Seth Meyers looks at the claim that Donald Trump is going to reinvent himself now that the nomination seems within his grasp and that the things that he has said so far that have alienated so many people were just an act to win the nomination.
The Republican party establishment that had despaired that Trump’s wild rhetoric would ‘break the party’ and lead to a catastrophic defeat not only at the presidential level but also in other races are grasping at this straw and hoping that his being more ‘presidential’ will restore the party’s chances.
On the other side, those who are hoping that Trump supporters will feel betrayed by this change and abandon him are likely to be disappointed. Once people have committed to a candidate, they tend to rationalize away almost any evidence that their hero has feet of clay. Trump has achieved the enviable political goal of enabling his supporters to project their views on him. I fully expect the very same Trump supporters who say they like him because he is a ‘straight shooter’ who ‘tells it like it is’ to see any change in his rhetoric as merely a clever strategy designed to win more voters over so that he can implement what he ‘really’ believes, which also happens to be what they believe.
You have to hand it to Trump. He may be all over the place when it comes to policies but he has the canniest political instincts and an incredible ability to manipulate the media.
My guess is that he’s going to shoot as far left as possible come the general election. If he’s the Republican primary candidate, as long as he stays a *little* bit to the right of Hillary, he wins the Republican vote. And he grabs all of those Dems who hate Hillary.
I agree, Marshall. In fact, he’s already started with his transgender bathroom comments.
Hopefully, people will look beyond whatever he claims his policies of the day are, and just focus on the fact that he’s a bullying, dishonest, mean-spirited ignoramus. Clinton may be a bit too cozy with the plutocrats, but she’s not the epitome of a puppy-strangling Henry F. Potter from It’s a Wonderful Life the way Trump is.
And that’s his good side!
Well gosh this was predictable.
Republicans like to whine about how young people are always caught up with cults of personality like Obama and Sanders. This is blatant projection, of course. It’s liberals who aren’t afraid of attacking their own heroes, and conservatives who defend their heroes regardless of the facts. That’s a cult of personality.
The reality is that many democrats became disillusioned with Obama relatively quickly once he was in office. He wasn’t the Change that they wanted. Those people didn’t go away. They went to other people like Elizabeth Warren or Patrick Leahy. If Leahy or Warren become corporate tools a la Howard Dean, that won’t destroy the movement, because the movement is about ideas, not cults of personality.
Trump is nothing more than a cult of personality. People don’t particularly care about his ideas.