Is he really dangerous though?I think he isn’t. Scary, but more a wanna be than a real threat IMO. The unwholesome values that he inherited from his grandfather aren’t likely to work as well in a prosperous and diverse US as they did in an impoverished early 20th century Germany. Still, I think that we definitely do need to keep an eye on him, and we definitely need to make sure that he doesn’t get to the White House. .

How? Let’s count:

— harking back to a mythical past? Check. (“Make America Great Again”)

— Xenophobia? Check

— A lean to authoritarianism, a contempt for the legislative processes? Check

— Appealing to the fears of those who feel disenfranchised, with a power base among said populations? Check

— Cult of personality? Check

If it looks like a duck…

Trump is dangerous because every fascist aligns themselves with some segment of the elites of their country. That’s how fascism works.

Trump is really, really dangerous because he hasn’t got the slightest self restraint. I could see him ordering air strikes on some country to look “strong” — and damn the consequences. And can you imagine how he might legitimize some pretty awful stuff if you are say, Latino? Muslim? “Hey, we went out and beat up a few Latinos with our minutemen pals, might have killed a few!” — you think Trump would call for that person to go to jail, or do you think he’d say “welp, regrettable but they were just protecting what is theirs.”

He doesn’t have to convince people that he means what he says. Simply by confirming pre-existing beliefs, telling people what they want to hear, he’s perceived as someone who “tells it like it is.” He doesn’t need to argue or produce evidence. All he needs to do is produce the requisite stimulus. He doesn’t need to be sincere. Reading his audience and reacting to its whims are enough. Eventually he’ll probably have to explain how he intends to fulfill some of his promises, but remember: Richard Nixon claimed he had a plan to end the war in Vietnam. Nixon’s claim was shrewd and expedient, and not at all sincere.

My view, as stated above (#13), is that the candidates that are in line with the donor oligarchy are more dangerous than Trump. They would find it easier to get elected, and they would be in greater agreement with a Republican congress. In that case the danger would be real, not potential.

I would say it could be, if he could convince enough people that he means what he says to make to through the nomination process.

I don’t know if he will keep his momentum or not, but on the Republican side it hardly matters: Cruz et. al. are no less crazy and potentially dangerous to the economy and civil system in the U.S. than Trump – they are simply better at hiding it.

He defends social security. He attacks the pharmaceutical companies. In short, Trump’s message is in many ways inimical to the donor dependent Republican mainstream.

Trump does say a great deal of things, borrowing from both sides of the political spectrum. The primary question is whether he actually believes in any of the things he says he supports and wants to do, or whether he is simply shrewd.

There is also the question of whether, even if he does feel strongly about these issues, and really would want to implement them if elected, he would be able to do any of them.

In my opinion, he may feel strongly about the more bigoted/racist positions he’s spouted – but not the other social issues. I don’t think the folks on the far right believe he is serious about those issues either: I can’t see them supporting him if they thought he was serious about them.

Yes, the first Jewish President thing is not lost on me. I think it is being underplayed because you don’t have to say it out loud to count in favor, but if you say it out loud too much latent anti-Semitism may play a role.

So that would work well for Sanders from the get-go. New Hampshire is also about as white as it gets.

I also take Sanders’ victory (don’t get me wrong, I’d prefer him over Clinton) with a large grain of salt. i looked at how much money he’s raised in South Carolina and Nevada. It’s not much. Like ~$60,000 not much in SC. That’s so tiny it’s ridiculous; Clinton outspends him and crucially, out-raises there by a factor of 10. I predict a crushing defeat in that particular state, even if by some miracle half of the black Democrats there vote for Sanders.

It’s early in the race yet; Nevada is a caucus state which also has little that works in Sanders’ favor. (The CWA and NNU aren’t as big of a deal there).

The reason I am not thinking yet that this is a big win for Sanders is that Iowa and New Hampshire are about as UNrepresentative of the larger electorate as you can possibly be. Pick almost *any* demographic and both states are outliers. Especially compared to states that have a population that’s bigger than that of say, Boston’s Metro Area. Both Iowa and New Hampshire could fit comfortably in single districts of Chicago or New York.

So I am skeptical that this means as much as we might like. (Remember Paul Tsongas? Nobody else does, either).

What I am more confident about is that Sanders moves the party leftward a bit; at least when it comes to convention time.

On the GOP side it gets interesting because Trump clearly has solid support of the rank and file (I mentioned this a few threads ago here and can I crow a bit about being right?) but nothing from the elites of the party. The last guy who managed that was McGovern early in his campaign. (I can’t think of anyone else whose endorsements came to basically zero at this point in the process — only Sanders is paralleling that this time around).

And let’s remember: the party basically abandoned McGovern. Trump could have a similar fate from the GOP side. A bad presidency could hurt the GOP worse than losing — people still beat Dems over the head with Jimmy Carter (whose presidency, all things considered, wasn’t terrible — he just didn’t have any major policy victories and voters who think bombing people makes their penises bigger hate him).

Anyhow, Trump’s support cuts across many sectors of the party, and that’s a bad sign for those of us who care about being non-sociopaths.

If Sanders wants to win either the nomination or the general election he has to give all those voters of color a reason to actually get up and vote. We’ll see if he manages that.

