Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse October 8, 2016  

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) October 8th, 2016

AMMAN – To say that the recording in question is not good for Donald is quite the understatement. I’m not here to go over the contents in detail; plenty of other people will do that. I’m here to provide a dispassionate analysis as to why this is not going to have the effect that many hope (and that it should) have. 

At this point, it’s lost on me that people think that Americans collectively possess the capacity to react in a rational way and to punish candidates for wrongdoing and reward them for doing the right thing; this is the year where any such claim has been proved to be inane beyond a reasonable doubt, and let us count the ways… The Republican primary field of 17 candidates had at least a dozen candidates far more qualified and that were far better human beings than Trump that committed nothing like the offenses that Trump routinely committed throughout the entire primary season, beginning with the day he announced his presidential run when he implied large portions of Mexican immigrants were rapists, drug traffickers, and murderers. Trump has ridiculed prisoners-of-war and the disabled; he attacked the appearance of the wife of one of his opponents and attacked the same opponent’s father as being linked to the assassination of JFK based on a tabloid report. He talked about his penis size on stage during a nationally-televised debate. He repeatedly made misogynistic comments about female members of the media who criticized him and about Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina. He cursed and used vulgar language repeatedly on the campaign trail and casually played around with stoking or excusing violence at his rallies. He changed his positions on many major issues casually and sometimes repeatedly unlike any candidate before him. He called for banning all immigrants of a certain religion and for giving a religious test to immigrants. He questioned a federal judge’s objectivity based solely on that judge’s Mexican ancestry. And he lied many times. Pretty much every day (and every 5 minutes when talking). Far more than any other candidate. 

And all that was during the primary. 

Additionally, ample evidence exists that Trump’s businesses frauded customers, misled investors and clients, and failed to pay contractors for their work. Trump attacked parents whose son died fighting in an American uniform in Iraq. Trump’s campaign team has ties to Putin—America’s enemy—that even in the most generous terms would have to be described as shady. Trump has repeatedly made comments about Hillary Clinton that the Secret Service and many other have deemed as threatening, and he also encouraged the Russian government to hack Clinton’s personal information. He lied about his role in and about who started the racist birther controversy about Obama’s birth certificate.

The list can go on and on but I’ll stop there. The point is, though, if none of these caused Trump to lose a significant amount of support before because he rose, and rose, and rose in the polls despite and sometimes seemingly because of these things, is this latest Trump pile of awful really that dramatically different from his others to the degree that it will cause him to lose a lot of support? I would venture a big fat no, despite my strong wish that this not be the case.

Yes, Trump’s numbers seem to be dipping a bit since his abysmal debate performance against Clinton, but he’s only about 3% behind Clinton (about 44% Clinton to about 41% Trump in four-way races with Johnson and Stein) even factoring in her recent upswing, according to the Real Clear Politics polling average. Of course, this was before this weekend’s revelations; you’d think that this would mean certain doom for a normal candidate in a normal election year, but Trump is not a normal candidate and this not a normal election year. In my last article, I discussed how few voters were truly open to switching votes: basically, Trump’s deplorables aren’t going anywhere. That still leaves undecideds, again, people that I find so strange and incomprehensible that I am not willing to make any strong projections for how they will break one way or another, even in light of this latest Trump foot-in-mouth demonstration. Maybe this might galvanize some third-party supporters who are so disgusted by Trump and are hit viscerally by this scandal in a way that helps them wake up and move to Clinton in larger numbers than they would have otherwise, but, again, he has such a long list of awfulness that I still find it hard to envision this as a tipping point when no other items on the list proved to be.

Other points to consider: while I personally find the remarks by Trump awful and reprehensible and incredibly objectionable, the sad reality is that Mad Men was one of the most popular shows in America and many Americans talk like this (as a former student-athlete, I heard this stuff in many a locker room, and let’s not forget misogyny is a very popular part of popular culture in terms of movies, TV, music, and video games) and are not bothered that deeply by this and will certainly not place the greatest weight on this scandal over the issues that drive them the most, e.g., if you were going to vote Trump because you are most concerned with getting conservative Supreme Court justices appointed, this won’t make you vote differently or stay at home. No matter how much public outrage, then, we must admit that far too many of us, pathetically, don’t care about this stuff in the way we should. And think about the people that are likely to me be particularly animated by this: they weren’t going to vote for Trump anyway. In fact, I have a hard time envisioning the Trump voter who switches to Clinton because of this, and I question how many people who are undecided will now choose to move to Clinton because of this latest Trump outrage when all the previous outrages failed to do the trick. Among other things, this depressing election cycle is reminding us how bad sexism still is in this country.

Today, we are seeing some Republican elites—former and current officials, particularly those in competitive races—running away from Trump (many are doing this now, at this moment, because they feel vulnerable in their reelection bids out of political convenience and that doing so will help them win, not because of any great moral moment of truth; note how proportionately many more senators are fleeing Trump than congressman, and that senators are elected statewide by a much wider group of voters; representatives are voted into office by more narrow-minded partisans in much less diverse, smaller districts, and they are by far mostly sticking with Trump). Liberals are gleefully pointing this out, and as a card-carrying liberal, I surely won’t deny that this has been entertaining schadenfreude, but if there’s one thing the 2016 GOP primaries taught us, it’s that the gap between elites and elected officials in the Republican Party on one hand and the mass of GOP voters on the other is YUUUUUGE. Basically, Trump voters don’t care about this Senator or that Congressmen of this intellectual or George H. W. Bush and Mitt Romney not supporting Trump; in part, these people are voting Trump to say a big “FU!” to these people and to Washington. So all the media coverage of the Republican elites abandoning Trump is not going to give us an accurate picture of the mind of the voters, who gleefully chose Trump despite the resounding disapproval of said elites.

Again, this leaves us with those pesky undecideds, only roughly 4.5% of voters. And right now, rather than this scandal, I think tomorrow night’s debate itself is going to be far more important one in shaping voters’ views, and who knows what new horrors await us in the final weeks of this dreadful and disheartening general election.

In other words, we have a month of campaigning and two debates and who knows what the hell else before Election Day. Anyone who think this insane election is over because they are predicting rational, humane responses to Trump’s tirade of sexual outrage or who wants to gauge Republican voters’ feelings based on how congressmen or senators are acting in the heat of the moment right now might want to calm down and not get ahead of themselves buying their Inaugural Ball outfits. If anything, if people think Clinton will run away with the election, that might make voters complacent at a time when they should be anything but.

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here. 

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981), and here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content, or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

 Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse July 3, 2016  

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) July 3rd, 2016, also published by StupidParty Math v Myth here

All photos taken from the Clinton Foundation website

AMMAN — If you listen to many conservatives, the Clinton Foundation is little more than a personal, criminal stash for cash for the Clintons (one big “scam,” to quote Trump).  But like so many other things that conservatives claim, upon closer inspection, efforts to tarnish or call into question the Clinton Foundation fall flat, quite like their efforts to dismiss the good work of the United Nations, even for all the UN’s faults.  In reality, the Clinton Foundation is a massive organization, atypical of most charities but one that does a staggering amount of good all around the world.

Love or hate the Clintons’s politics, it is an objective and indisputable fact that Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and Chelsea Clinton have been involved in programs that have bettered and save the lives of millions of people.  Even without Bill’s political career, his work with the Clinton Foundation would be enough to make him one of the great philanthropists of our time, and Hillary Clinton has also been getting increasingly involved, as has Chelsea.

What the Clinton Foundation Is and How It Works

The Clinton Foundation is actually a public charity that mainly does direct charity work, which can be confusing since many foundations primarily funnel money to other charities.  While conservative media and political figures (like serial liar Carly Fiorina) have claimed that only a small portion (Fiorina said 6%, hot-air-dispenser Rush Limbaugh said 15%) of the money going into the Foundation goes to charity, this statistic is in reference to the money that the Foundation gives to other charitable groups; the vast majority its money still goes to charity, its own charitable works, with 87.2% of all funds going directly to either their or others’ program activities/beneficiaries.  Unsurprisingly, conservatives myopically failed to do even this basic level of research before making their wildly off-base claims, which is par for the course in these hyperpartisan times. 

What is now the Clinton Foundation began in 1997 as an organization that began helping then-President Clinton set up his presidential library, but since then it has grown to be a global foundation that encompasses eleven initiatives, has raised over $2 billion for charity and development work, and now raises about a quarter of a billion annually.

Let’s look at these eleven parts, and a twelfth that was recently ended:

Clinton Foundation:

2014 expenses: $249,545,030 (12.3% overhead, including management, administrative, and fundraising expenses; 87.2% directly to program activity/beneficiaries; and 0.5% to make up for shortfalls in donation pledges)

Clinton’s Presidential Center (library) (1997-present)

2014 expenses: $13,501,618 (5.4% of Foundation total)

Presidential libraries serve as something of a combination of a museum and an archive for the particular presidency they showcase.  The Clinton Foundation was formed in 1997 to help raise money for Bill Clinton’s presidential library, which it did to the tune of $165 million over some years plus over $11 million in the form of grant of land from Little Rock, Arkansas, on which the library was built (in comparison, Reagan’s library cost $60 million at the time it was built, and George W. Bush’s presidential library cost about $250 million).  Clinton’s library, which includes the University of Arkansas’ Clinton School of Public Service and provides year-round educational programs and camps for students of all ages, has benefited the city of Little Rock greatly, as well.

Clinton Economic Opportunity Initiative (2002-2013)

The Clinton Economic Opportunity Initiative began in 2002 by helping small businesses in Harlem and grew to focus on promoting entrepreneurs and small businesses in cities across America.  Through partnerships with successful entrepreneurs who acted as mentors and major business institutions like Booz Allen Hamilton and UBS, the Initiative specialized in providing consulting and mentoring to small businesses and small business owners.  The 2012 annual report for the Clinton Foundation noted that the Clinton Economic Initiative had provided 75,000 hours of pro bono consulting and mentoring hours, over $15 million in pro bono consulting, that 92% of businesses that received assistance from its Entrepreneur Mentoring Program said that that assistance had helped them deal with the recession, that all these the businesses assisted had an average of a 16% increase in workforce, and over 600 volunteers provided long-term pro bono services for small businesses in nine different U.S. cities.  Another example of the type of work the Initiative engaged in, as highlighted in the 2009 annual report, was helping to provide banking services to struggling populations in America that were underserved by the banking industry. The program was shuttered in 2013 because the Foundation found that the efforts were too labor intensive and dependent on many too outside factors to be replicated on the larger scale the Foundation had hoped for it.

Clinton Health Access Initiative* (2002-present, *now affiliated but separate entity)

2014 expenses: $143,041,357 (57.3% of Foundation total)

The Clinton Health Access Initiative began in 2002 as a big push to provide HIV/AIDS patients with low-cost access to life-saving drugs, and since then has expanded to include treatment for malaria and vaccine access, among other programs; nearly 10 million people have received access to lifesaving treatment at low cost through the Initiative since 2002, to name its most significant achievement.  It now operates directly in more than 33 countries benefiting over 70 countries overall.  Its 2014 annual report noted that it was also heavily involved in assisting Liberia with its recent Ebola epidemic.

Clinton Alliance for a Healthier Generation (2005-present, *now affiliated but separate entity)

2014 expenses: $16,436,262 ($2 million from Clinton Foundation, 0.8% of Foundation’s total expenses; rest is (presumably) raised by Alliance on its own, outside of the efforts of the Foundation)

The Alliance for a Healthier generation was founded by the Clinton Foundation and the American Heart Association in 2005 to fight America’s childhood obesity epidemic by providing alternatives to soft-drink sodas in schools and other facilities used by children, all through making deals with the soda industry.  It is the nation’s largest effort to fight childhood obesity, and in large part because of the Alliance’s efforts, the calories of drink products sent to school locations fell 90% from 2004-2010.  Through 2015, the program has spread to help affect 18 million students in over 31,000 schools in all 50 states, Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico, as well as over 6,300 locations used by children outside of school grounds.  There is also an effort to help students improve health in other ways, engaging over 56,000 doctors and health professionals.  The Alliance also engages companies like McDonald’s to improve the level of healthier offerings within their product lines, in McDonald’s case covering 85% of its worldwide sales.

Clinton Global Initiative (2005-present)

2014 expenses: $23,544,381 (9.4% of Foundation total)

The Clinton Global Initiative began as way for President Clinton to bring together world leaders and thinkers as only he can together in one place and to get them to make substantive commitments towards tackling major global problems.  Through 2015, it has engaged over “180 heads of state, 20 Nobel Prize laureates, and hundreds of leading CEOs, heads of foundations and NGOs, major philanthropists, and members of the media, which has resulted in $90 billion in commitments representing over 3,100 Commitments to Action, which have improved the lives of over 430 million people in more than 180 countries,” spanning issues as diverse as job creation, training, education, human rights, gender equality, health, medicine, conservation, ecology, endangered species, and international development, among others. 

Clinton Climate Initiative (2006-present)

2014 expenses: $8,293,416 (3.3% of Foundation total)

The Clinton Climate Initiative has been working for years to address fundamental drivers behind dangerous man-made climate change using easily replicable and cost-effective methods that the Initiative is spreading throughout the U.S. and the world.  The Initiative’s Forestry Program is helping governments together with other partners to better manage their forests and forested lands and to help plan and enact forest restoration, with major programs in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Indonesia. The Islands Diesel Replacement program helps small island countries transform their energy sectors into ones that involve far more clean energy and far more sustainable practices, and also assists with waste and water management, which all, in turn, spur new jobs and markets for the green energy sector.  An energy-consumption-reduction program and a Home Energy Affordability Loan (HEAL) program that both began in Arkansas have both spread to six other states—California, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, Vermont, and Wisconsin—and allowed both employers and employees to greatly improve energy efficiency and reduce costs, with the HEAL program alone helping over 5,600 people and both programs together reducing U.S. carbon emissions by over 33,500 tons every year.

Clinton Development Initiative (2006-present)

2014 expenses: $4,482,714 (3.3% of Foundation total)

The Clinton Development Initiative has been helping small farmers in Tanzania, Malawi, and Rwanda by leveraging knowledge, resources, and partnerships to help over 105,000 small farmers improve their efficiency and access to markets.  In addition, its Trees of Hope program in Malawi has helped over 2,300 farmers plant more than 2.6 million trees to help offset their carbon footprint and create a new opportunity in tree farming, where it is also helping local farmers and their families by establishing local health clinics.  In Rwanda, the Initiative recently helped to create two local businesses based on producing soy in one case and coffee in the other that are combined expected to create hundreds of jobs and help 150,000 farmers with their livelihoods.  With a New Seeds to Sale Project in Myanmar, the Initiative also helps to reach some 15,000 farmers there over the first 3 years of implementation.

Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership (2007-present)

2014 expenses: $7,358,967 (3% of Foundation total)

The Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership seeks to implement the best of non-profit and for-profit approaches to help emerging-market-nations around the world deal with major gaps in either supply chains or distribution chains in ways that improve both the social and financial situations of poorer, underserved populations by bringing them into one of three-market driven approaches: supply chain enterprises, distribution enterprises, or training center enterprises in the hopes of providing economic opportunities through which people can find social mobility and lift themselves out of poverty.  Distribution enterprises can make a huge difference in rural areas where many small villages and towns and farmers often find it very difficult to obtain basic supplies.  The Partnership in one instance found almost 3,000 women in one of the most remote parts of Peru and trained and equipped them with the help of major corporations to be able to sell many basic, in-demand products to their own communities; these women are expected to double their income within a year of beginning the program.  Supply chain enterprises help small farmers in developing countries obtain ways to get their products to the right markets and improve their business as a result as well as help developing markets fill their shelves with appropriate and better quality products.  A Partnership enterprise in one region of India was able to help small farmers get cashew products to new customers, and another Partnership program set up many small farmers with PepsiCo’s local juice operations; along with efforts to help local farmers become more efficient and produce better crops, the Partnership hopes to see these farmers’ incomes double within 5 years and to spread these models to encompass some 15,000 local farmers in the region in the near future.  Another project is helping over 12,000 peanut farmers in Haiti get their crop to markets.  Finally, training center enterprises help to provide youth in developing countries the skills needed to get decent jobs in places where there is often a skills mismatch.  One such enterprise in Cartagena, Colombia, is training some 20,000 young people to be able to find jobs in the hospitality industry.  The Partnership will be expanding to new regions and countries soon, and thus far has helped to train and empower more than 450,000 people in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia.

