Trump's willingness to denounce Bush's Iraq disaster combined with his moderate positions on Planned Parenthood and Medicaid/Medicare might actually work. He wisely staked out positions that will help in a general election, and I don't think his racism and lack of policy knowledge will hurt with rustbelt centrist voters, especially if he convinces them that he will reverse the giant sucking sound created by NAFTA.
Great industrial towns like Pittsburgh have been decimated by cheap Mexican and Chinese labor. Trump is promising to bring those jobs back, which means he either pays PA factory workers to live on dog food, or he takes a huge hit on the products he is currently outsourcing. In other words, Trump is full of shit ... But this has never been a liability when it comes to uninformed voters.
Besides... Hillary Clinton has caused a huge enthusiasm gap on the Left. A ham sandwich could beat her.
President Trump is a reality:
I agree with Londoner. The way that different GOP candidates COULD win are totally different than the way the others could win. Don't think for an instant in last nights debates he was blowing smoke about how many new people have come on board, along with Democrats switching sides; especially blue collar.
Trumps road to the White House comes by addition through subtraction. Many blue collar workers are going to cast their vote for him, if he is the nominee. The thing that many people are having a hard time figuring out or understanding is.......................how he has managed to create a coalition that doesn't fit into political demographic orthodoxy. While you may not agree with his positions on issues, he has shrewdly seemed to have split off many votes by standing for the American worker, unapologetically. He then spun that into illegal immigration being detrimental to blue collar workers, and made it terrible for African Americans.
If anybody here goes to union worker sites and look into the archives, at every place you will find them railing against these unfair trade deals and corporate elitists helping spirit their jobs away. Trump has stated he would stand against factories closing, (how is not important) and break the back of these terrible deals. (how is not important either) Nobody else but Sanders has stated such a thing, and Sanders has said he would use EOs to keep illegals here, so that kinda screwed him. The illegal problem is prong 2 of his attack, and using LEFTY tactics perfectly, he has made them persona non grata, meaning blue collar workers understand the logic.
I am currently in Florida so I have no information on the rust belt, but I am under the impression that Trump COULD have the key to unlock Penn and Michigan for the GOP, and make them more than competitive, especially against a Hillary Clinton. One of the old sayings inside some political circles is---------> If you have a job, you vote your politics. If you don't have a job, or are worried about losing the job you have, you vote FOR a job!
Like him or not, Trump has done this perfectly, and he has created "bogeymen" to point at and blame, further dividing the Democrat party, and the establishment Republicans too! I can't believe his "shtick" was all an accident, and yet, if it wasn't, this means the political scholars of our country, have been stuck in the past for so long, they still do not grasp what he has done, accidently, or on purpose, take your choice!