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Passing Peak Trump?

hgc

Penultimate Amazing
hgc
Joined
Jun 14, 2002
Messages
15,892
First of all, yes this topic needs its own thread. This is about the long-term trend in Donald Trump's position in this race relative to the competition for the GOP nomination.

The thread title is inspired by an event that Trump did yesterday in South Carolina where the room was not even half filled and the cable news networks gave scant live coverage. The purpose of this thread is to track Trump's progress in poll standings and speculate on his evolving chances of being the nominee.

I'm not saying that Trump is definitely not going to win this nomination. But if he's not going to win it, then we will see a slide somewhere, sometime. Has that slide started now? Trump is a creature of the obsessive coverage by the political and entertainment media, which is a milieu where he generally is the most capable exploiter of the features of the landscape. But when the media coverage starts to slacken, if for no other reason than that the entertainment gets stale, he's probably going to suffer in his popularity.

Thoughts?
 
Thoughts?

Yes. Given that the general Trump thread already has several posts asserting "Now, it's over. This is the beginning of the end," I really don't see the need for a separate thread for more of those posts.
 
His only competition is Donald Trump - whether today's Donald can be more outrageous than yesterday's.
 
marplots said:
His only competition is Donald Trump - whether today's Donald can be more outrageous than yesterday's.
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I don't know if he has to be more outrageous. But it seems to me he has to provide a lot of variety in his shtick if he's going to go the distance. The repetitive nature of his self-aggrandizement and insult comic routine is going to drive the entertainment consumers to greener pastures.

Today I'm hearing that Hillary Clinton is shrill and that Marco Rubio sweats a lot for a young guy. That's interspersed with his refusal to discuss Obama's nationality because he's going to focus on jobs, blah blah blah.
 
His not being able to turn the second GOP debate into the Donald Trump show seems to have rattled him badly.
And he seems to be doubling down on his most outrageous statements...the sure sign of a Comedian whose shtick has gotten old and cannot come up with anything new.
 
Quote from the Politico article above:
On Wednesday, he said he would no longer appear on Fox News, which responded that Trump "doesn’t seem to grasp that candidates telling journalists what to ask is not how the media works in this country.”
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Another spat with Fox News. :popcorn1


More from the Washington post here:

Donald Trump apparently wants to sue and complain his way to the presidency
The latest: Trump wants the Federal Communications Commission to fine Fox News pundit Rich Lowry, the editor of the conservative magazine National Review, for using a colorful locker room metaphor Wednesday night to describe how former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina handled Trump in the second GOP presidential debate. Fiorina, Lowry said, basically cut off a piece (or two) of Trump's anatomy — rhetorically speaking.

Trump didn't take too kindly to the metaphorical discussion of his private parts.
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When conservative outside group Club for Growth started to run ads attacking your decidedly populist economic stance (you've said you want to raise taxes on the wealthy), your campaign issued a cease-and-desist letter threatening a multimillion-dollar defamation lawsuit if the group doesn't abide.
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He threatened a defamation lawsuit for essentially an attack ad. One which, I think, Citizens United makes perfectly within the rules. :popcorn1
Yep, sounds like his MO. :popcorn1

Donald Trump’s slide in the polls is beginning to look real

This one may be premature. It's based on 4 recent polls from different polling companies. I'll wait to see a few more polls, but it does already appear that "Peak Trump" may be over. But his RCP polling average is down 6.5 points since the middle of September. It also seems to indicate that we may have passed Peak Carson too. His average is down about 4 points since the middle of the month.

:popcorn1 :popcorn1 :popcorn1
 
This is part and parcel of the sine wave coverage of politics; I am anticipating the inevitable "Comeback Clinton" stories when (or if) Hillary has a couple good days.

Trump is a classic "never going to happen" candidate, albeit with a little more name recognition than Herman Cain, who was leading in the polls at a similar point in 2011. Fiorina is another.
 