Clinton Health Matters Initiative (2012-present)

2014 expenses: $3,696,323 (1.5% of Foundation total)

The Clinton Health Matters Initiative works in the United States through a wide variety of public and private, local and national entities to reduce the occurrence of preventable health problems, conditions and diseases, while also working to bridge inequality in health and healthcare access and to improve access for all Americans.  Its national-level programs focus on “employee health, military and veteran health, health disparities, access to nutrition, access to sport and physical activity, and prescription drug abuse,” while a variety of local and regional programs (mainly focusing on working through many hundreds of partners to help some 8 million people in specific regions in the U.S.: California’s Coachella Valley, Central Arkansas, Northeast Florida, the Greater Houston Area, and, most recently, Adams County, Mississippi) combine with the national programs to be projected to be able to benefit some 85 million Americans.  The initiative has also created over $200 million in partnerships with various organizations to help improve Americans’ health, is helping to innovate new technology to improve healthcare across the country and access to information about health and healthcare, is improving substance abuse and mental health programs on over 60 college campuses, is pioneering fitness programs, is working with 40 different organizations to improve employee wellness, and is bringing together experts from many different organizations to plan new ways to tackle health problems in America.

The following programs fall under the “other” category as listed in the Foundations’ financial statements/annual reports, as is (presumably) the $2 million grant that goes to the Clinton Alliance for a Healthier Generation; the “other” category comprised $13,789,165, or 5.5% of the Foundation’s 2014 expenses; minus the Alliance grant, these below programs would be part of $11,789,165, or 4.7% of the Foundation’s 2014 expenses.

Clinton Foundation in Haiti (2009-present)

The Clinton Foundation in Haiti began in 2009 as a way to specifically help the beleaguered Caribbean nation, but when a major earthquake devastated the nation in 2010, the program focused for some time on disaster relief, recovery, and rebuilding but is now back to its original intent: helping to empower the people of Haiti through education and economic opportunity by engaging a wide range of actors.  Since its inception, the program has raised some $36 million for Haiti (including $16.4 million in for immediate relief after the earthquake tragedy), and has also been instrumental in bringing about $120 million in direct investment to Haiti, including in Haiti’s agricultural, artisan, and environmental sectors, helping some 117,000 Haitians and creating some 11,200 jobs.

No Ceilings: The Full Participation Project (2013-present)

The No Ceilings: Full Participation Project, led by Hillary and Chelsea Clinton, aims to bring women and girls around the world to points of full participation and equal opportunity in their societies using data-driven methods.  To this end, the Project partnered with The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to produce a detailed global report on the status of women and girls worldwide, identifying specific areas of concern that can be targeted by various organizations around the world.  As part of this process, the Project began a global conversation about the status of women involving over 12,000 people, and conducted a survey about the status of women of over 10,000 people in over 150 countries.  The Project also teamed with The Brookings Institution to secure pledges from over 30 partners to provide $600 million to help girls get access to and do well in secondary school, which has since been increased to $800 million through 50 partners with plans to reach 15 million girls.  Another initiative plans to facilitate access to mobile technology for women in Afghanistan, Myanmar, the Philippines, Indonesia, and the Arab Gulf States in order to help empower disempowered women in those locations.

Too Small to Fail (2013-present)

The Too Small to Fail project, also led by Hillary Clinton, seeks to help different parts of society to come together to provide solid heath and growth environments for children from when they are born to age 5, focusing in particular on interactions involving talking, reading, and singing.  Such interactions foster vital early brain and language development among our youngest children, ensuring that they enter school not in a mental state behind that of their follow classmates and in a better position to succeed in life.  This helps to fight the “word gap” in which lower-income kids by age 4 hear an average of 30 million fewer words than their better-situated counterparts, causing their brains and language skills to develop more slowly.  With partners like Sesame Street, the American Academy of Pediatrics, Univision, Text4baby, and Scholastic, Too Small to Fail was a major force in efforts to donate some 500,000 books, reach 700,000 parents regularly with parenting information and tips through text messaging, use television programming to get important information and tips out to parents, get over 20,000 families to take pledges, and distribute 62,000 literacy toolkits to pediatric professionals.

*****

In addition:

In America, the Clinton Foundation has also helped to organize thousands of volunteers for “Days of Action” that have resulted in over 18,000 hours of volunteer service since 2012, at first in response to Hurricane Sandy and later to include other projects.  There is also the Job One initiative, designed to help young Americans find meaningful employment in the wake of the Great Recession; so far, the initiative has secured promises from 13 companies to focus on mentoring and hiring young people, has generated commitments worth $37 million, and expects to be able to help some 150,000 young Americans in the near future.

*****

All in all, The Clinton Foundation is a unique thing in the world, one of the world’s largest charities on its own, but then transcending even that status when the extensive action it has led indirectly through its special partnerships and relationships is taken into account, amplifying its already staggering scale of impact on people all over the world.  It’s time the media and even the Clintons’ critics clearly acknowledged this basic truth.  And for Trump to criticize the Clinton Foundation, when nothing he has done has even come close to a fraction of this level of charity, is shameful.

© 2016 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here. 

Here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg.  If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to him! Feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981)

 Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse May 13, 2016 

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) May 13th, 2016

AMMAN — The more I watch the current American political proceedings, the more I am increasingly convinced of an increasing chance that the presidency of George W. Bush will be remembered as the moment when American democracy began rapidly unravelling.

Our Unravelling, “Unwinding” Democracy

The trends that resulted in this unravelling (or, to use George Packer’s word for it, “unwinding”) could be traced back decades to the so-called Reagan Revolution, coupled with the political incivility and onset of hyperpartisanship that resulted from the so-called Gingrich Revolution. Later, with tax cuts that went almost completely to the wealthiest 1% after we had a surplus, the damage of the 9/11 attacks and the ensuing grossly mismanaged wars, Hurricane Katrina, and the Great Recession after the mortgage and financial crises at the end of Bush’s presidency, George W. Bush had a record of disaster unmatched in modern times and was one of the worst presidents in all of American history, at least if one is to judge according to the effects of his policies.

Some people read a lot into Obama’s election that I did not: many saw it a sign that we had dramatically changed. I saw the election of a black man like Obama, born to and raised by a white mom and who ran as a centrist and went out of his way to not talk about “black issues,” but, rather, to be post-racial and post-partisan, more as an example of the type of minority candidate America would vote for in stark contrast to more outspoken, consciously racialized minority candidates that America would not vote for (Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Bobby Jindal, and Marco Rubio are examples in this year’s election cycle who share this approach of campaigning mainly away from their ethnic/racial identity along with Obama). To white America, Obama, Carson, Cruz, and Rubio are “less black” and “less Latino” than other candidates who would not earn as much support from them (if Obama was the exact same person but looked and spoke like Cornell West, does anyone think white America could have supported him at the same level? If Cruz and Rubio were exactly the same but looked and spoke like George Lopez, does anyone think they would have the same support with Republicans that they do now?).

But I realized something else that Obama’s rise and victory represented: the only way that Obama was able to win in 2008 is because the Republicans and George W. Bush has messed up so badly and so completely that America was absolutely desperate for whatever was the least-Bushlike thing they could find. Bush was such a categorical disaster that people wanted to reject the system and class that had produced Bush as a leader as much as possible: the less it acted and sounded like Bush, the better. Without Bush and his presidency creating such a terrible series of crises, it is impossible to imagine that voters would have been willing to try out such a wild card like Obama in 2008. In 2016, it’s incredibly in vogue to talk of candidates as “Establishment” and “anti-Establishment.” That sentiment was not described then the way it is now, but undoubtedly, much of Obama’s support came from people who were desperate for something new, desperate for something different, desperate to reject the past eight years, desperate to reject a system that had done what it had done to us (never mind that WE, first and foremost, empowered those people who ran the system so badly). Basically, at least in 2008, a President Obama was not possible without a President Bush. While many were celebrating Obama’s win in a way in which they were giving American voters an enormous amount of credit, I was saying that it was kind of embarrassing that things had to be that bad before we elected a black president.

The American electorate is funny; in 2000, they more or less rejected Al Gore because he was too “nerdy,” wasn’t “cool” and affable like Bush (I bet they’d take that surplus and invest it now into Social Security in a “lockbox” as Al Gore said he wanted to do in 2000, when he was ridiculed for saying so!). In 2004, they chose Bush to continue his wars his way; in 2008, they voted for someone to get American out of Iraq just 4 years after they voted for someone to keep us in there. In 2010, voters empowered the Tea Party; in 2012, voters rejected multiple Tea Party extremists, which dragged Romney down, in favor of allowing Obama to continue a modest recovery from a historic recession and rejected Republican arguments that Obama’s national security and foreign policies made America less safe. Now, in 2016, voters think Obama is not tough enough on ISIS and many of them chose Donald Trump to be the nominee of one of America’s two major parties and are flirting with a democratic socialist to be the nominee of the other (yes, Clinton will win, but by a narrower margin than many thought would be the case). Fickle, indeed.

How America Took a Huge Gamble on Obama (and Mostly Won)

I voted for Obama in 2008. But not before: I had voted for Hillary Clinton in my local primary. I am still convinced that Hillary would have been a better president, that she would not have made the same rookie mistakes Obama made, that should would have accomplished more with a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate, but, as I wrote recently, that does not mean I don’t think Obama did not do a good job: I think he did do an overall good job and deserves a lot of credit, even if I think he could have, and Hillary would have, done better.

The thing is, experience counts. Hillary had a lot of it, Obama did not. And what was frustrating for me in 2008 was that so many voters got caught up in the story and style and “coolness” factor with Obama, and paid so little attention to his lack of experience. We basically elevated a man to the highest office in the land who had no executive experience, who has spent precious little time on the national stage, and with whom we as a people had very little familiarity. We did not properly vet him and fell in love with him partly because he was the new guy with an inspiring story and amazing stage presence.

America basically dodged a bullet with Obama. With someone who was so new, and who had so little experience on the national stage, it could have turned out much worse than it did. But in Obama, a man of vast intellect, poise, calm, and composure, and who understood history and the system well from an academic standpoint, if not from an experiential one, the United States of America made out pretty well, and is well on the path to recovering from the calamitous W. Bush presidency even if that recovery is slow, understandably slow, though, since Obama took office in the midst of the worst American and global economic crises since the Great Depression.

Yes, Obama overpromised and oversold ideas of postpartisanship, but he never promised anything ridiculous in terms of policy.

One thing the history of the ancient Roman Republic teaches you about democratic politics is that once a certain type of character rises to certain political heights, it paves a way for others who are similar; once certain behaviors succeed in propelling someone to power, it paves a way for such behavior to used in the same way again; once certain traditions or rules are circumvented or ignored, it paves a way for those traditions and rules to be pushed aside even more forcefully in the future.

Obama, Trump, et al.: The Experience Factor, 2008-2016

The rise of Obama and the fact that his candidacy was able to triumph over both Hillary Clinton and John McCain, both seasoned political hands that were objectively more qualified resume-wise for high office, opened the door for candidates with historically low levels of national-level or executive political experience. In fact, during this election cycle, the Republican Party fielded three candidates—Donald Trump, Carly Fiorina, and Dr. Ben Carson—who had never, ever held elected office or any political office whatsoever; Trump won, and Dr. Carson was one of the top-polling candidates for most of the election season (even briefly leading), before he was one of the final candidates to drop out, outlasting twelve other candidates; Fiorina, too, was even one of the top-tier candidates, if only briefly.

This tells us something very simple and very disturbing: American voters care less about experience and qualifications than they possibly ever have, and this trend is only increasing. “Outsider,” “anti-‘Establishment’” politics have become wildly popular and wildly successful. 

There were signs that this was coming. 

With the Democrats, before, we he had a freshman U.S. Senator (Obama) defeat two of the most recognizable, experienced hands in American politics (Clinton, McCain) in 2008. 

On the Republican side, we saw signs with the rise of the Tea Party in 2010 and after—including some of the most unqualified, looney people ever to make it into Congress—and with seasoned, major political figures in the Republican Party being “primaried” and defeated from their right—people like veteran Sen. Dick Lugar of Indiana and House Majority Leader (arguably the most powerful legislative position in Congress after Speaker of the House) Eric Cantor of Virginia, the latter losing to an obscure college professor. In 2012, only Herman Cain had never held political office before among Republican presidential candidates, and he still led in the polls for close to a month; still, the field was dominated by people with decent to serious experience in executive government positions or national-level politics, but the nomination contest felt more like a ritual, a wooden Mitt Romney never generating much enthusiasm (Trump must have looked at how weak the 2012 field was and realized there was a chance for someone with charisma and personality to really make a mark). 

In this 2016 cycle, the Republican field had three freshmen U.S. Senators and three candidates who have never held national-level or executive government office, representing over a third of all candidates, and the last man standing, Trump, has never, ever held a position in government.

What will be the situation if trends continue on this path in 2020? 2024?? 2028??? 2032!???! Will the typical office-holder of 2016 bear any resemblance to his or her counterpart of 2032? Given today’s situation, the answer is very likely no.

*****

Trump & Today’s Scary Precedents for Presidential Politics

Time

Only once in American history has the nominee of a major party never held government office: in 1940, when Republicans nominated businessman Wendell Willkie to challenge Franklin Delano Roosevelt as fascism was taking over the world; when Willkie lost, he became a huge supporter of FDR’s war effort in an extraordinary show of bipartisanship; in other words, he was no Trump or Tea Partier.

Only once, that is, until now, until 2016, when Trump is already the de-facto nominee.

I am scared far less of Trump than I am scared about the barriers he has broken for men seeking high office, the behaviors he has set up as examples of ones that lead to political success, and the traditions and decorum he has smashed. I am scared far less by this election and its smashing of precedent in 2016 than by what—and who—this election paves the way for in the future.

In 2008, the winner of the presidency was a freshman senator with little national-level experience and no executive experience in government. In 2016, about one-sixth of Republican candidates were freshmen senators who had no national-level or executive government experience prior to entering the Senate (Cruz, Rubio, Paul), and roughly one-sixth had never held any government office before (Trump, Carson, Fiorina). All but one (Ohio Gov. John Kasich) of the final five Republican candidates were in one of these two categories, and the man who essentially has the nomination, Trump, has no government experience. How much larger proportionally will such candidates be out of the whole field in 2020, 2024, and beyond? How many people, like Rubio and Cruz, are going to run for the House or Senate and care little for the office they seek, but, rather, seek to use it merely as a platform to run for president? Instead of one-third as it was in 2016, will be in half in 2020? Two-thirds? While people have complained about the dumbing-down of American politics for years, perhaps with what is now happening today it has never been more inarguably clearly so.

Make no mistake, as I have written before, Trump is a threat to Western civilization and democracy as we know it today. But a big part of what is scary about him—is the most frightening—involves not Trump himself whether he wins or loses, but what comes after.

A case in point from ancient Rome: for nearly four centuries, that Roman Republic’s evolving democratic (small-r) republican system avoided any serious internal political violence until 133 B.C.E., when a Pandora’s Box of political violence was unleashed; less than half a century after that was the Roman Republic’s first civil war, and less than a half-century after that, its final one between Caesar and Pompey that would see the destruction of republican government in all but name.  The point is, once precedents are broken, there are serious consequences, especially when new “norms” delve into dangerous territory.

Another case in point: the Romans very much valued experience, and they had not only age requirements for someone to hold their highest political office—the consulship with its two annually elected consuls, on which the American presidency and vice presidency are based—but also required the holder of that office to have been elected to and held two other lower offices (praetor and quaestor) before being considered eligible (see Part II here). Considering that the Roman Republic lasted roughly twice as long as America’s republic has thus far existed, Americans might want to take note of this.

In Conclusion: Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid

Even without the specter of political violence (at which Trump has lightly hinted and at whose rallies there have been sporadic incidents of mild violence), the precedents of 2016 and especially Trump will be remembered collectively as a watershed moment. But this moment would not have been possible without the extraordinarily destructive policies and gross incompetence of the experienced career politicians of the George W. Bush Administration, without which the stage would not have been set, the desperate hunger for something different established, for the precedent-breaking candidacy of Barack Obama, whose victory was both the beginning of a shift of large portions of America turning away from the familiar in favor of the risky and a harbinger of a much larger shift in this direction to come. 

With Obama, the American people certainly gambled on an unknown but came out pretty well in the end, but it was still a big risk. Without the W. Bush Administration disaster, it is hard to envision American voters in 2008 taking such a big risk in an election. But if electing Obama can be said to have been a risky gamble on the part of the American people, Trump’s winning the Republican Party’s nomination in 2016, powered by voters and grassroots support above all else, as well as his having a real shot at winning the presidency, is a move of a far greater level of risk on the part of the American people, one that is unlikely to pay positive dividends like 2008’s gamble did, and is far more likely to damage us in ways many of us now cannot even begin to imagine.

Right now, the new political rulebook clearly states to win as a candidate to be the nominee of one of America’s two major political parties, Trump, Trump’s behavior, and Trumpism are all acceptable, when literally less than a year ago, they were not (and far from it!). 

