Nope, obviously this isn’t “the same crisis” as faced by the Weimar Republic, which had already lost its empire and gotten its butt kicked by the last batch of foreigners it tried to oppress. Those things are still in our future. However, our working class no longer benefits from empire. When Hitler took power, there had been over a decade of high unemployment and low wages. That’s the case for much of the U.S. today, in regions that increasingly look like “less developed nations.” Just because you and I are doing okay doesn’t mean that the country is.

Dean – Those who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat it. One can be “not a Nazi” and yet be Nazi-like in one’s desire to bring the government’s jackboot down on some scapegoat group. The purpose of remembering the Holocaust should be to enable future generations to recognize such poisonous ideologies at an early stage, so we can fight or undermine them before people are being hauled away in boxcars to slave labor camps. Yes, sometimes people will claim parallels to early Nazism that don’t exist, or are exaggerated through bias; but if nobody is allowed to comment on such parallels until the trains are actually rolling, it’s too late.

In the UK in 2005, the Labour party won the general election with an apparently comfortable majority. However, some pointed out that winning 35% of the vote on a of a 65% turnout hardly constituted a popular mandate. They were roundly ignored with all sorts of justifications, including from those who should have known better.

Now, of course, since 2015 we’ve had a highly reactionary government installed in very similar circumstances. Perhaps 23% of the total voter population actually voted for them.

The message being that if a set of rules happens to give the result that you want this time, this does not make them good rules. Deposing a candidate who was democratically elected on the grounds of his being a fruitcake sets a terrible, terrible precedent.

As reprehensible as Trump is, suggesting that he’s an American Hitler is absolutely absurd.

Agree. The only people we should identify with Nazis are other Nazis.

With as many wild statements as he has made this campaign, and as different as many of them are from things he’s said in years past, you have to wonder what, if anything, he really believes and what he knows he would try if elected? (I have no desire to find out the answer to the second part.)

This is one of the reasons why the establishment doesn’t like him, why they are afraid of him. Not because he embraces a neo-Nazi ideology, but because he has no ideology.

Without an ideology, he has what to their minds are two fantastic and scary flaws: They can’t predict him, and they can’t control him.

To the oligarchs, that’s probably worse than his being another modern-day Hitler.

“Firstly, he tells his disaffected audiences, which include an unusual number of white supremacists, that he can make them better off by making those menacing or conniving nonwhites worse off.”
Please provide proof. I believe that Trump has argued that illegal immigration is also harmful to legal immigrants.

“There are some war crimes our military would not commit? That will change when The Donald gives the order!”
You’re misinformed. Trump has already backed down on this. There are limits to a president’s power, so a President Trump would not be able to do whatever he wanted.

“ ‘Strong’ leadership is not the means to achieving policy ends; leadership is the plan in itself.”
Leadership without policy is meaningless. He has some unachievable policy aims, like building a wall that Mexico will pay for. His “leadership” is based on Trump as dealmaker, and on the willingness of others to accept the deals Trump is proposing.

“As for the situation of the U.S. now, we as a nation aren’t laboring under a Treaty of Versailles, but a large fraction of our working class might as well be.”
If this is meant to show that the U.S. today is undergoing the same crisis as the Weimar Republic and is subject to comparable strains, you haven’t succeeded.

Second, he does not explain how that will work, except through the fact that he will be in charge, and he is more capable than any other man of making Good Deals happen. When it is pointed out that things he proposes are illegal, he is dismissive: he will just change that law. Perhaps unilaterally, one gets the hint. There are some war crimes our military would not commit? That will change when The Donald gives the order! “Strong” leadership is not the means to achieving policy ends; leadership is the plan in itself. That is a component of fascism.

As for the situation of the U.S. now, we as a nation aren’t laboring under a Treaty of Versailles, but a large fraction of our working class might as well be.

Despite its problems, the U.S. of 2016 is not similar to the 1933 Weimar Republic.

Kasich. There is no downside for the establishment Republicans.

If the Dem nominee is Sanders, Kasich wins.
If it is Clinton, Kasich has a shot. Even if he loses, the down-ticket negative effects are minimized: “See, we’re the party of compassionate conservatism, not extremes.”

Where exactly will the Trump supporters go? Most of them will probably find the prospect of having a woman president so disconcerting that they will forget all about the “betrayal” and vote anyway.

What matters to the Republicans is SCOTUS. This is their best shot to make it even more conservative or at least keep control of the Senate to continue obstruction.