One thing that struck me: Sanders would be the very first Jewish president. Who would have thought we’d elect a black guy before a Jewish guy? (Maybe that makes an odd kind of sense, since so many people assume Jews are loyal to Israel automatically — leaving NYC is always weird to me that way, because I find myself doing a double take and asking myself “what year is this again?”).

So with either Sanders or Clinton we get a first. Not bad, IMO.

“In the brief period that the national political media has not been fixated on him, Donald Trump has undergone an important metastasis. His populist rhetoric has firmed up and identified a different and somewhat more specific band of enemies, including (but not limited to) oil companies, insurance companies, defense contractors, and wealthy “bloodsuckers” in general…

…The underserved political market is voters who want less libertarianism. They oppose free trade, want to keep every penny of promised Social Security and Medicare, distrust big business, think immigrants hurt the country, and generally distrust the rest of the world.
Trump’s campaign initially emphasized his nativist position on immigration, which caused him to be identified with the Republican right. But Trump has repositioned himself increasingly as the candidate of the populist, disaffected center. Even though Trump has proposed a huge tax cut for the rich, he draws support from Republican voters who are most heavily in favor of raising taxes on the rich. (They have no other candidates to choose from within their party.)

Trump’s populism has slowly intensified. “I don’t get along that well with the rich. I don’t even like the rich people very much,” he recently said. “It’s like a weird deal.” He has proposed to let the federal government negotiate lower prices for Medicare prescription drugs, a plan horrifying to conservatives (and drug companies). Like other Republicans, he proposes to eliminate Obamacare and replace it with something undefined but wonderful. The reason Trump’s vague repeal-and-replace stance makes them so nervous is that he once advocated single-payer insurance, and he has emphasized, in a way other Republicans have not, the horrors of leaving people who are too poor or sick to afford insurance on their own. Trump’s shorthand description of the travails of the uninsured before Obamacare — people “dying on the street” — alarms conventional conservatives precisely because it captures the broad reality of the suffering that justified Obamacare in the first place, and which would intensify if the law is repealed. The Republican fear is that Trump’s vague promise to replace Obamacare with something terrific is not just a hand-waving tactic to justify repealing Obamacare. Their fear is that he actually means it. Trump’s populist positions may place him farther away from the Republican Party’s intellectual and financial vanguard, but they draw him closer to its voters.

The clearest sign of Trump’s intentions is the conscious fashion in which he has tried to co-opt the appeal of Bernie Sanders (who, like Trump, has opened up a populist attack on his party’s consensus). Trump’s argument is that he agrees with Sanders on trade, but only Trump can put his critique into practice.”
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/02/donald-trump-is-getting-serious-about-populism.html

“In New Hampshire, an angry populist who calls for a revolution and assails the Washington establishment, special-interest lobbyists, big-money politics, and rapacious corporations won an election in a historic move that could shake up and remake American politics.

And Bernie Sanders did, too.”

“Most intriguing was his [Trump’s] attack on the corrupt power elite. He started off this portion of his speech by bashing the Republican National Committee for handing out tickets to Saturday’s debate to donors and special-interest lobbyists. (By the way, do you know that he “won” the debate?) And then Trump offered this assault on a “they” he didn’t bother to identify:
They want to chop away at Social Security like they want to chop away at the Second Amendment [on guns]…like they’re chopping away at Christianity. Very soon, we’re going to start saying Merry Christmas.”
That line about holiday greetings drew one of the loudest cheers of the night from the Trumpites. But here was Trump melding a Sanders-like populist proclamation (I won’t let them weaken Social Security)…

…He next blasted big drug companies for hiring lobbyists and donating to politicians in order to prevent the government from negotiating lower drug prices. He pledged, “We want to take care of people without health care…the Republican way—if people can’t help themselves, we have to help them. Those drug companies are going to hate me so much.”
It’s always unclear how much of what Trump does as a politician is planned. Is he driven by instinct? Does he cunningly calculate his moves? But by the end of the New Hampshire campaign, he had crafted an ideologically muddled populism with appeal mostly to conservatives but also to economically insecure independents who are pissed off at the powers that be, whoever the hell they are.”
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/02/new-hampshire-primary-trump-sanders-kasich

“Like other members of the Republican elite, the Koch brothers misjudged Donald Trump. They never considered the real estate scion a serious contender, and his politics on taxes, trade, and foreign policy clashed thoroughly with theirs. (Charles Koch noted that Trump’s Muslim registry, for instance, would “destroy our free society.”)
…the Kochs, after building a shadow party on the right, are now struggling to gain traction in a political landscape they have helped to bring into existence.

This election cycle was supposed to be the one in which the Koch network­ fulfilled its mission of installing a Republican in the White House. But that goal, and the millions behind it, are at risk. And before the Kochs begin to take on Hillary or Bernie, they are carefully considering whether to wage a war against Trump.”
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/02/koch-brothers-take-on-trump

It’s far too early to say how the Republican race will pan out, and we don’t know whether the great deal maker will end up making deals that accommodate the interests of the big-monied donors. But by the time it ends Trump will have inflicted considerable damage on the party’s message and image.