These are dangerous and exciting times we live in, but, then again, when any society take a giant leap forward towards self-destruction, there is always plenty of excitement. There was plenty of excitement when Rome’s republic fell, as was the case in Revolutionary France, Russia, and China. As many voters are feeling the energy for candidates like Trump and Sanders, hoping they will tear down the current system, one can only hope that the more passionate and frenzied political noise-makers will be outnumbered by the moderates who will back Hillary Clinton over Trump in the end. People are angry and suffering today, but as Hillary Clinton knew since her days as an undergraduate, and as Barack Obama recently told graduating Howard University students, “Change requires more than righteous anger.” He also told them “It may sound like a controversial statement—a hot take—given the current state of our political rhetoric and debate, but America is a better place today than it was when I graduated from college. It also happens to be better off than when I took office, but that’s a longer story.” 

And he’s right; and these improvements were accomplished not by disruptive and divisive anger, not by the far left castigating everyone who is not immediately on board to seismic reforms, but, in reality, by “Establishment” politics, seeking not to destroy the system, but to work within it. 

This is the approach Obama took once elected, and it’s the approach the Hillary Clinton has taken her whole career. It’s not as exciting as promising free college and that millions of new manufacturing jobs will be won from renegotiating all of our existing trade deals, but unlike the other promises, Clinton’s promises of working within the system are not in the realm of laughable fantasy. Declaring war on reality might please many voters, but it also pushes more and more people to give up on a system that, even creakingly and grudgingly, has delivered an enormous amount of positive change across generations, if imperfectly and unevenly. But politics is always imperfect and uneven, regardless of what candidates like Trump and Sanders pump into the heads of their oft-rabid followers. And the solution is not to give up on the successful if sometimes frustrating incremental success of successful reforms of the past century, but to realize that all those increments add up over time into something big and revolutionary; heck, even revolutions take many years and are hardly instant. And yet those who are the youngest voters often seem the most impatient for change; yes, we face many problems now, but our chances of success are far less if we give up on the system and allow our leaders to destroy our confidence in it, if we forget how and why America has been great, how it is still relatively great though currently in serious decline and in sore need of improvement, and how the past shows us a recipe for making American even greater than before if we can roll up our sleeves to work towards reasonable expectations and can do so with a degree of patience as well as optimism.

With Trump and even Sanders, we have creaked open the door to demagoguery, which thrives when people have low to zero expectations for the system and foolishly high expectations for their savior who will deliver them from it. When a population moves too far away from the politics of the system to the cult of personality, the health of democracy is unquestionably in decline. It is not clear how many of Obama’s supporters fell more for his personality and style than his substance and intellect, but I imagine it would be a level that is higher than with which many would be comfortable; when it comes to Trump, we can be certain his supporters are not behind him for his intellect and substance.

Americans should be concerned. Only now are we truly seeing the political consequences of the calamitous two terms of George W. Bush and other trends in place for decades before; I shudder to think of what seeds are being sown today in the era where Trump could win the nomination of the party of Lincoln, and may even win the presidency.

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Here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to him! Feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981)

 Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse May 8/9, 2016 

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) May 8th/9th, 2016

Aaron Bernstein/Reuters

AMMAN — I must confess, in a race full of unprecedented behavior, I was still shocked that a distant second place candidate in the Republican presidential nomination race—one who was mathematically eliminated from winning a majority of delegates from the primary/caucus process, from winning the nomination on the first ballot at the Republican National Convention—would name a running-mate for the vice president slot with about one-third of the time still left in the contest and months before the convention, long before anyone else had ever done so during our modern nomination process.

Then again, since the chutzpah of both Ted Cruz and Carly Fiorina knows no bounds, I really should not have been surprised that either Cruz named Fiorina as his “running mate” even though he is not even close to being his party’s candidate, and that she, of all people, would accept.

Pride As a Vice

This amazing duo lasted one week—just one week exactly—before Cruz gave up his quest for the presidency.  After just seven days of existence, the Cruz-Fiorina ticket was no more, and Fiorina now has the record for the shortest vice presidential candidacy in U.S. history.

It is worth examining this exceptional piece of desperation political theater because it is truly a singularity in terms of its sheer absurdity and inanity.

Short-lived though the ticket was may be, the two are truly perfect for each other: along with Donald Trump, they are by far the most shameless, dishonest self-promoters of this election cycle.  In case you might be under the incorrect assumption that they are not the most shameless self-promoters out of over twenty candidates  in both parties (apart from Trump), a brief education is in order below.

Lyin’ Ted

Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

First up: Ted Cruz.

Full disclosure: I am not a fan of Trump and I view his candidacy as a historically dangerous one for democracy and for Western civilization, but his “Lyin’ Ted” nickname for Cruz he came up with is about as spot-on as you can get when it comes to that man, because he lies constantly and plays dirty and deceitful politics on the campaign trail.  Pulitzer Prize-winning PolitiFact has been checking statements by Cruz since 2012, and, as of today, nearly two-thirds (64%) of his statements that it checked were categorized as mostly false (31%) or worse: false (27%), (liar liar) “pants on fire”-false (6%); only 22% were rated positively: true (6%) or mostly true (16%).  His record ranks among the worst of all the candidates for this election, with only Dr. Ben Carson and Donald Trump having a higher portion of mostly-false statements or worse.

This is a man whom the recently-former Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner just referred to as “Lucifer in the flesh,” and Boehner noted in same statement that he has “never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in…[his] life.”  Reflecting Boehner’s words, it is even a widely understood piece of political insider wisdom that Ted Cruz is the most hated man in the Washington, DC political establishment (especially in the Senate), an establishment he is extremely hostile to but is also, nevertheless, something of a member of since he is one of only 100 sitting U.S. Senators; he turns on friends, he turns on his own Republican Party, he feeds off and uses skillfully delivered and amplified misinformation in the way a Sith Lord feeds off anger, all in a quest for personal power for Ted Cruz, regardless of who or what he damages in pursuit of this power.  In fact, it all seems to actually be part of his plan, because he has always worn the hatred of those he deems “The Establishment” as a badge of honor, and has sold this as a badge of honor—even as part of his campaign platform—quite successfully to his supporters.

This is a man who led his followers to believe that he could use a government shutdown he personally orchestrated to (ostensibly) attempt to force a repeal of Obamacare, though this ignored basic constitutional and political realities, of which Senator Cruz is supposedly an expert.  No, the real reason he engaged in such a stunt—complete with reading Dr. Seuss’s “Green Eggs and Ham” in the Senate while on the taxpayer’s dime, all while blithely missing the irony in doing so—was for one reason and one reason only: to promote himself.  And in this, he wildly succeeded, even as he alienated himself even more so among his Congressional colleagues and caused a damaging government shutdown that risked the United States Government defaulting on its debts, damaged his political party’s brand, cost hundreds of thousands of federal employees and contractors (about 850,000 people) days to weeks of pay, and caused harmful economic spillover effects to the tune of $24 billion nationally and 0.6% in national GDP growth, economic effects felt especially in Washington, DC, Virginia, and Maryland.  Moreover, this shutdown occurred even as, embarrassingly, the Syrian government was able to fully operate in the regions of Syria it controlled in the midst of a full-scale civil war.  Yes, all these were acceptable casualties in Cruz’s quest to elevate himself to maximize his exposure and thus his chances for his presidential bid.  If there is any doubt as to how calculated all this was, consider that Cruz was the first major candidate in either party to officially announce his candidacy in a field that would swell to over twenty individuals.  He had clearly been planning for some time, and he would hardly have been unaware of the fact that the government shutdown is that for which he is most known by the American public; he sure isn’t known for his record as a legislator in the Senate, where he by far makes more noise than actually engaging in the normal tasks of being a U.S. Senator.

This is a man who has engaged in the ultimate deception on one of his signature issues: Cruz constructed what is possibly the most masterful lie in the history of American politics on immigration policy, positioning himself exquisitely carefully to be able to play both sides of the issue depending on which way the political winds blew in what may very well be the most planned (and one of the longest-running) series of political lies in American campaign history.  That he did lie many, many times and manipulate over an extended period of time on this issue is not in doubt and has been meticulously documented by William Saletan at Slate.

Then there is the infamous episode I wrote about some time ago, where Cruz was booed off the stage at an even highlighting the plight of Middle Eastern Christians.  Most of them are Arab, and Ted Cruz chose to open his remarks by insisting that Middle Eastern Christians first and foremost need to stick up for the Israeli state, even as it illegally occupies millions of Arab Palestinians, Christian and Muslim alike, and denies them basic human rights.  Middle Eastern Christians living under forces hostile to Israel—including ISIS—would be risking their very lives speaking out in favor of Israel.  This does not mean that Cruz does not have a point in the sense that as a minority in a region that generally treats minorities awfully, Christians there have a plight in common with Jews in a general historical sense, and that many anti-Israeli forces go way too far and veer into anti-Semitism, but this is not the main issue facing Christians in the Middle East at a forum dedicated to their suffering, not that of Israeli Jews and Cruz’s approach was certainly not appropriate, especially leading off with that, at that particular event.  Encouraging what he encouraged was not a way to help persecuted Middle Eastern Christians, and was, in fact, asking them to needlessly expose themselves to danger, up to and including death.

Ted Cruz is not stupid.  Ted Cruz knows this.  Ted Cruz didn’t care about Middle Eastern Christians. Ted Cruz knew that much of the Republican evangelical base is fervently pro-Israel to the point of being apologists for Israel’s (self-)destructive and illegal nearly-half-century occupation of Palestinian territory.  Ted Cruz knew he was doing this was elevate himself in the eyes of the very people in America whose votes he needed to win in order to win his party’s nomination for the presidency.  Ted Cruz was perfectly willing to use Middle Eastern Christians as a prop to help himself.

This is a man who routinely engages in dangerous demagoguery when it comes to issues related to terrorism, Muslims (including Muslims-Americans), and Islam, in a dangerous way that preys on fears and creates more division, suspicion, mistrust, and hostility than is necessary, but this has been largely overlooked to a degree because of the Trump phenomenon.   Yet from to ISIS to Palestinians, from San Bernardino to the Iran nuclear deal (which Cruz has outrageously claimed makes “the Obama administration the world’s leading financier of radical Islamic terrorism”), Cruz has played a game of risky rhetorical hyperbole that deals in misleading demonization of vulnerable minorities to win political chips in order to elevate himself politically.

The lies and deceptions and destructive, selfish behavior do not begin or end here, but they are major points of a highlight reel.

This is the real Ted Cruz.

Failed Fiorina

Getty Images

Now, to pivot to Mrs. Fiorina.  Perhaps you are thinking she is better, but they are actually a match made in heaven (or hell, if you’re in Boehner’s camp).

Out of the political contenders this election cycle, only Dr. Carson, Trump, and Cruz have worse records on PolitiFact than Fiorina.  For Fiorina, 55% of her reviewed statements were at least mostly false (23%) or worse: false (23%), (liar liar) “pants on fire”-false (9%); only 28% were rated at least mostly true (14%) or true (14%).  Math might have eliminated them from getting a majority of delegates from the voting contests, but it sure makes them close in terms of lying.

In fact, as I have noted before, most of the two pillars that are together the entire premise of her presidential campaign (all of one and part of another) are based on falsehoods. 

For one thing, she has the gall to run on her record as a corporate executive at Lucent and as the first female CEO of a Fortune 20 company at Hewlett Packard (HP), but she was instrumental in destroying both companies, facts which do not stop her from spinning her record to absurd lengths to shamefully duck from her clear responsibility in both historic business collapses.  As I wrote of her time at Lucent, she was either too stupid to know what was going on, which is unforgivable, or complicit in illegal and/or highly risky, highly-irresponsible business practices, which would be highly unethical and immoral.  The implosion of a company ensued, costing over 100,000 people their jobs, but Carly managed to use the deceptively ostensibly false posted “success” to land her the top job at HP, leaving just before Lucent came tumbling down.  With HP, she was actually in charge and helped to severely weaken the company from the most powerful position within it, for which she was fired after destroying much of the company’s value and shedding thousands of jobs.  She has been noted as one of the worst CEOs in modern history repeatedly.  And in each case, she made sure that her harmful business activities would be rewarded to the tunes of many millions of dollars, even as the companies she guided lost many millions of dollars in business and value.  One thing (perhaps the only thing) she excelled at during her time at both Lucent and HP was self-promotion.

The other pillar of her campaign is that she is a female secretary-to-CEO success story, but this is only partially true: yes, she achieved historic success as a woman, but only worked as a secretary while she was attending college and law school, dropping out of the latter.  When she later went to business school and earned her MBA, she began right after graduation at AT&T (later her section became Lucent) on a fast-track executive-level path to senior management.  That is a pretty normal narrative—to work while in school in temporary administrative positions to help cover expenses/tuition while after you earn your degree you hardly start at the bottom—and is hardly the direct path from secretary to CEO that she misleadingly makes it out to be.

No wonder when Carly Fiorina ran for a U.S. Senate seat in California on the basis of her deplorable business record that voters there resoundingly rejected her.

But if having her campaign’s premises be less than truthful isn’t enough for you to put her in league with Cruz, like Cruz, she has had some of the most spectacular lies of this campaign season and has refused to back down from them despite being repeatedly confronted with overwhelming evidence that he claims have been false.  I am talking especially about her despicable falsehoods she has repeatedly perpetuated regarding the women’s healthcare advocate and provider Planned Parenthood, whereby Fiorina claimed that Planned Parenthood was, in her words, utilizing “a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain” in video she had seen with her own eyes (so she claimed), that Planned Parenthood sells dead baby organs for profit to some kind of baby organ trafficking network.  In reality, no such video exists actually linking Planned Parenthood to any such activity, she grossly mischaracterizes the video in question that according to all expert review does not seem to either be of an abortion or at a Planned Parenthood clinic, and there is zero evidence Planned Parenthood engages in the trade of fetal organs/tissue; in fact, a grand jury convened to consider charges against Planned Parenthood for illegal activity only found the activists targeting Planned Parenthood worthy of criminal investigations, not Planned Parenthood itself).

She has also levied vicious, quite mean-spirited, and grossly unfair attacks against Hillary Clinton, perhaps thinking that because she is a woman she could get away with such abuse more easily than if she were a man.  In fact, apart from spinning her own business record and lying about Planned Parenthood, aside from a few debates where she “shone” by delivering one-liners with a degree of competence, and other than mixing it up with Donald Trump, hyperbolically attacking Clinton is what most characterized her short-lived presidential campaign.

This campaign did not last more than the first two contests in Iowa and New Hampshire, where she finished in 7th place in both states with less than 2% and a little over 4% of the of the vote, respectively.

This is just a brief taste of the major highlights of the real Fiorina, but one that still gives you the real flavor.

Perfect for Each Other, Perfectly Unfit for Office

Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images

So, when you thinks about it, if Ted Cruz, who was just mathematically eliminated from winning a majority of delegates from voting contests, still fully intended to find a way to get party elites to hand him the nomination in a sheer disregard for the will of the primary/caucus participants, the idea that he would pick someone who came in 7th in two contests and then dropped out actually makes sense in Ted’s World.  And if Carly Fiorina was going be willing to try to use her historically bad record as a top business executive as a reason for voters to consider her to be a U.S. Senator or the Republican Party’s nominee for the presidency, then why not use her historically bad record as a political candidate for the Senate and the presidency as a reason for voters to consider her to be the Republican nominee for vice president on a ticket that would be inherently undemocratic in nature and a longshot (even at a contested convention, as I wrote earlier)? 

(On a quick aside, Marco Rubio, apparently, rejected such the same request from Cruz that Fiorina did not reject)

As with his behavior concerning the shutdown, Cruz was thinking about what was good for Ted Cruz, first and foremost; and it is telling that another person who thinks like he does—primarily about herself—would accept the offer to be the vice presidential nominee on an almost certainly doomed ticket, months before any ticket had ever been formed since the modern primary/caucus system was instituted.  The last time a move even remotely like this happened? Reagan’s failed, desperate attempt to edge out Gerald Ford in 1976 when he named a running mate at the end of July, three weeks before 1976 Republican convention (and three months later than Cruz, who made his move three months before this year’s convention!).  Reagan, though, unlike Cruz, was not mathematically eliminated from winning a majority of delegates from voting contests when he made his announcement.  Still, Reagan’s selfish gamble against an incumbent president when Ford was heavily favored helped to weaken Ford and hand the presidency over to Jimmy Carter and the Democratic Party.

Gary Settle/The New York Times

We don’t know who will win the White House in November, but we do know that both Cruz and Fiorina have developed a megalomaniacal, delusional sense of self-importance and a massively inflated views of their own records that, time and time again, has allowed them in their minds to put themselves ahead of the organizations for which they are ostensibly fighting.  If not mathematically, we must hope that morally and ethically this eliminates them forever from consideration for high national office, especially, but not limited to, the presidency. 