Brainster said:
Trump is a classic "never going to happen" candidate, albeit with a little more name recognition than Herman Cain, who was leading in the polls at a similar point in 2011. Fiorina is another.
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Well they've all outlasted Scott Walker who was supposed to be a serious contender.
 
varwoche said:
As some will say, including members of this forum, when Trump says these fantastically false things, he's not lying; he believes what he's saying. As if being delusional is better than being a liar.
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I don't think he's exactly delusional. I think it's more of a case that the truth value of his utterances is not a thing he recognizes as relevant. His motivation is always self-interest. Yes, he may understand on some level the concepts of truth and lying, but he doesn't really get why they matter in human communication.
 
hgc said:
I don't think he's exactly delusional. I think it's more of a case that the truth value of his utterances is not a thing he recognizes as relevant. His motivation is always self-interest. Yes, he may understand on some level the concepts of truth and lying, but he doesn't really get why they matter in human communication.
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:D
An intriguing take on the matter.
 
Brainster said:
This is part and parcel of the sine wave coverage of politics; I am anticipating the inevitable "Comeback Clinton" stories when (or if) Hillary has a couple good days.

Trump is a classic "never going to happen" candidate, albeit with a little more name recognition than Herman Cain, who was leading in the polls at a similar point in 2011. Fiorina is another.
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Add Ben Carson to that list.
Fiorina will not get the nomination,but she is on Veep radar big time.
My own suspiscion is when althougg the GOP voters will waltz with every candidate in the room, in the end they will go home with Jeb or maybe Mario.
 
Trump is a equal opportunith insulter:He is now attacking CNN for unfair coverage by showing the many empty seats at one of his rallies in S.C.
 
dudalb said:
Trump is a equal opportunith insulter:He is now attacking CNN for unfair coverage by showing the many empty seats at one of his rallies in S.C.
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He feels compelled to fight back against all insults. But he may be punching himself out in terms of his manly persona, if his admirers begin to perceive the insecurity beneath the bravado.
 
"Trump...has had a great first act. But [the second] debate suggested that he has no plan for a second act. First acts are famously easy to pull off. 'It has often been remarked that anyone can write a good first act,' [playwright David] Mamet notes. 'When the curtain goes up, we’ve got your attention. So we dramatists don’t have to do anything for a while. Later, either the plot will kick in or the audience will start yawning and eating popcorn.'

The struggle of the second act in a political campaign, as in any drama, is that the problem identified at the beginning—the one that seized our attention—must be translated into the more mundane tasks that propel the protagonist toward his or her goal. Won’t even the most committed Trump supporter start to wonder why this self-proclaimed savior hasn’t prepared himself to answer standard policy questions?

<snip>

Mamet illustrates second-act problems—and their solutions—by pointing to the real-life examples of political actors who actually changed history. The most ambitious and inspirational leaders are also the ones who, after articulating what seemed to be an impossibly lofty goal, soon found themselves mired in the tedious work required to realize it. 'In the middle term the high-minded goal has devolved into what seem to be quotidian, mechanical, and ordinary drudgery,' Mamet writes. Trump seems more ill-prepared to bother with the ordinary drudgery of politics than anyone in the race."

Donald Trump May Not Have a Second Act
 
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The only thing in this election cycle that will get even more over-the-top media coverage than the rise of Donald Trump will be the decline and exit of Donald Trump. But that at least will be a more tasty meal to slop up.
 
His Elmer Gantry style Bible Waving routine in Carolina was prime..including the whole "War on Christmas" B.S.
 
Conservative crowd boos Trump for calling Rubio a 'clown'

At the "Value Voters" Summit, Trump steps on his own dick when he tries out his insult shtick, targeting Marco Rubio.

"You have this clown, Marco Rubio," Trump said, as the crowd erupted in boos. "I’ve been so nice to him."
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http://www.politico.com/story/2015/09/donald-trump-booed-calls-marco-rubio-clown-214069

Nice that it's accompanied with his usual aside about his own relationship to the target, which is starting to look like a verbal tic.

This is what I'm talking about ... His act is fraying at the edges. Pretty soon they'll be throwing rotten fruit at him.
 
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