hang-dog look to him that many people from my New York and New Englandy neck-of-the-woods will generally not find appealing. 

But I am willing to give the guy a chance. I am going to oppose whoever the Democrats put up this year, even Uncle Bernie, and may just sit this one out. But I am still enough of a political junkie to want to hear what candidates, including Cruz, have to say.

The real problem, from my point of view, is the Jewish / Evangelical divide. Cruz is a Tea Party kind of a guy and although the Tea Party folk are friendly with Israel - and thereby generally friendly with the Jewish people - they are not very friendly toward Gay people and often hold retrograde viewpoints on the roles of women in the world.

Whether this view of the Tea Party is accurate, or not, it is what puts a screeching halt to American Jewish support for that political movement and, thus, for Cruz.

Besides, most Jews would rather rip their left arm from its socket and beat themselves silly with it before they would pull the lever for a Republican.


Rubio

He is such a handsome and intelligent young guy. He could almost be a Latino JFK. 

Rubio is still in the race because he exceeded expectations with 23 percent of the Republican vote.

This makes it a three-way race on the Republican end and I suspect that Rubio may be the candidate best able to knock Hillary off of her high horse.

Of all the viable candidates in the field Rubio, along with Cruz, would probably be a good friend to Israel. Nonetheless, I see the guy as primarily Vice Presidential material. I wish him well, but we shall see. New Hampshire might shake things out a little.

If he gets the nomination, however, I suspect that he will get my support.


Uncle Bernie and Hillary

Yes, I think of him as "Uncle Bernie."

What can I tell you? My father is from Brooklyn and my mother is from the Bronx. This definitely makes him Uncle Bernie.

That accent is the accent of the adults of my youth. I can easily see him - or Larry David - sitting around our dining room table, eating my mother's ruggelach, and kvetching about whatever.

Nonetheless, if Trump wants to return to 1954, Uncle Bernie wants to go back to the fun-filled days of 1968.

I have to say, part of me is proud to see a Jewish American take a shot at the Presidency. G-d knows that if by some miracle Sanders were to actually get there the anti-Semites would go entirely out of control. I mainly concern myself with progressive-left racism but under the circumstances of a Sanders presidency the right-leaning variety would definitely stand up in the United States and make themselves heard.

Who knows? Maybe we'd even see the fourth incarnation of the Klan.

My assumption from the beginning - just like all of yours - was that Hillary would be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States in 2016. In the beginning almost no one saw Uncle Bernie ride his Jewish Socialist horse into the ring. 

As of the figuring at this moment, Hillary took 49.9 percent of the Democratic vote in Iowa and Sanders took 49.6 percent. Good for Sanders. I cannot imagine that he could win the general election, but it gives me deep joy to see him annoy Hillary Clinton.

Will he take New Hampshire?

I haven't even looked at those polls, but one need not be a magician to predict that he will.

26 comments:

  1. Via 538

    http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/its-rubio-or-bust-for-republicans-who-want-to-win/

    Interesting from Nate Silver's site.

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  2. Hillary won 6 districts by a coin toss (no, really, that happened). And now the Sanders clique is claiming that the Hillarians cheated on a few key district votes or procedures therein. Which sort of makes sense. The DNC has to stage this theatrical pageant to give the impression that a primary process exists or that the groundlings and peons even matter so they had to put up a sure fired loser who wasn't so awful that no one would take it seriously. But Sanders it turns out runs better against Lady MacBeth than they expected. Which really shows you how weak a candidate Queen Hillarius really is. While their spend rate is about equal, Hillary She Who Is Our First Ovarian-American President has been running for the job for more than a decade whereas 9 months ago the media wrote off Sanders as a fringe curmudgeon. And it's on to New Hampshire where Sanders has a homefield advantage, sort of. SE NH is far more liberal than it used to be with the sprawl north of Boston. So he has good odds at beating Hildebeest there. If I were Sanders I'd pay someone to start my car for a while.

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  3. Lots of difference between a caucus and primary. Yet the pundits, who are consistently proven wrong, treat it as more important than it probably is.

    Cruz may be smart, but seems underhanded. His zeal as an evangelical conservative raises an issue of authenticity. Would not want him, at this point, to have the power of the executive order.

    Sanders wants to return to way before 1968, more like 1917. He seeks a country and world that may seem laudable on paper, but not achievable.

    FWIW

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    1. Do you think that he would have been a Wobbly back in the good old days?

      Y'know, my family got off the boat from the Ukraine at Ellis Island right around that time. I like to kid friends that they arrived carrying a copy of Das Kapital in one hand and a little round bomb in the other.