Again, I am not at all a fan of Trump, but at least Trump has a record of a moderately successful businessman (if hardly a perfect one) and of getting deals done and earning the respect of many of his colleagues; Cruz is hated in the Senate (fellow Republican Senator and former presidential aspirant Lindsey Graham said that “If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you,” and only 4 out of 53 fellow Republican senators have endorsed Cruz, 2 of them doing so very unenthusiastically), and Fiorina was fired as CEO of HP, with both Cruz and Fiorina having terrible records in their highest professional capacities as noted earlier. 

Having seemingly settled on Trump, the Republican Party and its voters deserve little credit for anything these days, and yet, at least in picking Trump, they can arguably said to not have picked the very worst out of seventeen candidates (even if he is still pretty awful); at least they had the sense to pick neither Cruz nor Fiorina, who have the dubious distinctions of being two of the only candidates that can be said to be worse than Donald Trump.

Goodbye Ted and Carly (For Now)

AP

Unfortunately, the shamelessness and egomaniacal delusion displayed by both Ted Cruz and Carly Fiorina means we would only be unbelievably fortunate for this failed ticket to be their political obituaries; no, their incredible narcissism that flies in the face of their terrible records is a strong indicator that we have, unfortunately, not seen the curtain call of their political theatrics in pursuit of offices for which they are most assuredly unfit.  And at least in that regard, they are in good company with many of their Republican colleagues, Trump included.

Here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg.  If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to him! Feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981)

 Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse February 4, 2016   

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) February 4th, 2016

AP

AMMAN —Wow, Iowa.  Thanks for making everyone’s job harder…

The scenario that would have virtually sealed the Republican nomination for Trump was a clear Trump win, with a big gap between him and Cruz, and a big gap between Cruz and Rubio.  The scenario that would have virtually sealed the nomination for Clinton would have been a clear Clinton win by more than just a few points.

Instead, we got scenarios that provided for about as unclear a nomination process as possible.  When I wrote earlier that America was suffering from political chaos and wild-card candidates, I sure wasn’t wrong about that, even if I incorrectly predicted Iowa to go for Trump (see my explanation at the bottom).  Much of the discussion below relies on these entrance polls (you can also see Democrats’ and Republicans’ info separately).

The Democrats:

On the Democratic side, both surviving candidates have reason to feel good, but also cause for concern, though Clinton is still easily the favorite.

AP/John Locher

Clinton: The Good:

A win is still a win, no matter how close.  Just ask President Al Gore.  As explained earlier, except for Vermont, Bernie’s home state, and New Hampshire, no other state was more suited politically and demographically for a Bernie victory than Iowa, which also shared this position with Massachusetts and is is the only of these states outside of New England, Bernie’s backyard.  Clinton’s well-run campaign competed with a well-run Sanders campaign on territory exceptionally tailor-made for a Bernie win and eked out a win for Clinton.  Her organization was, therefore, slightly better and succeeded in turning out more Clinton supporters by the slimmest of margins than her rival’s campaign.  After New Hampshire, almost every single state will be more favorable to her, so if she was able to do as well as she did last night in Iowa, she has little reason to panic, even if she loses in New Hampshire by a wide margin.  Clinton won more delegates from the Iowa caucus process, both at the state level in the number of delegates Iowa’s caucus process will send to the national convention, so for all the false talk of a “virtual tie,” Clinton is indisputably a winner, if only by the narrowest margin in the history of Iowa caucusing.

Clinton The Bad:

Clinton won, but it would be virtually impossible to have won by less.  A sizable win would likely have been a knockout blow against Sanders in the first round; that Bernie did so well and that the two were are virtually tied is most certainly going to be part of the narrative going into Bernie’s backyard, New Hampshire, where she is trailing Bernie currently by huge margins.  That is a part of the narrative that Team Clinton would have preferred not to have had to grapple with at all.  If Clinton wants to keep Sanders from having a shot at broadening his thus-far-narrow-support to other groups and to keep him from having a chance at chipping into her sizable lead in South Carolina and in other important states after New Hampshire, she will have to at least partially close the massive gap between her and Bernie in New Hampshire.  In particular, Clinton would have to hope that any major negative revelations about her e-mail situation do not occur at a time when she needs to dominate in certain states like South Carolina and others going forward, and though it is unlikely such revelations will unfold, it is not impossible that this would happen.

Sanders: The Good

Sanders has a lot to be proud of: his insurgent campaign in a matter of months came from being extremely far behind Clinton in Iowa to coming painfully close to beating her.  Bernie will be getting a lot of attention and money as a result of his strong performance there, more than enough to keep him in the race for a while and possibly as long as he wants to stay in since it is likely he will win New Hampshire also and will thus have a steady stream of positive coverage and donations coming in for weeks, enabling him to remain a presence for the foreseeable future.  Bernie also clearly dominates among young voters by an overwhelming margin, and his remarkable ability to bring new young voters into the process is also something that all Democrats can celebrate if those voters are willing to be team players in the long-run and are not just “Bernie-or-bust.”  Whatever the result of the nomination process, Bernie has helped the liberal wing of the Democratic Party roar back to life in a way not seen in a generation even if they still remain a minority within the party; because of Bernie, their voice has been heard loud and clear and they can be pleased with their candidate and their movement even for just that.

Sanders: The Bad:

If Bernie’s candidacy was going to have any serious viability, he should have been able to beat Clinton in a state that is basically tied for being the third-most favorable state in the nation to him based on political and demographic identity.  That he did not increases the already substantial doubts about his ability to be a viable candidate and to win over significant numbers of people who are not white liberals.  Bernie’s performance in Iowa does not bode well for the prospects for his campaign after New Hampshire.  If anything, it suggests that Iowa and New Hampshire will be the peak of his performance and will likely be the only time throughout the race he is even close to Hillary in the delegate count.  Bernie also did terribly with older voters, who tend to be more reliable voters than younger ones.  Bernie also promised his supporters that he would win if there was a high turnout, and there was a high turnout, but he lost, even if barely.  Finally, with O’Malley mercifully withdrawing, there will be much more time for public scrutiny of Sanders, especially during debates, a scrutiny to which he has not yet been subjected and with which Clinton is very familiar.

Verdict:

Both Hillary and Bernie did well enough to be able to hold their heads high and not be dogged by a negative narrative going forward.  Bernie performed admirably against a formidable foe in Hillary Clinton, but unless something drastic happens, Hillary’s far stronger support among moderates and minorities means that Sanders has a statistically verysmall chance of winning the nomination.  His best bet would have been a sizable victory in in Iowa followed by the same in New Hampshire; that would have given Bernie a dominant and overwhelmingly positive narrative for at least three weeks in February, and Clinton would have been dogged by a negative, losing narrative.  Since that has not happened, the long-game does not look good for Sanders. Bernie should win in New Hampshire, a state in his own backyard and with similarities to Vermont’s electorate, but if his margin of victory shrinks significantly between where the polls have him now and where the results have him Tuesday, that would be the equivalent of his political obituary as it allows Clinton to credibly sell a narrative of momentum; if Bernie only wins by a slight margin or somehow manages to lose to Clinton (the latter seeming not likely looking at current polls), expect a very clear public narrative that he is done as a candidate.

The Republicans:

On the Republican side, the results of Iowa may not (as usual) be terribly indicative of what is to come.  Apart from the death of some of the bottom-tier campaigns, the race changes little for the rest of the candidates, with the possible exception of Rubio.

AP/Reuters 

Cruz: The Good

Without a doubt, Ted Cruz surprised a lot of people.  He put together a top notch organization and out-campaigned and out-politicked his opponents, and had one of the most efficient ratios for money spent per vote.  Even when a national audience and the national media questioned some of his decisions, they played well with Iowans.  Cruz also managed to win when virtually everyone—his rivals, Republican elites, and the media—were questioning his record and behavior.  He even managed to win with two scandals relating to his personal loans and his eligibility to run for presidentdogging him.  To be able to come out on top with so many negatives weighing him down is, objectively, a remarkable feat.  Cruz also dominated among conservatives.  In addition, unlike recent past Iowa caucus winners, Cruz has a solid organization and is well funded, and this status is only likely to improve as a result of his win; he has already raised $3 million since his victory.  He also won his key demographic—Evangelicals—by 12 percentage-points, getting 34% to Trump’s 22%.  In addition, Cruz was able to bring in a substantial number of new people into the process: 23% of all first-time caucus-goers, second only to Trump.  He also did the best by far with Iowans on the issue of terrorism, and also led on the issue of government spending.

Cruz: The Bad

Make no mistake about it, Cruz’s victory was a dirty one.  He doubled down on insulting “New York values” and it played well with enough voters In Iowa; he mailed out deceitful, lie-filled flyers to scare and shame his supporters into caucusing; his campaign even falsely suggested that Dr. Ben Carson had dropped out of the race while the caucuses were still happening, drawing the rare anger of Dr. Carson directly onto Cruz; and he played and pandered as much as possible to religion in a nation that is supposed to have secular governance.  At the same time, Cruz only got about a third of the Evangelical vote, more than any other candidate, but such a divided Evangelical constituency is something that is a troubling sign for a candidate who is banking his entire campaign on dominating this group.  Cruz also did terribly with moderates.  All of this suggests that Cruz’s ability to broaden his support and to win in states that are not heavily conservative and/or religious is weak, making him a weak candidate and a possible one-state wonder (or just a few at most).  He is also now one of everyone else’s biggest targets after his win in Iowa (and was so was even in the week before), and it is extremely unlikely that Cruz will be able to build momentum that will help him in New Hampshire, as there are very few Evangelicals there and it is not terribly conservative.  It is very possible, maybe even likely, that he will come in third or worse in New Hampshire, something that would weaken him going into the primaries in the South, where he needs a strong showing for his chances of winning to survive.

Trump: The Good

With a candidate who operated in the manner that Trump did, it was inevitable that so many of his rivals and in the media would pummel him for coming in second.  But Trump has more to be pleased about than should worry him.  For one thing, Trump spent less money than any other candidate per vote in Iowa and still came in second.  He also spent significantly less time in Iowa than Cruz, Rubio, Carson, and other rivals, meaning there is easy room for improvement, plus he still did better than all those candidates except for Cruz.  Likewise, he kind of winged it when it came to his on-the-ground campaign organization in Iowa, and still managed to come in second, and he has time to adjust tactics.  And, like Cruz and third-place Rubio, he won thousands more votes than any candidate had ever won in an Iowa caucus before 2016.  That means that even half-assing it, Trump was able to bring in record support and hold his own in a crowded field against everyone else except for Cruz.  Trump also managed to bring in more new caucus-goers than anyone else by far, 31% to Cruz’s 23%.  Furthermore, from the beginning, Iowa was described as territory naturally hostile to Trump: it was rural and super religious and Trump was big-city and hardly known for his religiosity, like Cruz and Carson; yet somehow, Trump was able to only lose the state by less than 4%.  In addition, he did well with Evangelicals, taking 22%, more than anyone else except Cruz.  Moving into much more favorable territory, he can boast that he dominated moderates to New Hampshire, a moderate state where he is leading all other candidates handily.  Trump’s support also remained the most steady of any candidate, with by far the highest portion of supporters who had decided earlier on their candidate rather than later.  Additionally, Trump was the candidate who by far dominated on the issue of immigration and was most thought of as the candidate who could get stuff done.  Also, to people paying attention to the details, Trump has demonstrated growth as a candidate, able to be more restrained when he chooses to be, and also showed he would not tolerate a level of public disrespect from Fox News when he boycotted the last debate, a sign of toughness many Republicans nationally will appreciate regardless of how it played out in Iowa.  Trump has created a national movement largely built on media exposure and has barely begun to bring any of his substantial personal resources to bear in this race, and a second-place finish in Iowa will hardly mean the disappearance of this movement as he campaigns in New Hampshire, where he still has a huge lead.

Trump: The Bad:

A large portion of Trump’s campaign narrative that is fueling his success and dominance in media coverage involves the two pillars that he is 1.) leading in almost every poll and 2.) is, therefore, “winning.”  Well, both those pillars took significant hits with the Iowa loss, but while the idea that these two pillars have crumbled and that the Trump Tower of Babble is going to imminently collapse, is premature, it puts the candidate in an unfamiliar and uncomfortable position.  Being a “loser” in Iowa is still not where Trump wanted to be.  In particular, his campaign came off as not particularly organized or intense on the ground there.  Among voters who made their minds up in the throughout January, Trump significantly underperformed compared to both Cruz and Rubio, suggesting Trump may have problems winning further support among undecideds beyond those who have already declared in favor of him.  He also did terrible in the metric of voters feeling that a candidate shared their values.  Now, the pressure on Trump to do well in New Hampshire is the highest pressure he has yet faced as a candidate.  A stumble in New Hampshire might not be fatal for Trump’s campaign, but there is a good chance it would knock him out of the top spot nationally and threaten his top spots in key winner-take-all states like South Carolina and Florida.

Rubio: The Good

Nobody exceeded polling and expectations in Iowa more than Sen. Marco Rubio.  Before, he seemed to be the distant-third to Ted Cruz and only marginally ahead of Dr. Carson, with multiple other candidates chomping at the bit to break into his lad; with his strong third-place showing only about 1% behind Trump, he is in a position to potentially dominate all the other remaining candidates after Trump and Cruz and to turn the election into a virtual, three-way fight between himself and Trump and Cruz; in such a contest Cruz would almost certainly struggle nationally and Rubio would essentially be in a two-way race with Trump.  At the very least, this positions him to be a favorite for a vice presidential slot and/or to be the heir-apparent to run again for president as a favored candidate four years from now.  Not bad at all for a young, freshman senator from Florida.  In many ways, his rise is not dissimilar to Barack Obama’s: both were ethnic-minority state legislators who won a U.S. Senate seat and then ran for president during their first senate term, though apart from that the two men are very different people.  Rubio has indicators coming from Iowa that he can also boast of: he did respectably well with the key Evangelical demographic (with 21%, almost as well as Trump, who came in only behind Cruz), and was by far seen as the most electable candidate; perhaps most surprisingly, he led among all candidates, even Trump, on the issue of jobs/the economy.  He also did the best with independents, and there are lot of them in New Hampshire. 

Heading into the New Hampshire primary, he is pulling in a lot of cash and garnering a lot of positive media coverage, especially from conservative media.  The wind is definitely in his sails nationally more than anyone else at this particular moment, even allowing for his third-place finish in Iowa.  In particular, he can be happy that his two biggest rivals, Trump and Cruz, are focusing most of their attacks on each other heading into the next Republican Debate and New Hampshire’s vote on Tuesday.  Without a doubt, Iowa made Rubio The Establishment/”moderate” candidate to beat, giving him a boost at the best possible time for his candidacy, which thus far has failed to take off and has not gained traction despite his being a darling of much of the conservative media.  If Rubio takes off in any way going forward, his third-place finish just slightly behind Trump will be seen as the moment when it all began.  As it is, there are already signs that he may be displacing Cruz for the #2 spot in New Hampshire, which is exactly where the Rubio campaign wants to be. 

Rubio: The Bad:

With success comes greater risk: Rubio will be walking into New Hampshire with a huge target on his back and it remains to be seen if he can take the heat.  He remains incredibly vulnerable on immigration, an issue of primary concern for many Republican primary voters, and remains vulnerable in terms of his lack of experience when tangling with Bush, Christie (who is now calling him “the boy in the bubble”), and Kasich, all of whom seem ready to go after him in New Hampshire (especially the first two).  He is also taking serious heat from Trump and Cruz, and New Hampshire may very well elevate someone other than him to either be in the spot to challenge Trump or perhaps only to weaken Rubio’s chances. On average, he will likely be the main target in the next debate, and Rubio has not yet faced anything so fierce in this contest.  His extreme views on abortion are also likely to hurt him in a state like New Hampshire.  Rubio has at least as many signs to worry him in New Hampshire as he has to be happy, which is why he may be campaigning so cautiously there.  New Hampshire will be a real test for Rubio’s viability as a candidate.  If he does not finish second there, it will be difficult to see him having a real shot at challenging Trump, let alone winning the nomination, despite him being a new favorite of The Establishment and the conservative media.

