House of Eratosthenes

Chris Cillizza writes in the WaPo about the unprecedented shift in Donald Trump’s favorable/unfavorable polling in Iowa, from 27/63 back in May to 61/35 now. Did I say “shift”? More like “reversal”:

Numbers just don’t reverse themselves like that in the space of a few months (or ever). Especially when the politician in question is totally known by the electorate. Once you are both totally known and broadly disliked — as Trump was in May both in Iowa and everywhere else — you are doomed. One hundred times out of one hundred.

That’s why I was SO certain of Trump’s inability to matter at all in the 2016 race when he, somewhat stunningly, decided to enter it 70-odd days ago. In the almost 20 years — gulp — I have spent following politics closer than close, I’ve never seen anything like the total reversal in how Trump is perceived by Republican voters. It is, quite literally, unprecedented.

After toying around with a few other theories that might explain, by themselves or cumulatively, she offers up this one:

The public has not only gotten used to Trump as candidate, and gotten used to seeing that he can stand his ground, but people have also become accustomed to the ideas he expresses, thoughts that initially may have seemed far out of the mainstream because they hadn’t been commonly voiced by politicians. An end to birthright citizenship for the children of illegals is the sort of issue only talked about previously by Senator Vitter (and relatively obscure bloggers like me), and how many people had ever heard of it before Trump, or knew the arguments pro or con? Trump dragged the idea out into the sunlight to be discussed and dissected, and many people who heard him decided, once they became familiar with the discussion, that the idea had some merit. Over time, the shock value of Trump’s positions generally has been diluted.

From the comments:

Those in the media who tell Trump supporters they’re stupid don’t seems to take into consideration that a lot of these same people have been treated like rubes by the GOP for years. The GOP claims to be the “big tent” party but then distance themselves from anything too conservative, especially social issues, where they lecture their base that they must “evolve.” This despite watching Obama break laws to encourage mass illegal immigration, and the Left using social issues such as same-sex marriage and HHS’s birth control mandate to needlessly harass religious institutions and private citizens of faith.

So who is stupid, the guy who keeps getting suckered into voting for GOP candidates with conservative stances that only surface in an election year, or the guy who has not always been conservative but is passionate enough about current issues to boldly voice his opinion and not back down now? It’s a gamble, but is it any more of a gamble than voting for the anointed candidate Jeb, who is fairly in line with the Left on key issues like immigration, and who can’t seem to display that he has any fight in him?

Most comments I’ve seen about Trump support what he’s dong as a candidate more than the idea of him actually winning. Apparently our pundits can’t differentiate between the two. But we’re the stupid ones, huh?

I’ve been pounding on this for months. People HATE the Establishment, and there isn’t a font big enough to express the hate they feel for the Media wing of The Establishment. That’s the lone source of Trump’s appeal — he takes the Establishment’s obvious lies and flings them back in their faces.

Eight years of Obama have taught us — if nothing else — that the President is the nation’s Dr. Feelgood. If what he says gives us self-righteous tingles, then he’s a good president and we love him. What does he actually do in office? Who cares?! He sticks it to the people we want it stuck to — rhetorically, at least — and that’s enough.

We are so, so screwed.
- Severian | 09/04/2015 @ 08:25
“…but people have also become accustomed to the ideas he expresses,,,,”
Accustomed to…?
How about “been harboring….with no apparent previous recourse”
Is THAT simply out of the question?
- CaptDMO | 09/07/2015 @ 03:31

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The Reversal of TrumpFriday, September 4th, 2015

The Reversal of Trump
Friday, September 4th, 2015