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    2. It was not only Jews. It rarely is only Jews. Except it is often only Jews that are blamed, by one side or the other.

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    3. oldschool,
      Yes, 1917 was the first thing that came to my mind as well. ;0)

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    4. Actually, more like 1933. Berni's not a Bolshevik, he's an old New Dealer.

      And so am I. We need the Old Deal back.

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    5. Well, at least nobody can claim this joint is partisan.

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    6. Many of these folks took to Socialist moniker because to be a Communist was worse.

      Greenfield just posted this:

      http://www.frontpagemag.com/point/261724/bernie-sanders-spent-months-marxist-stalinist-daniel-greenfield

      Radosh labeled him a "fellow traveler."

      To say these ideas come from the New Deal is a misnomer.

      He may have evolved over the years to his present state, but Red Diaper Babies had more affinity to Marx than anything else.

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  4. The second place finishers in both parties aren't members of the parties they aspire to. Breathe that in.

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    1. That's what people seem to find refreshing.
      What's not refreshing is the banter of radio talk show pundits who believe a Republican cannot get elected unless he is a pure down the line conservative. This is how they explain loser candidates.

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  5. That may or may not be the case. In either case, his call to "normalize" with the Islamic theocrats of Iran is reason enough to oppose him.

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    1. He spent $88 per vote of his own money to be NY's mayor the first time. He's 10x richer than Trump and even more of a control freak who would imprison smokers and various other untermenschen.

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    2. if Bolshevik Bernie gets the Democratic nomination, I'm voting Bloomberg. He would make a great Prez.

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    3. I fundamentally have a problem with a guy who's something like 12th richest person on earth being President. Sorry but it's not a match. I would neither expect him to be connected in the least with the rest of America nor would I be shocked if he were even more imperial than the current office holder.

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    4. but at least Bloomberg is pro-Israel and pro-capitalism and surrounds himself with such people. Bernie surrounds himself with anti-Semite communists like Noam Chomsky and Cornel West. Trump would be a terrible prez too.

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    5. Why should wealth be disqualifying? As to connectedness, at least he understands the issues, as his Foreign Affairs article of Sep.-Oct. 2015 demonstrates.

      Bloomberg is also the only possibility who is reliably pro-Israel and doesn't combine that with a commitment to put Lochner revivalists on the Supreme Court. He may or may not provide an alternative to the Democrats' refusal to recognize the malevolence of the international malefactors and the Republicans' belief that all that's needed to defeat them is to take the gloves off, but we know what we would get from any of the others.

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  7. To clarify the first part of that, Bernie may or may not share the foreign policy views of some of his more vocal supporters. Whether or not he does can't disqualify him any more than his position on Iran does.

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  8. Sanders is quite determinedly not working with a single Jewish or pro Israeli group and his was the lone voice NOT to supply Israel with arms in Yom Kippur war.

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  9. I'm with Dershowitz for now; holding out hope that the Clintons can get the Democrats back to the center after Hussein Obama moved it far to the left. Obama has been the "transformative president" he set out to be; Bernie is Hussein's legacy because he empowered the far-left to make noise and never explicitly rebuked the COMMUNIST Occupy people. But I'm saddened; I feel I'm losing my party and country, if Hussein Obama's wish, that America replaces lost white voters for Dems with Islams, goes thru.

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  10. https://youtu.be/xBG580olaj4?t=38s this is why I can't hate Ted Cruz.

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  11. You seriously want Cruz? https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-nastiness-of-ted-cruz/2016/02/05/2cfbfde0-cc2c-11e5-a7b2-5a2f824b02c9_story.html

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    1. Actually, I am leaning toward Rubio.

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    2. i posted the above comment about Cruz, but I was using my wife's computer and I failed to properly identify myself. I wasn't trying to be deceptive. Anyway, Rubio would get destroyed in a general election. His background is beyond questionable. Furthermore, he doesn't seem to have any real core beliefs. He keeps changing positions as the political winds blow.

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    3. I don't want Cruz, but I want a candidate who will stand up for the Jews and Israel no matter what. Even for what Trump said at the RJC, he's still more pro-Israel than Bernie or Hussein Obama. And while I'm still tentatively for Hillary, I'm keeping my eye on her closely regarding Israel; I must see her Sister Souljah the anti-Semite/anti-Israel left before I vote for her, because after all, I'm still a Dem at heart.

      BTW, guys, help me out on this Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalDiscussion/comments/44lnx7/progressive_hypocrisy_on_israel/

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