AP 

Rest of the Pack and Verdict:

For the Republicans, Trump is still likely to win handily in New Hampshire.  If this happens, things do not look good for the non-Trumpers as the race heads to South Carolina.  It will be very hard for Cruz to finish in the top two spots in New Hampshire, and he may well finish lower than even third, as what played well in Iowa will not play well with New Hampshire’s different crowd.  His best hope for remaining viable is for his non-Trump rivals to keep splitting support fairly evenly among themselves so that none of them can rise to prominence and displace him.  Rubio could rise to be second behind Trump, but the three governors—Bush, Christie, and Kasich—could do some damage to and I believe they will go a long way to exposing his weaknesses as a candidate and that he will not do as well in New Hampshire as some are hoping he will.  If this happens, who emerges strongest in New Hampshire between Bush, Christie, and Kasich?  Having just lost Huckabee, Santorum (winners of the 2008 and 2012 Iowa caucuses, respectively, a fact testifies remarkable to the increasing volatility of modern politics), and Rand Paul, who will be next to drop out?  Bush still has a ton of money, so it seems there would be more pressure on Kasich and Christie to drop out if they do not perform well in New Hampshire.  Fiorina is irrelevant in New Hampshire and nationally as well, but as a millionaire and the only woman running on the Republican side, she has reasons to stay in the race to at least make a solid audition for being the vice presidential pick.  Carson is irrelevant in New Hampshire but is still a strong fourth nationally and has plenty of money in the bank to continue his campaign.  His continued presence hurts Cruz the most, who depends heavily on Evangelical support, and Carson remains a darling of Evangelicals nationally.  Expect Carson to be just… there, and possibly until the end of the race.

Overall Verdict:

Iowa is not a state that is representative of America as a whole, and, more often than not, Iowa fails to pick the winning candidate on the Republican side.  To be sure, candidates at the top should not expect similar results and/or similar margins in New Hampshire.  Trump and Bernie are clear favorites, but a win is a much bigger deal for Trump than for Sanders.

*****

Epilogue: Why I Got Iowa Wrong for Trump

If you read one of my last articles, you know that I wrote it was a pretty sure thing that Trump would win Iowa.  Without apologizing, I want to explain to my readers where I erred and why I was wrong:

1.) I assumed that billionaire Trump would not skimp on organizing a campaign in Iowa, even if last minute, and that he would dump a lot of money into the state in the final week. I just assumed that the people around him, and that The Donald himself, would not be so cavalier in Iowa.  However, those who dismiss Trump as “stupid” neglect his overall spectacular management career.  I am not saying that I lean towards what I am about to say, but I also would not be surprised if Trump and his people didn’t mind risking a close Iowa loss to seeing all his rivals tear each other apart because of the results.  Right now the focus is all on taking Cruz and Rubio down, and a win in an atypical and small state like Iowa, in the end, is not much of a threat to Trump’s candidacy, especially since Cruz was the victor.  If Rubio was trailing him, and not Cruz, in the final days in Iowa, I suspect that Trump & Co. would have had a different approach.  So perhaps this is a sly, calculated plan to elevate Cruz and thus make Trump look less extreme and see Cruz and his rivals damage each other to Trump’s benefit.  I’m not saying I think this is the case, but that, again, it wouldn’t surprise me if it was.  After all, this almost certainly had to have been part of the calculus in Trump’s skipping the final debate in Iowa. Either way, Trump is an amateur at political campaigning, but he is learning fast and on-the-fly, and don’t assume he will make the same mistakes with his ground game in New Hampshire and other states as he did in Iowa.

2.) I mistakenly (and naively) assumed that Cruz’s dirty tactics and attacks on Trump’s “New York values” would backfire and help to keep him from winning Iowa; while I am right that they are certainly backfiring on him on a national level, they clearly helped him in the closing days in Iowa. I assumedhis dislikability on the national stage would spill over to the local level in Iowa, and did not give the specific nature of Iowans and the state of Iowa enough consideration when I ended up deciding to favor Trump as much as I did and to not favor Cruz as much as I did.  I will admit that I personally find Cruz the most detestable of all candidates, and while I never consciously allowed that to affect how I went about my research, in the future I will check myself a bit more when analyzing him and his campaign to guard against any subconscious factors.

3.) In general, Iowa is difficult to predict; in fact, it is the most difficult state to predict, especially since it holds its contests as wacky caucuses, not simpler, superior, and more democratic primaries. The oft-cited gold-standard Des Moines Register poll, run by polling virtuoso Ann Selzer, was wrong this time on the Republican side; it has only been wrong one other time from 1988 until now.  One of the problems is that this poll and most of the other final polls were not conducted in the final days before Iowa, so they missed a late break of momentum for Rubio and other shifts; there was also a surprisingly high Evangelical turnout and over 1/3 of Iowa caucus-goers made their decisions in the final few days and were thus missed by most pollsters.  All of these reasons contributed to why the polling in Iowa did not reflect the final result, though it probably did reflect the mood when the polls were actually taken.  If the election were held a few days earlier, my prediction, and the picture painted by most pollsters, would likely have held.

Overall, it was a good experience for me.  I had a feeling Hillary would beat Bernie, but hesitated in making an “official” prediction since it was so close.  I am happy to say that I can learn from my mistakes on the Republican side and hope my errors are understood by my faithful readers.  I am confident I can do better in the future (my non-public predictive record in past elections state-by-state has been pretty solid) and hope you will stay tuned as I continue my coverage of America’s 2016 elections, as well as other topics.  Also, bonus points to anyone who gets The Hobbit reference…

Here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg.  If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to him! Feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981)

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse January 18, 2016   

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) January 18th, 2016

AMMAN — Right away, this latest Republican debate started on a ridiculous note, a note it sustained throughout the entirety of its proceedings.  Moderator Maria Bartiromo asked Ted Cruz—now in second place behind perpetual front-runner Donald Trump—a question about jobs; instead, he began by answering with a monologue about ten U.S. sailors that it was reported were being detained by Iran at the time; stating that:

“Today, many of us picked up our newspapers, and we were horrified to see the sight of 10 American sailors on their knees, with their hands on their heads.  In that State of the Union, President Obama didn’t so much as mention the 10 sailors that had been captured by Iran. President Obama’s preparing to send $100 billion or more to the Ayatollah Khamenei. And I’ll tell you, it was heartbreaking.  But the good news is the next commander-in-chief is standing on this stage.”  (That remains to be seen, Ted)

Cruz then made a meaningless and ludicrous pledge: “And I give you my word, if I am elected president, no service man or service woman will be forced to be on their knees, and any nation that captures our fighting men will feel the full force and fury of the United States of America,” as if any president is capable of preventing any U.S. military personnel from being captured.  He looked like someone who had spent hours and hours and hours standing in front of a mirror practicing his “presidential” face to use when saying these macho but empty crowd-pleasing lines.  More than anything else, Cruz comes off looking like an actor from a for-cable B-quality action movie when he tried to give the audience his “I will kill terrorists face!” and I am not sure what is more pathetic: that this politician knows such theatrics will work so well with the simpletons of his party’s base, or that so many of those in his party find this appealing and have catapulted him to the Republican race’s #2 spot.

But most farcically ridiculous of all is that even as Cruz uttered these words, what had not yet been announced was that the sailors had already been released after unintentionally wading into Iranian waters.  Iran very quickly released the sailors not long after their detention after working out the details with the Obama Administration, and then Iran released five other Americas just hours before the nuclear deal between Iran, the U.S., and five other major world powers (UK, France, Germany, Russia, China) officially began being implemented whom Iran had detained or imprisoned.  What Cruz and his colleagues on the stage would never admit but what is undeniable is that the releases were almost certainly made easier, perhaps even made possible, because of the nuclear deal—which has opened much stronger lines of communication between the U.S. and Iran—that all of the Republicans are so strongly against.  So, here we have a bunch of people on the Republican debate stage who would have prevented this nuclear deal from occurring and most of whom vow to rescind it, which means fifteen Americans would almost certainly still be in Iranian custody; here we have Ted Cruz threatening military action when diplomacy more than sufficed and making an outlandish promise that American servicemen would never be captured under his watch, a promise that is impossible to keep. Then Ohio Gov. John Kasich said some stuff that didn’t make him sound like a crazy person, some of which sounded downright reasonable; nationally, he is polling at roughly 2.3% by Real Clear Politics’ average of the most recent polls, giving him close to a zero-percent chance of winning the nomination.

Yep, this all basically tells you everything you need to know about Republicans, the Republican Party, and Thursday night’s Republican debate.  I could stop here, but there is so much more to discuss.

I will admit that this was the most enjoyable Republican debate since the first one, largely because there were many fights between the candidates.  There were zingers abound.  Multiple people attacked Cruz and Sen. Marco Rubio, as was to be expected since those two senators are between all the other candidates and being within striking distance of Trump, still reigning supreme.

It didn’t take too long for the burgeoning issue of whether or not Cruz is constitutionally eligible to run for president—the whole “natural born Citizen” issue arising from Article II Section 1 of the Constitution—since Cruz was born in Canada.  Cruz dismissed the issue with a technique he would use to dismiss any and all attacks or tough questions about him or his record: he accused those of bringing it up as playing politics or playing into the narrative of “the mainstream media,” which played well with the Republican-base debate audience but will get him nowhere in a general election.  Trump was given a chance to opine on this issue after Cruz had tried to swat it away, and to Trump’s credit (that is not a phrase you will see me write often), Trump did not back down, but repeated the very sound points that 1.) there is no consensus and that legal opinion is divided and that 2.) it is better for Republicans to handle and settle this now than allow Democrats to use it as an issue in the general election. 

Cruz supporters booed loudly during this explanation but Trump stayed strong and ended his points with loud applause from others in the crowd.  It is nice to see that Trump’s birther antics can be effective on both sides of the aisle, as not only was Trump able to help fuel a cloud of (inane nonsensical) doubt around Obama concerning his eligibility to be president and his citizenship years ago, but now Trump has been able to help fuel a similar (more legitimate) cloud of doubt around Cruz and his eligibility.  I plan to address this whole eligibility question in a separate article, but for now, it is suffice to say that Cruz’s attempt to push this issue aside at the debate will have failed miserably in the eyes of far too many people in his own party, let alone non-Republicans, as even before this debate one of every four Republicans felt Cruz’s Canadian birth location disqualifies him from running for president; Cruz’s defense, and Trump’s attack, will hardly see subsequent polls produce a lower measure on this metric and it will dog Cruz throughout the primaries. 

New York Daily News/Reuters

Trump also got in another response to Cruz that, I am ashamed to admit, I thought was great: I consider myself a New Yorker, so perhaps I am biased, but I thought that when Cruz stood by his “New York values” comment, Trump really did a great job of making Cruz look “callous” and hollow.  Frankly, it was Trump’s best moment in any debate as far as I’m concerned; with just that one moment, Trump may have increased his support even more so.  While Cruz cheaply and repeatedly plays regional politics, Trump, as far as I can tell, has been careful to build his appeal all over the country.  Additionally, Cruz’s blame-the-media mantra as a response to a question about his recent loan scandals (he failed to properly disclose about $1 million in personal loans when he ran for the Senate, including a major loan from Goldman Sachs, where his wife worked at the time and still works) also, I believe, will fall flat with many primary voters.

Trump was not the only one to go after Cruz: Rubio and he also sparred on immigration.  Cruz effectively painted what he termed “that Rubio-Schumer amnesty bill”—simply noting Rubio’s bipartisan effort is enough to be an effective attack in this setting—while Rubio accused Cruz of flip-flopping (an understatement, as Cruz might have engaged in one of the most carefully planned, most shameless and calculated lies in American political history in an effort to play both sides of the immigration debate and to leave his options open depending on where the political winds and popular mood shifted throughout his quest for power, as William Saletan of Slate shows in his epic and irrefutable takedown and its accompanying timeline; I’ve written before that Cruz is undeniably a disingenuous charlatan and demagogue, but now we can demonstrably prove that Cruz is an “spectacular liar,” thanks to Saletan).  Cruz’s response to Rubio was to jokingly compliment him on being able to recite his team’s opposition research on him, and Rubio incredulously interjected “No, it’s your record!” back at Cruz, what I felt was one of his best lines of the night. 

Cruz sure talked a lot (more than anyone else) and had plenty of chances to make his points and be heard, but did little to reassure when he played defense

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, within striking distance of emerging as a strong second-tier candidate behind Trump, also got a good swipe in on Rubio, noting how hypocritical Rubio was at an earlier debate for chiding Bush for attacking him, Rubio had said, to help his poll numbers, when it seemed that Rubio was doing the same on the campaign trail when it came to Christie:

“I stood on the stage and watched Marco, and rather indignantly, look at Governor Bush and say, someone told you that because we’re running for the same office, that criticizing me will get you to that office.  It appears that the same someone has been whispering in old Marco’s ear too.  And so the indignation that you carry on, some of the stuff, you have to also own, then.”

Additionally, Christie contrasted his executive experience as a governor with the “talking” senators.  Christie also often appeared more adult that the candidates who were bickering but also managed some good zingers throughout the night that were well-received by the crowd.  Christie might have helped himself a bit, but he has never been terribly popular with Republicans nationally. And yet, the type of Republicans who could really help him—the independent, moderate-minded New Hampshire ones—might see his stronger series of performances after this one as reason enough to move to him from Kasich, who is less of a solid performer on debate stages even as he is ones of the most sensible candidates (Christie had several memorably positive moments in this debate, while it  is hard to identify any specific moments where Kasich could be said to have possibly increased his support).  Still, Kasich seems to be running a good campaignin New Hampshire.  They are both competing to be able to have some sort of result in New Hampshire that they can use to build momentum, and it is likely that only one of these two will be able to do so there.  After that, it becomes difficult for both as they are more or less Northerners in the eyes of Southerners who will be competing in a number of key primaries in Southern states, where they have almost no support.

Rubio was not bad, but was certainly not great.  He opened his comments with a deceitful, slanderous, already debunked attack on Hillary re: Benghazi, as well as with other spurious, empty attacks on her re: foreign policy, and later, even Fox-News conservative moderator Neil Cavuto pushed back against Rubio’s ludicrous, unsubstantiated claims that Obama “would” “confiscate every gun in America” and “get rid of the Second Amendment” if he “could.” Of course these played over well with the crowd and the base, but effective attacks from Cruz and Christie limited his ability to shine and he still struggles in trying to break out.

Jeb Bush, well, poor Jeb: he is campaigning much, much better now than he was this summer but it is probably too little, too late.  He spoke out passionately, yet again, against banning all Muslims from coming into America.  His content is better than most of the others’ on stage, but his delivery is still just a bit off even as it has gotten better.  It makes sense for him to stick around since he has so much money and thus a realistic chance to exert some influence on the race, the party, and the GOP platform, but as far as winning his party’s nomination, we may as well be writing his political campaign’s obituary… And yet, a glimmer of hope: the most recent South Carolina poll has him third, climbing back into relevancy; perhaps his money is paying off? And while it’s hard to see how he make up the huge gap between him and Trump there in one month, that bit of good news coupled with Cruz’s recent scandals is the only thing preventing me from declaring his campaign dead in the water.

And Dr. Carson?  Well, the oddballs who still support him likely didn’t see anything to make then run away from Carson in this debate, but it is certain that nobody else saw anything from him to bring them over to Carson.  In fact, he may as well have not even been there for all the good it did him; he himself joked, when asked his first question, that he was about to fall asleep, and frankly, I can’t see how that would have made any difference whatsoever on his impact in the debate.

Part of me missed Rand Paul, but I’m not a foaming-at-the-mouth GOP-baser who was never going to support him in the first place.  I did not miss Fiorina from the main stage at all: as I have written before, her business record is horrendous and she is a master of distortion while she also plays the gender card as cheaply as I’ve seen anyone ever play it in politics.  The only person who sounds as rehearsed as her is Cruz.  I’d love to see them both marginalized for the sake of the health of our democracy, but at the same time, a Cruz-Fiorina ticket (which is, to me, extremely unlikely) would be a dream come true for the Democratic Party.

So what happened?  Trump, Cruz, and Christie all had strong moments, but Cruz took some damage while the other two seemed pretty unscathed.  Rubio appeared competent and confident but was not the standout he needed to be even as he also took damage, while Carson and Kasich might as well not have been there for all their presence did to actually help them.  Bush either fits in with Carson or Kasich, or, if his campaign has a chance of being resuscitated, he at least didn’t do anything to have its life support cut off, but he remains a longshot unless either Christie or Kasich drop out after New Hampshire and endorse him (a lot of ifs there, and both are running ahead of him there), and even then would be nowhere near a favorite.

My prediction is that Trump—who could be said to be the big winner in this debate—stays on top and gains nationally and in Iowa and New Hampshire at Cruz’s expense, though I’m not sure how much.  It is hard to say whether Cruz will yield his spot to Rubio in Iowa or stay strong there and within striking distance of Trump.  It’s hard to say if Rubio goes up or down, and who gains at his expense if he goes down (Christie?  Kasich?  Bush?).  Maybe some evangelicals worried about Cruz might even flock back to Carson, though not because of anything Carson himself did.  Are either Trump, Cruz, or Rubio vulnerable enough to provide an opening for anyone else?  I have a feeling that those who left Carson won’t come back, but then again, Iowa does have a lot of evangelicals…  The Christie-Kasich dynamic in New Hampshire is interesting, so it will be telling to see where they move in the polls there between now and Iowa, where neither of them have a chance for any kind of a respectable showing; their hopes lie in New Hampshire.  As for Cruz, I think he absolutely needs a strong showing in Iowa to have a shot; if he does not finish in at least second place, evangelicals in Southern States will likely drift to other candidates.  If not Trump or Carson, does this mean a surprise, zombie-like surge from Huckabee or Santorum?  Fiorina is done as presidential material, but she could be quite an attractive vice-presidential candidate so expect her to stick around as long as she possible can.  All in all, lots of possibilities here.

In the end, though, I think this debate will remembered as the moment when Trump successfully fought off Cruz and also as the moment when Cruz entered peaking and left on the decline, and though I wouldn’t rule him out of Iowa yet, my prediction is Trump wins Iowa or virtually ties with Cruz and wins big in New Hampshire even if he doesn’t win Iowa.  Cruz’s scandals have the potential to really hurt him if he continues to trot out the garbage responses he gave to them in this debate. Trump is also way up in South Carolina, so the chance for someone else to derail Trump is now and after this debate, it is going to me much more difficult for Cruz to be that person, and right now there is not anyone else even close to derailing trump, as I can’t see Rubio and don’t see anyone else succeeding in that task, either, even if “The Establishment” is coalesces behind someone.  Keep in mind that more Republicans now see Trump as someone they could support being their nominee, a clear majority and dramatically way more than this summer. 

As I wrote back in early August, don’t dismiss The Donald.

What else does all this clearly show?  That the Democratic Party is the only mature, sane major party in America.

Other GOP debate coverage from this author:

December Republican Debate Exposed GOP As Joke on National Security

Republican “Debate” Circus Round 2: Trump vs. Fiorina and Why the Kids’-Table Debate Was Better

The Republican Field & Debate: Substance vs. Style: What Trumps What?

Here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg.  If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to him! Feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, andTwitter(you can follow him there at @bfry1981)

 Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse January 16, 2016  

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) January 16th, 2016

Ethan Miller/Getty Images

AMMAN — I apologize to my readers that this has not been put out sooner, but life, the holidays, all sorts of things can get in the way. Yet the serious issues raised by the mid-December Republican debate have not gone away, and are still just as relevant then as they are now, thus, this analysis, while a month after the event, is still relevant to the election and to the issues of security and foreign policy. The security-oriented debate was perhaps the most banal and predictable Republican debate yet. Most candidates said nothing novel or new, and simply repeated soundbites that have grown to be as repetitive as they are hollow and hyperbolic. On issues of international security, the Republicans are as loud as they are on any issue, and provide as stark a contrast to the Democrats as they do on any other issue, too. It is worth taking a brief look at the content of the debate (though almost nothing new was said), and then to contrast what leading Republicans’ present vs. what the Democratic front-runners present.

Gov. Jeb Bush competently called for safe zones and a no fly zone and spoke out against Trump’s Islamophobic ideas repeatedly. You almost had to feel bad for him: one of the least extreme candidates on the Republican side with roughly the most relevant experience has failed to launch repeatedly and is going nowhere fast. Sen. Rand Paul thoughtfully noted that America must be restrained, especially with Russia and notions of regime change, so as not to make things worse, and spoke out against surveillance. Gov. Kasich sounded moderate (except when he called for a Gulf War I-style invasion to take out ISIS), but said nothing terribly memorable or impactful. After these moments, apart from a somewhat interesting kerfuffle over surveillance, most of the rest of the debate was just hot-air bombast. And all these candidates, who are among the most substantive of the field depending on the issue, are all doing terribly in the polls (except for Kasich in NH, who is polling respectably in NH relative to everyone but Trump) and don’t seem poised to win anything.

Now, for the leaders: Dr. Carson just seemed to be the Donny of the debate: out of his element (what is surprising is that so many people don’t realize just how out of his element he is). I recognized him as woefully unpreparedfor prime-time as of the first Republican debate, and though his star has faded from his peak at the #2 spot behind Trump, I still feel Carson’s popularity with so many Republicans is a justified basis for my sustained contempt for those very Republicans, and by contempt I am referring to my feelings for them supporting someone who is so clueless when it comes to policy and politics.

As for the rest of the candidates, they pretty much tried their best to do their best John Wayne imitations, because in their minds, complicated geopolitics and dynamic terrorist movements operating in complex social, political, ethnic, and religious spheres call for Hollywood-inspired, simplistic solutions embodied by tough-talk soundbites and cowboy posing (their elevation of Reagan to the level of semi-deity should leave no doubt about this). These other candidates—Trump, Sen. Cruz, Sen. Rubio, Fiorina, and Gov. Christie (the first three now representing the top three candidates nationally)—almost farcically and comically competed as to who could sound the toughest against the terrorists. “KILL!” “DESTROY!” “CARPET-BOMB!” “HUNT DOWN!”” blah blah blah…

One of the most nonsensical moments came when Cruz, who had earlier recklessly said he wanted to find out “if sand can glow in the dark,” was asked if he would “carpet-bomb” Raqqa, ISIS’s “caliphate’s” “capital,” even though there were hundreds of thousands of civilians there; his response was that he would not bomb a city but, instead, would bomb where the ISIS soldiers were (HINT: THEY ARE IN RAQQA THE CITY, TED!). Yes, just another moment when the rhetoric was exposed as wholly inappropriate to the situation, and yet, almost invariably, such extremist statements were met with wild applause from the Republicans in the audience.  Fiorina, lying and misleading as much as ever, made it clear that she was an expert on national security because she named the Sixth Fleet… by name! Rubio sounded completely foolish when he (sensibly) noted that the main fight against ISIS had to be carried out by Sunni Muslims in the Middle East, then just moments later criticized Obama and Clinton for “leading from behind” and “outsource[ing] foreign policy,” apparently oblivious to the stupendous contradiction involved. So even though Rubio was often making more sense than the other leading candidates, he had plenty of moments when matched them in ridiculousness. Yes, these candidates stumbled over each other trying to sound as macho as possible in order to win the support of their childish Republicans base.

At this point, it’s useful to be reminded of some clear contrasts between the Republicans and the Democrats on foreign policy (especially for all the fools who claim there is no difference between the two parties):

1.) Hillary Clinton, the democratic candidate with the most relevant experience and the most moderate positions, is the front-runner, and has at least a 90-95% chance of winning the nomination according to statistics prodigy and super-accurate election predictor Nate Silver (he got every single state’s choice in the 2012 presidential election correct in his predictions); on the Republican side, the candidates with the least experience and most extreme positions are leading and, combined, dwarf the support of experienced, more reasoned moderates.

2.) For all their tough talk, top Republican candidates have offered very little specifically that would do now differently than Obama; they say they want to bomb ISIS, but Obama is doing that; several say they want push Sunni Muslims to lead the fight against ISIS with the promise of more aid if they do so, but Obama is doing that; they say they want to arm the Kurds, but Obama is doing that. The main differences amount to how they would talk about ISIS (more John Wayne/Reagan-esque posing line delivery!) and what they would do in terms of refugee entry into the U.S. All this more or less applies to the situation with Russia and Ukraine, too: you can count on Republicans to come up with needlessly provocative bombast even as they struggle to fault the specifics of his overall strategy. Thus, in general, the nebulous Republican criticism of Obama has more to do with semantics and style than with actual policy, and their “solutions” have proven maddeningly lacking in specifics.  They basically say they will continue Obama’s policies and strategy, just more intensely and forcefully, ignoring the potential negative consequences of going too far.  In other words, they have learned nothing from George W. Bush’s Iraq War.

lacking in specifics.  They basically say they will continue Obama’s policies and strategy, just more intensely and forcefully, ignoring the potential negative consequences of going too far.  In other words, they have learned nothing from George W. Bush’s Iraq War.

3.) However, one clear difference is that Republicans in general are far more willing to deploy American troops on the ground in harm’s way, and, it should be added, without any exit specific exit strategy, and are, in general, willing to rely more on force while disdaining diplomacy (see their response to the Iran nuclear deal), than are Democrats.

4.) Another clear difference is that Republicans, in general, seem less concerned with inflicting civilian casualties in fighting ISIS than Democrats

I suppose it is easy to see why the leading Republican candidates are ableto appeal to less educated voters with a cartoon understanding of the world that think the solution to Putin and ISIS is to for America to be more like John Wayne. Again, their hero Ronald Reagan is basically a second-rate, wannabe John Wayne, so this should not be any surprise. That so many Republican voters are falling for this silly nonsense is just another indication of the vast gulf between Democrats and Republicans in terms of seriousness and credibility on the major issues of the day.

See also: review of most recent Republican debate

Here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg.  If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to me! Please feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow me there at @bfry1981)

Having examined Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina’s rise to the #3 spot in polls of Republican voters in the context of gender politics and the current state of the Republican Party, now it is time to look at Fiorina’s major premises of her campaign: that she is a self-made woman trailblazer as a secretary-to-CEO who became a global business leader with a record as a top executive that makes her the best option to run America from the White House. While there is no denying that she is articulate, intelligent, ambitious, and one of the first women in America to rise so high as a corporate executive, in this article it will be demonstrated that she was hardly self-made and hardly came up from the bottom; furthermore, it will be shown that her record as one of Lucent’s top executives in the 1990s—the highest position she held before becoming CEO of HP—was, upon close examination, a historic disaster of epic proportions. 

 Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse September 30, 2015

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) September 30th, 2015

Continued from Part I: Fiorina the Female: The Republican Party’s Desperation for a Viable Woman Candidate and the Lowering of the Bar

AMMAN — Even at the second main Republican presidential debate, most candidates, save for Donald Trump and Chris Christie, stayed away from attacking Carly Fiorina. That will likely change now that she poses more of a serious threat. And even after all the stage theatrics, her real vulnerability is about to be front and center, and is the main reason why her winning the nomination and especially the presidency is a longshot. I am talking, of course, about what is the main premise of her campaign and how Fiorina has defined herself for years: her narrative that she is an outsider trailblazing self-made secretary-to-CEO global business leader who could play hardball with the boys and lead major corporations to dazzling success.

The problem with this narrative is that one of its two pillars is blatantly false and the other is only partly true: she seems, by all reasonable metrics, to have been a terrible CEO and senior executive in her two big stints at that level, at AT&T/Lucent and Hewlett-Packard. See, campaigning that you can get to the top and win is demonstrating that you are good at self-promotion and advancing your own career; what really matters is what you do once you get to the top and how well you lead (King Robert Baratheon from Game of Thrones, anyone?) Between the two pillars, this is the much more important one and it may as well be the foundation, for without this pillar it is hard to see her candidacy as having a real shot; if this pillar crumbles, there is simply Carly the Self-Promoter, unfit to lead, and the whole foundation of her candidacy basically crumbles.

We will see that she was one of the top executives at Lucent when it embarked on a binge of major business deals that were some of the worst and ill-advised in business history, deals whose entire premises were nonsense and known by many to be so at the time, and this all the while the company took on more debt and engaged in accounting practices that were highly misleading and amoral but which would lead to hefty bonuses for Fiorina and her colleagues before crossing the into the realm of hard fraud just months after she left the company. She was complicit or active in all of these disasters, but made sure to jump ship just in time before Lucent had one of the most epic collapses in the history of business and just in time for her cash in on Lucent’s soon-to-be revealed house of cards of inflated numbers to bag the CEO spot at HP. In the wake of this destruction that was most certainly in large part a result of her leadership as one of the company’s leading executives, Fiorina managed to stay long enough at HP for her to explicitly and unequivocally be known as the main force in the ruining of HP, in contrast to her emerging relatively unscathed from Lucent.

NBC News

But, as in any tale, to really understand all this we must go back to the beginning.

Becoming Carly: Rags to Riches Ambitious Daughter of Privilege Achieves Success

As for how much the other pillar of her campaign is true, Fiorina’s tale is no rags-to-riches phenomenon, and her attempt to describe her beginnings as humble are an inaccurate exaggeration; she is the daughter of a prominent federal judge, Judge Joseph T. Sneed III, who was also a U.S. Deputy Attorney General and also the Dean of Duke Law School, while her mother was an artist (hardly a struggling childhood there). She grew up living in and traveling around the world and America, and studied history and philosophy at Stanford University. Her father at this time was the Dean at Duke Law, which meant that Duke paid most of her tuition. Still, while at Stanford, she temped to cover her living expenses, and one of her temping gigs was at Hewlett-Packard. After Stanford, she went to UCLA Law School under pressure from her father, but dropped out after one semester after hating the experience. She then worked as a receptionist at a small real estate brokerage firm, where she was eventually given more serious responsibilities than secretarial ones. After a year, she married her college boyfriend (the marriage did not last) and moved to Italy with her husband to teach English. She then applied to business school at the University of Maryland, but missed the application deadline. Undeterred, she showed up at the school and insisted to the dean that she be given special treatment and an opportunity even though her application was late; he was impressed, and she was accepted. 

After earning her MBA there, the dean recommended her to AT&T to be groomed for management, and she started there in 1980 in sales. Two years later, she had been promoted to a management position. She did well enough to be recommended by AT&T for one of the best management fellowships for mid-level executives in the world at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and AT&T covered all her related expenses. The experience was powerful for her and provided her with her second MBA, and when she returned to AT&T, she was assigned to a track for a senior management position.

Thus, she hardly entered AT&T as a secretary. When she worked as a secretary, she was temping while attending Stanford to pay for living expenses. Her other stint as a secretary after she gave up on law school was a short-term stepping-stone for someone who was intending to still go to graduate school. As a young Stanford graduate, she enjoyed a romantic adventure in Italy, then demanded special treatment when she failed to turn in her application to business school on time. The fact that she had such a powerful and prominent father would hardly have been ignored at the time, either. Thus, the idea of Fiorina as a self-made outsider woman is hardly an accurate story: she was a child or privilege, born into wealth and power and insider status, attended one of the great American universities, got special treatment to get into business school, and got recommended for a fast-track at AT&T by her school’s dean. Thus, she certainly had a lot of help and insider connections and certainly did not come from nobody and nowhere. 

Lucent’s Loss, Fiorina’s Gain

As Fiorina continued to rise at AT&T, the company decided that it wanted to spin part of itself (its equipment division, including the famous Bell Labs) off into a new company. AT&T put Fiorina in charge of the process, picking her over the largely male executive pool. The company would be born as Lucent in 1996 and it had the biggest IPO in American history at the time ($3 billion), and Fiorina would eventually head its largest division over a period of time that would see Lucent, in many ways, become the Enron of the telecommunications industry. 

One venture she oversaw was a joint project with Phillips that began in 1997; it was abandoned in 1998 after suffering $500 million in losses. She was also asked for her advice on a deal that went forward in January 1999 after a long buildup to buy Ascend Communications for somewhere between $20 to $24 billion—a significant portion of Lucent’s assets—that is one of the worst deals in business history; she carried a lot of weight at the time and failed to advise against this disaster. Within a year of the deal, most of Ascend’s “management and talent” had abandoned ship and left Lucent, creating difficulties for product designing and basically destroying the main rationale and premise for the entire deal. The Ascend people, used to a quick pace at a small company, found Lucent overly-procedural and stifling and not to their liking. This clash of cultures was being predicted even as the deal was being announced. But the deal was flawed in other ways, too; it was basically Lucent doubling down on Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) telecommunications technology at a time when some analysts were already noting that it would soon be massively eclipsed by Internet Protocol (IP) technology (many computer users today are familiar at least vaguely with the acronym IP; with ATM, most people only think about cash machines and don’t know anything about Asynchronous Transfer Mode). Thus, the deal was questioned at the time as being too short-sighted as this was essentially Lucent backing what was soon to be an obsolete wrong horse. Even before the end of 1999, Lucent quickly realized that it had made a huge mistake in favoring and investing so heavily in ATM over IP and began moving to acquire more IP properties. In addition, one of Ascend’s specialties was in an area that Lucent has already spent over $1 billion acquiring a company that had that area covered. Overall, the massive deal turned out to be “virtually worthless.”  

Fiorina herself took over the division at Lucent (the company’s largest) that would sell equipment to the booming and emerging service provider companies laying fiber-optic cables, wireless networks, and other infrastructure that would lead to the Internet as we know it today. Lucent’s sales along these lines went from $15.7 billion in 1997 to $19.1 billion in 1998 (when Fortune named her the most powerful woman in business) to $23.6 billion in 1999. But there was a big bubble happening here, and in the process Lucent even made loans to these companies so they could afford to buy even more equipment, far more equipment than they actually needed to create far more infrastructure than was needed. In what can only be described as a pretty crooked accounting scheme, money from the loans to these clients was counted as revenue for Lucent, the debt being actually categorized a firm asset. In its reports to the S.E.C., Lucent used the excuse “but everybody else was doing it.” 

Fiorina personally orchestrated a deal for a client company named PathNet in which Lucent agreed to lend PathNet more money than the worth of the equipment it was buying from Lucent. That meant PathNet would not be putting any money down for the Lucent equipment up front and that PathNet would even get extra money from Lucent in the loan. Using “generous” accounting, PathNet had roughly $100 million in equity (stock holdings); it also owned $350 million in junk bonds that were supposed to pay out 12.25% interest. On top of this, Lucent was loaning it $440 million (expanding to as much as $2.1 billion [!] in the future). This gave it a leverage ratio—the ratio of debt to equity—of 8 / 1, or 8.0, and that was if Lucent did not loan PathNet any additional money; if general, if this number is higher than 2.0, the investment is considered risky. So, yeah, Lucent’s loan was creating a situation at PathNet where the company was a risk was four times greater than what was generally considered acceptable. The company also just had about 100 employees and only $1.6 million in yearly revenue…

Knowing all this, Fiorina went full speed ahead.

Such deals did not begin or end with PathNet. Just after Fiorina left Lucent in 1999, the company filed reports to the S.E.C. that stated it had guaranteed some $7 billion in loans to companies—many of them brand-new, with few assets, and structured financially in risky ways similar to PathNet—and had already given out $1.6 billion of that $7 billion. If any of this sounds familiar, these financial dealings are similar to the antics of the sub-prime mortgage loaning schemes that caused the 2008 Global Financial Crisis and the Great Recession. Soon, the bubble burst, the industry imploded, and PathNet filed for bankruptcy in 2001. Shortly after Fiorina left Lucent in July 1999, Lucent collapsed: by early in the fourth quarter of 2000, Lucent’s stock was already down 70% and its was CEO fired; its stock would tumble even further, to less than $1 a share; just in 2001 some 50,000 employees were laid off, and over 120,000 were laid offthroughout the collapse, which saw the company lose about 80% of its employees; it chose to settle with the S.E.C. in 2004 on charges that it committed over $1.1 billion in accounting fraud in 2000, when much of the direction of Lucent would still have been a product of Fiorina, who had chaired the company’s biggest division only months earlier, and though she was not tied directly to any of the fraud, some of the people who were fined were her close associates, promoted and supported by her and definitely raising serious issues about her judgment. At its peak, the company was valued at a quarter of a trillion dollars, and today Lucent’s value has just recently been valued at $10 billion and that after the merger with a larger company (Lucent merged into larger Alcatel in 2006, with Lucent becoming the second, not the first, name in a hyphenated pair as the junior partner, and Alcatel-Lucent is currently in the process of being acquired by Nokia for about $17 billion, incidentally, the biggest deal in the industry since Lucent’s ill-fated Ascend acquisition).

William Lazonick and Edward March

Several sources have her pushing aggressively for these client loaning deals and being very concerned about the press releases detailing them (some loyalists to her and Fiorina herself claim she tried to reign in the scale of these outsized deals, but that would still have her pushing for what would have been just slightly-less super-risky, super irresponsible moves). In any event, the press coverage and seeming miracles of the short-term numbers her company was putting up attracted the notice of tech giant Hewlett-Packard (HP), which gave her $65 million in restricted stock to partly compensate for some $85 million in Lucent stock she would leave behind to entice her to come on board; Fiorina likes to take credit taking $20 million less from HP than the value of her Lucent stocks, but value of her $85 million in Lucent holdings have been worth almost nothing not long after had she relinquished them.

At a generous best Fiorina was clueless and ignorant or unable to control or influence the people around her if we buy her and her defenders’ narrative; what seems more likely was that she was either actively engaging or complicit in obscenely irresponsible and unethical practices. This is the reality of Fiorina and her time at Lucent during its meteoric rise and just before its meteoric fall as she and Lucent failed to adjust to a dramatically but predictably changing landscape while all the while they engaged in wildly inappropriate and unethical accounting practices (the accounting practice used in the 1999 Ascend deal and other acquisitions was outlawed in 2001 by the Financial Accounting Standards Board). In fact, Lucent’s entire setup was a disaster that should have been obvious beforehand from the information anyone could see in its financial statements: in general, it is bad to have your inventory and your receivables (revenue from sales that a client does not pay out right away but promises to pay in the future) grow faster than your actual sales; for all of 1999, for example, Lucent had dramatically higher inventory and receivables growth than sales growth, with similar trends extending even further back. This meant that they were making/acquiring a lot of products that were sitting in warehouses, losing value, while the actual money they were bringing in was a lot less than amount included in promises made by companies—many of them unstable start-ups with few assets—saying they would pay in the future, promises that might not be (and in this case, often were not) kept. Thus, while these inventories and receivables were reported as assets and revenue, respectively, in reality, they might more accurately thought of as risky liabilities, as you cannot pay employees or invest with either. But the rewards for sales performance at Lucent—including for executives like Carly Fiorina—were based on numbers that included the promised receivables, further incentivizing the creation and scale of these poorly-structured, dishonestly reported deals. Too many people were making too much money off of these declared revenues, though, for people to be bothered to even look at the sales vs. inventory vs. receivables growth ratios, but all the information was right there in the public financial statements at the time. This was all also being done while the company was also taking on a massive amount of debt. In January 2000, only six months after Fiorina left, the company declared that its earnings would fall far short of expectations for the first quarter of 2000; it was a sign of much bigger problems to come. 

Fiorina was in the middle of all of this, either on the wrong side or not advocating for the right side, and thus bears a significant amount of responsibility as one of the company’s top executives, even if she was not the top executive. However, if HP had known in 1999 what was known later—that much of the “success” of Lucent at that point had to do with borderline (and soon to be) fraudulent and creative accounting rather than Fiorina’s leadership of its largest division—it is unlikely that HP would have tapped her to be CEO.

The final part of this series, fittingly, then, will look at Fiorina’s record at HP, and will conclude with an overall assessment of her career as a top executive at Lucent and as CEO of HP and what it means for her candidacy for the presidency.

Part III coming soon!

More Election 2016 coverage from this author:

Republican “Debate” Circus Round 2: Trump vs. Fiorina and Why the Kids’-Table Debate Was Better

Scott Walker’s Weak Wisconsin Record (and What His Candidacy Says About Today’s GOP)

The State of Illegal Immigration 2015: Reality vs. Republican Fantasy

The Republican Field & Debate: Substance vs. Style: What Trumps What?

Don’t Dismiss The Donald: 4 Reasons Why Trump Could Win GOP Nomination

All Hail Hillary! Her Political Nature Is Just What Washington Needs

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 Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse September 27, 2015  

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) September 22nd, 2015

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When Men Need a Woman: Republicans’ Desperation for Gender Diversity + Plummeting Standards for Republican Candidates = Carly Fiorina

AMMAN — There is something sad about Carly Fiorina’s trajectory that speaks volumes about both the weakness and desperation of today’s Republican Party.  Fiorina is truly an unremarkable candidate; she is utterly lacking in charisma and charm and even after two impressive debate performances, the media has not really critically analyzed or challenged her on her views, past, and record. 

Despite her at generously best questionable record, Republicans were desperate to make a big deal out of her modestly competent performance at the second-tier “kids’-table” debate in early August, held for the seven bottom-feeders out of a field that then numbered seventeen candidates.  That she was able to shine surrounded by six of the worst candidates out of seventeen total is hardly a remarkable achievement.  In fact, I would say Santorum’s performance was just as good.  But the main-debate was one populated by seven white men, two Latino men who are very assimilated in speech and mannerisms and neither of whom really project a strong Latin flavor nor represent, generally, the views of American Latinos, and one black man whose professional experience as a world-renown neurosurgeon is also hardly representative of the African-American community (though his childhood in poverty is) and whose political views that severely downplay the issue of racism put him within an extreme minority of African-Americans and at odds with them overall as a group of voters; the Republicans have almost no hope of making any large inroads with African-Americans this election cycle, and their extreme positions on immigration have made any significant gains with Latinos quite unlikely, too; the white vote and the male vote are the only voting groups organized by gender or organized by race/ethnicity that Republicans won in 2012.  Women and all ethnic/racial minorities voted for Obama by significant margins, though Romney did manage to win a majority of white women, just not a majority of women overall.  Elevating Rick Santorum—a white male—into the top ten just to replace another lower-polling white male would serve no purpose for the conservative media, desperate to find a way to chip into the Democratic demographic coalition that, if preserved, all but guarantees Democrats key victories in battleground states and therefore the White House.  After all, unless Republicans win more women or minorities, it is virtually certain that they will not win the White House again, given America’s changing demographics. 

Compared to Democrats’ seasoned female politicians—women like Hillary Clinton, Claire McCaskill, Barbara Mikulski, Dianne Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi and, of course, Barbara Boxer, who beat Fiorina in her 2010 U.S Senate bid by a whopping ten percentage points(52% to 42%), and even compared to newcomer Elizabeth Warren, Fiorina is revealed as particularly weak as a potential politician, unable to stand against any one of these women, all of whom are capable of speaking passionately (and accurately!) at length and in depth on a wide array of public policy and societal issues.  Clearly, the female bench for the Democratic Party is deep, whereas the lack of depth on the Republican side is quite revealing; if anyone wants to dispute these relative strengths, one only need remind such an individual that the last two major Republican female politicians to seriously campaign for federal executive office were Michelle Bachmann in 2012 and Sarah Palin in 2008.

Especially fearing a potential Hillary Clinton candidacy, conservatives and their media outlets were desperate to find an excuse to elevate Fiorina as the sole female candidate out of seventeen candidates, in part so they could present her as a rebuttal to the idea that the Republican Party is waging a “war against women” or is a man’s party so they could hope to begin to close the significant gender gap their party suffers with women in relation to Democrats (in 2012, women went for Obama 55% to 44% for Romney, a gap of eleven percentage points, and 56% for Obama to 43% for McCain in 2008, a thirteen-point-gap, compared with 51% who went for Kerry to 48% for Bush in 2004, a gap of just three percentage points; in addition, women were a majority of voters in these elections, 53% in the last two).  Fox News personality Megyn Kelly, disregarding her responsibility to be a neutral moderator, was even inappropriately promoting Fiorina (“It’s a good thing Carly Fiorina isn’t here,” Kelly beamed, “She unleashed a can [of whoopass?] earlier tonight.”) at the beginning of the first main top-ten debate, of which Fiorina was not even a part.  Republicans and conservative media were also eager to have her aggressively go after Hillary Clinton, fearful that male aggression against Hillary would be viewed less favorably and as sexist.  The mainstream media was also fairly desperate to see Fiorina graduate to the top tier to add some much needed gender diversity to the coverage of the Republican race, was worried that an all-male stage might be or become boring (even with the likes of Mr. Trump on that stage), wanted to be able to have the narrative be about Trump and Fiorina (a much more engaging, moneymaking narrative than just Trump vs. everybody else), and wanted to be able to promote the relatively revenue-generating narrative of a potential woman-vs-woman, Fiorina vs. Clinton matchup in the general election.  This desire to promote a woman may have had a more pressing quality as Republicans are realizing that Rubio, Cruz, and Carson may not be the vehicles to winning over minority voters that they had hoped they would be and in light of the the dawning realization that the current Democratic coalition of women and minority voters are essentially unbeatable in terms of Electoral College math.  If they are dooming themselves with minority voters, the Republicans are looking to the other part of that equation—women—for salvation from near-certain defeat.

Thus, when the overall bland, unremarkable, and non-headline-generating kids’ table debate finished, and Fiorina’s competition looked weak except for Santorum, it was clear that crowning Fiorina and not Santorum the winner would serve both the conservative and mainstream media’s interests, as well as the Republican Party’s.  That is not to suggest a media or media-GOP conspiracy per se, but with weak performances and no clear winner in substance or style, the media and Party surrogates generally fill in the void and affect the narrative more than usual in such close and boring circumstances.  Never mind that Fiorina did not face a single attack from other candidates and that they were more or less ignoring her as a non-threat, or that the substance behind her well-delivered lines was often fantastical.  Though over the course of more than a month Fiorina was only to able to rise a few points in the polls, it was a boost nonetheless and enough (after a rule change and Fiorina complaining very vocally about the possibility of not being in the main debate) to get Fiorina into the main debate in the second round of debates.

Fox News

Carly Climbs to the Top Tier… of Mediocrity

Between all the coverage over the question of whether she would be in the main debate, and of Trump’s verbal attack on—of all things—Fiorina’s face, it was clear that it would not take much for her to be crowned a “winner” of the second top-tier debate.  Barring any horrendous gaffes, on such a crowded stage with such a limited opportunity to be questioned or to go into detail, simply rattling off rehearsed lines but rattling them off well was always going to be enough for the media and conservatives to crow loudly about her as a “victor,” something new, interesting, different, and easily distinguishable.  Heck, surrounded by ten men wearing dark suits, she wore a bright blue skirt suit with blue high heels and had red nail polish on her fingernails.  Apart from Mr. Trump, the rest of the candidates that shared the stage with Fiorina have, unlike Fiorina, been in the public eye for some time and were therefore quite predictable.  As I wrote before, this also made most of them—and the debate—rather boring; in fact, it was not even really a debate, and whatever you want to call it, it was quite light on substance.  In addition, a significant number of the men on the stage were disturbingly inarticulate: Bush, Walker, (especially) Carson, and (surprisingly) Paul have all struggled verbally on stage.  Except for Christie and Rubio, the rest were rather humdrum in their performances.  Just as in her first kids’ table debate appearance, Fiorina conducted herself with poise, skillfully delivering what still came off as rehearsed talking points and sound bites, nothing more, nothing less.  Never mind that a huge chunk of what came out of her mouth was misleading at best or flat-out factually wrong (lies?),  clearly delusional, or blatant distortions at worst; particularly shameful were her exaggerated fabrications regarding the much overhyped Planned Parenthood abortion videos (many Republicans—including a newly hard-line Carly Fiorina—are even for threatening to shut down the government if Congress does not vote to completely defund the organization even though abortion services are only a tiny part of what planned parenthood does—3% of all activities for about 12% of its patients—but Speaker Boehner’s recent resignation announcement may have avoided a shutdown, at least for some time). 

In any event, a predictable and somewhat ridiculous media narrative would emerge out of the debate: Fiorina “won.” Because, there have to be “winners” and “losers” in these things.  This narrative was the consensus of both the mainstream and conservative media.  In the aftermath of the debate and her glowing press coverage, Fiorina jumped all the way up to the number #2 and #3 spots in the various post-debate polls in a battle with Dr. Carson for the #2 spot, both nationally and in polls for the first two contests in Iowa and New Hampshire, though Dr. Carson seems to generally have an edge over her.  Trump went down slightly, but still maintains what is generally a dominant lead, topping every post-debate poll.  Fiorina, though, has emerged as a force in the Republican contest now, gaining polling support and momentum, but it remains to be seen if she will be able to pull in significantly more money.  Still, she seems competent enough not to quickly fade like so many of the Republican candidates did in the 2012 primary cycle. 

At the same time, understanding the popularity of Trump means that becoming the media and Republican Establishment’s new darling could also undermine her with the base.  Fiorina is, after all, only an “outsider” by virtue of defeat at the hands of Boxer, and her being a corporate insider who contributed to the tech bubble disasters is something to remember, as well.  Understanding Trump supporters also suggests there may be little ability for her to take support away from Donald Trump, as it is likely they are not even competing for many of the same voters.  Her rise is likely to come at the expense of Bush and Rubio, not Trump, and even more so if she becomes to be seen as a new weapon of the Establishment.

In the end, the rise of a woman like Fiorina with a terrible record (more on that record soon) to the top tier of Republican candidates tells us a lot about the weakness of today’s Republican party, its severe lack of a pool of impressive potential female candidates, and its insecurity about being able to win female votes.  Can Fiorina do anything to address these problems?  Not likely, not when she exemplifies all of these problems (some food for thought: Fiorina lost the female vote to Boxer in 2010 55% to 39%, a gap of sixteen percentage points!).

Even at the second debate, most candidates, save for Trump and Christie, stayed away from attacking Fiorina.  That will likely change now that she poses more of a serious threat.  And even after all the stage theatrics, her real vulnerability is about to be front and center, and is the main reason why her winning the nomination and especially the presidency is a longshot.  I am talking, of course, about what is the main premise of her campaign and how Fiorina has defined herself for years: that narrative of hers that she is a trailblazing self-made secretary-to-CEO global business leader who could play hardball with the boys and lead major corporations to dazzling success.  That awful record will be the subject of analysis in the next two parts of this series.

Continued in Part II: Fiorina Key Exec on Team that Destroyed Lucent by Making It Enron of Telecom World. She Is Also Hardly Self-Made, Hails from Elite.

More Election 2016 coverage from this author:

Republican “Debate” Circus Round 2: Trump vs. Fiorina and Why the Kids’-Table Debate Was Better

Scott Walker’s Weak Wisconsin Record (and What His Candidacy Says About Today’s GOP)

The State of Illegal Immigration 2015: Reality vs. Republican Fantasy

The Republican Field & Debate: Substance vs. Style: What Trumps What?

Don’t Dismiss The Donald: 4 Reasons Why Trump Could Win GOP Nomination

All Hail Hillary! Her Political Nature Is Just What Washington Needs

If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to me! Please feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow me there at@bfry1981)

Why the debate should not be called a debate, why it is embarrassing for Republicans to say Fiorina “won,” and why the “kids’-table” candidates were far more impressive

 Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse September 22, 2015 

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) September 22nd, 2015

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A Tale of Two “Debates”

AMMAN — On one level, you have to feel sorry. Not for the Republicans—they most certainly have brought this fiasco on themselves—but for the TV networks. How on earth is it possible conduct to have a substantive, informative debate with ten or eleven people on stage taking part at the same time?? I am not arguing that Fox News or even, especially, CNN, could not have done a better job with their debates; they both could have, but such action would not have made much of a difference. The main problem was that there were just too many damn candidates on stage at the same time. Just before the first main debate back in August, there was a pre-main-“debate” “kids’-table” debate with the seven bottom-feeders out of the seventeen candidates. That pre-debate debate then was boring and unremarkable. Not so for the pre-“debate” debate this time around: while eleven people made it into the main “debate” this time, in terms of the pre-“debate” debate, the hapless Jim Gilmore, at 0% in the polls, was not included, plus Rick Perry had dropped out. So that only left four candidate—George Pataki, Rick Santorum, Bobby Jindal, and Lindsey Graham—in the pre-main “debate” kids-table bottom- feeder “debate” extravaganza.

That smaller debate was everything the main “debate” should have been: informative, entertaining, substantive, deep, with some candidates willing to speak harsh truths to their base and an exchange of views in which candidates clearly differentiated themselves on politics and governing philosophy. Absolutely none of these qualities were present to any significant degree in the three-hour show that was labeled the main “debate” but that can hardly characterized as such. Even when it came to the entertainment factor, the main debate only had exceptions to what wasin general a boring slog that only gave candidates on the crowded stage enough time to spew talking points, slogans, and one-liners that generallywere not able to stand up factually to scrutiny. Some candidates in the main “debate”—especially the much overhyped Carly Fiorina (more on her in a soon-to-be-published piece by yours truly) did a good job delivering their hackneyed and rehearsed lines. Yet unless this is an audition for a slightly colorful infomercial, that should hardly be a metric as to whether a person should be considered for the office of President of the United States of America (Sorry, Fiorina).   In contrast, in the pre-“debate” debate, everyone was sharp, everyone crisp, everyone articulate, everyone had moments to shine, and everyone was able to withstand vigorous challenges from their fellow candidates but were also able to issue strong challenges themselves.

I might have been having more beers during the main “debate,” but I honestly can remember very little from it and the alcohol is not the reason why. The main “debate” and its candidates were duds, unremarkable from beginning to end. We can give Rubio credit for having fire and also seeming “competent” (relative to a lot more obvious and blatant nonsense) and Christie was able to eke out some maturity and substance as well, but the format simply did not give them or the others enough time to shine or candidates like Trump, Cruz, and Carson enough rope to hang themselves. At the same time, I will also note that many people—including one of my best friends who is a very intelligence conservative Republican and successful attorney—aren’t looking for substance or well-crafted policy solutions from experienced politicians; they are looking for a style that is pleasing to them and ideology that meshes with theirs (a bizarre mix of an exclusionary sense of self-entitlement, thoroughly unoriginal nativism, hatred of government and politicians, intense anti-intellectualism, an embrace of evangelical fundamentalist Christianity, and other troubling ideas) a phenomenon that I must admit confuses me at times, though not entirely. This is the reason why the political pundit class has been so off with its predictions and why this Republican presidential race in particular is so unpredictable (going into October, who before would have had Trump and Carson as #1 and #2/#3, respectively, way ahead of pretty much everyone else both nationally and in the key early-contest states?), and I must regrettably, at least to a degree, include myself in this class: while I thought that Trump had a legitimate shot, I did not see the race playing out like this overall, and I had thought that Carson was done after what I thought was a terrible performance in the first debate, with me predicting his exit sooner rather than later.

Part of what makes this race so confusing is the steady position of Trump at the top, and the volcanic magma mess of the middle. Only Fiorina has made it out of the pack of bottom-feeders to the main stage, but I and others find it hard to believe that she will actually rise to the top. A real part of the problem and confusion is that as one candidate rises, it is hard to predict at whose expense this occurs. Ben Carson may have taken a nibble at best out of Trump so far, but Trump’s support is relatively strong and steady and the rise of anyone other than Trump seems to take support away from anyone other than Trump. As I wrote earlier, if such a dynamic continues, Trump could very well continue to stay on top in a crowded field and win the nomination, or, at the very least, have the most delegates of any single candidate going into the convention.

As for the specifics of the main “debate,” in many ways it was the true kids’-table-debate. Some of this is because of the candidates themselves, some of it the moderation and questions, but most of it has to do with the fact that with eleven candidates on single stage, hoping for substantive exchanges is like hoping for ISIS to set up academic exchanges with Israeli universities.

Still, let’s talk about the candidates.

The Republicans Contenders Going Forward…

CNN released a poll conducted just after the “debate.” Nationally, Trump is still on top by nine points (24%), but dropped slightly compared with recent polls. Ben Carson fell quite a bit and is now third (14%), but is practically tied with Fiorina (15%), who saw a huge bump and is now technically in second place. Rubio saw a big boost that nearly doubled his support (11%) and is now in fourth place, with Bush relatively holding steady or gaining just a bit (9%) and in fifth place. Cruz and Huckabee are hanging in there, both tied for sixth place (6% each). Fitting with (and probably because of) his dismal “debate” performance (although for the sake of the American republic I wish it was because of his weak record), Walker—once a great hope of the Republican faithful—is now polling at o%, behind even Santorum, who was not even part of the main “debate.” If he doesn’t finish near the top in Iowa, which is as likely as Mitt Romney throwing his hat into the ring and winning the nomination, expect Walker to drop out soon (UPDATE: 9/22: Walker has, unsurprisingly, dropped out). Christie, Kasich, and Paul are floating in the bottom, but are each within striking distance of the middle. Christie can rely on his strong debate performances and record of substance as a governor, along with his ability to skillfully and quickly convey that record. Kasich is loved by the media as the conservative with a heart; he also has a strong record as a governor and a U.S. Congressman and is in the top tier in New Hampshire, the second contest of the primaries. Paul is, well, a Paul; he may yet be able to tap into more of his father’s die-hard supporters and be the libertarian and youth-voter banner-carrier of these primaries. The bottom four in the other debate? They all performed well; the questions that matter are was anyone paying attention, and does anyone care? That remains to be seen. For the sake of argument, let’s say 3-5 candidates (including Gilmore) drop out in the coming few months; does that leave room at the adult table for anyone from the pre-“debate” debate who stays in race? It would be a tough battle, especially with the media seeming so keen (consciously or unconsciously) on seeing a Republican woman be elevated, but not impossible (if anyone breaks out, my money is on Santorum; his message is in some ways unique, he is passionate, and he has a potential army of volunteers who campaigned for him in 2012 that he can call upon in the eleven primary states he won when he came in second to Mitt Romney in 2012), which is much more recent and therefor relevant than Huckabee’s 2008 second-place finish).

Trump was… well, still Trump, if just a bit off from his performance of the first debate. That is to say, he was unapologetic and a bully, but this is what his supporters love the most about him. What others see as weaknesses, his supporters inhale like laughing gas. No matter what inane things come out of his mouth, Trump has stayed strong: for three months, he has been the only candidate consistently polling nationally above 20%, and the only one to poll above 30% at all. Only Ben Carson has also been above 20%, but only recently and if the latest CNN poll is the harbinger of what is to come, Carson may have already peaked and his 20+% support may be over, though officially count me as wait-and-see as to whether Carson has peaked, but it’s a possibility (see below). Trump has also dominated the key early-contest states. And, obviously, he has very effectively dominated the media coverage of the Republican field. So those thinking that somehow this debate was a game changer for him are almost certainly wrong, just as they have been before. Also, don’t forget about how much money he has; if we chooses, he can flood any market he wants with ads. Maybe he even pulls a Ross Perot and buys large chunks of prime-time TV slots that he turns into infomercials. All I can say is that any Trump television anything will be dramatically higher quality (“THE BEST!” “THE CLASSIEST!”) in terms of production values compared to his competitors, and certainly far more entertaining and therefore captivating. Basically, those writing Trump off seem to be missing the big picture.

Fiorina, as in past performances, didn’t stumble. She continued to make the most of her (weak) resume (denying that her performances as a CEO were not awful, which they certainly at least seem to be and which I will discuss in my next piece) and make a big deal out of the fact that she’s met “Bibi” Netanyahu (always referring to him by his nickname as if we are supposed to believe that they are BFFs or perhaps even past lovers; contrast this with Hillary Clinton’s more substantive discussion of her actual relationship with him) and met Putin, King Abdullah or Jordan, and others before as if a few meetings with world leaders as the CEO of a major tech company means the UN should roll out the red-carpet for her to be Secretary-General (This reminds me a bit of Sarah Palin saying Russia was near Alaska and that that made her qualified on foreign policy issues, although to be fair to Fiorina her global experience was much more substantive than Palin’s and the fact that she can say she’s met these people is something most of her rivals cannot claim, so one can’t blame her for milking those meetings for everything she can get from them). Fiorina delivered her lines well, but that’s all they were: rehearsed lines, and they were often impractical or factually incorrect (e.g., claiming she can get the world to reimpose sanctions on Iran when world powers clearly do not want to, her shameful exaggerations of the planned parenthood video, etc.), but in this she was in good company on that stage. As a performance artist, she was good: making the most out of a weak record, sounding strong, not stumbling over her words, having (brief) answer to everything. She performed her role on stage as well as anyone and better than most of the people who shared that stage with her. Never mind that her answers, statements, and characterizations won’t hold up to scrutiny: a debate with eleven people in stage has time for almost nothing, let along scrutiny. Carly understands the game, used both debates as a way make herself “viable” in this incredibly weak field, and played the game well. The media would do well do recognize and discuss the difference between debate performance and being a serious candidate for high office. If she stays in the top three or four spots in the polls between now and the next debate, expect moderators and candidates to go after her many glaring weaknesses, not least of all her record as a CEO. She is also weak in fundraising (though she has a respectable amount of personal wealth—some $59 million—upon which to draw). Consider this one overhyped, but don’t dismiss her.

Carson very likely failed to capitalize on his solidly #2 position entering the debate; he declined to go after the only candidate—Trump—who was ahead of him. He was his usual rambling and incoherent self, a self that is also charming and affable, and this self, who seems like a terrible candidate to most of us, is beloved by evangelicals, over one-quarter of America’s population and a huge portion of the Republican base. This helps to explainhis unpredictable rise. The first post-“debate” poll just released saw his support drop considerably, but it is still in the middle-teens and though he is technically third, he is virtually tied with Fiorina for second. I do not think anyone should be predicting a collapse of Carson anytime soon, and though his days of nipping at trump’s heels may (I’m only saying MAY) be over, it is quite possible for him to stay in the top tier for the foreseeable future and even beyond. The truth about him and Trump is that they appeal to the fearful, the irrational, and the emotional, and few words besides those three could better describe today’s Republican base. The pundit class would do well to remember this, and factor in the fact that their popularity does not make sense and should not make sense, but that this support is real and needs to be recognized. The fact that a candidate like Fiorina is being taken seriously by the “serious” wing of the Republican Party now, more so than Bush, is a joke in and of itself.

The most intelligent, realistic, and substantive republicans are probably torn between Rubio and Bush. This, too, is sad in some ways, though not as much as is the case of the candidates discussed above. To me, Rubio is a better performer and more exciting and fiery than Bush, but Bush is more measured with his foreign policy statements and in general, especially on the signature issue of our times, the Iran nuclear deal, an issue on which Rubio is simply ridiculous. Bush, much older than Rubio, also carries more gravitas. Both have moderate streaks, especially on immigration, but Rubio is a bit more radical and rose to power with support from the Tea Party movement. Bush-Rubio could be a formidable ticket (possible even in reverse order). Rubio seems to have more potential to gain from debates, outperforming Bush in both debates so far, but offsetting this people also need to remember that Bush has raised $114 million, and though his polling numbers do not suggest this, he has barely begun to utilize those resources. For either to rise to the top, both still have a lot of work to do; neither of them lead in any polls, even in their home state of Florida, where in the latest poll Bush and Rubio are a distant third (13%) and fourth (10%), respectively, to Trump’s 28% and Carson’s 17% and where the last three polls have in them in the same ranking.

Cruz and Huckabee didn’t do any damage to themselves, but didn’t do anything to help themselves rise from where they are—the top of the middle—either.  As I already noted above, Paul, Kasich, and Christie are all within striking distance of breaking out, at least to Cruz-Huckabee levels; if the elections gods (and media) deem it so, any one of them could be another Fiorina, though as white males lacking vaginas, they don’t do much to address the dire diversity problem the Republican Party faces and the uphill, lopsided demographics battles it will face in the 2016 general election. The Kids’-Table four, unlike Scott Walker, seemed very eager for a chance to prove their mettle and relished the spotlight; they seem to have to drive and motivation to continue fighting for a long time. And in a long, volatile, race, they are not that far away from Paul, Kasich, and Christie and, therefore, are not far away from being within striking distance of being relevant. Bobby Jindal, himself an Indian-American, maybe very well become more appreciated by Republican voters and elites as well as conservative media if any of them start thinking with their heads, although he never talks about his Indian heritage. In this way, he is not that differentfrom Ben Carson, and do not underestimate the power to appeal to conservatives of person in a minority group totally downplaying their identity as part of that minority (Republicans love that sort of thing).

All in all, the race is far from over and promises to be a long, hard, interesting slog.

More Election 2016 coverage from this author:

Scott Walker’s Weak Wisconsin Record (and What His Candidacy Says About Today’s GOP)

The State of Illegal Immigration 2015: Reality vs. Republican Fantasy

The Republican Field & Debate: Substance vs. Style: What Trumps What?

Don’t Dismiss The Donald: 4 Reasons Why Trump Could Win GOP Nomination

All Hail Hillary! Her Political Nature Is Just What Washington Needs

If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to me! Please feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow me there at@bfry1981)

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse August 13, 2015 

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) August 13th, 2015

GETTY IMAGES/CNN

AMMAN — The Debate last night was not the farcical circus it could have been.  Aside from Megan Kelly’s activism (how was it the job of her as a moderator to put in a big plug for candidate Carly Fiorina and her standout performance from the earlier second-tier kids-table-debate as the main debate for the top ten began?), she, Bret Baier, and Chris Wallace did a good job of keeping the debate lively and interesting with pointed, challenging questions and also kept the more rowdy candidates in line.  They were overall very fair, giving each candidate chances to shine but also putting them on the spot.  Trump was leading in all the polls so it is fair that he got more airtime, and most of the other candidates got the time they deserved relative to their standings in the polls and how close they are in these polls to each other.

The New York Times

The exceptions to the overall fairness were Scott Walker and Rand Paul: Walker was third in many pre-debate polls and second in others, while Paul had tended to also be at the top just behind Walker, Bush, and Trump, so the moderators should not have allowed them to be the next-to-last and last candidates in terms of speaking time.  But still, the debate was good television and surprisingly had a good amount of substance.  Below is an attempt to rank the ten candidates from the main debate (plus Carly Fiorina whose performance was pretty much the only major takeaway from the kids-table-debate of the bottom seven) in terms of substance, then style.

Substance rankings:

#1 Governor John Kasich (OH)

I’ve got to be honest; I had no idea who the hell John Kasich was before this debate.  But I do now, and I was very impressed.  He seems to be 2016’s Jon Huntsman: a substantive, serious, accomplished, sensible, rational Republican who is not afraid to compromise to get results and who does not run on hatred or discrimination in any way.  Of course, all this means that he has zero chance of being chosen by the Republican base as their champion since they seem to abhor most, it not all, of his qualities, even if it would improve their chances of winning in the general election.  Kasich is the popular governor of Ohio.  He was one of a small number of Republican governors who supported Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, and gave a very rational and eloquent defense of this decision, talking about the relationship of the mentally ill, prisons, and emergency-room-care costs to Medicaid.  He did a great job referring to many specific achievements with specific numbers, discussing his record of success in Ohio on multiple fronts with ease.  He also touted his record as a congressman in Washington as Chairman of the House Budget Committee, where he was instrumental in helping to achieve a balanced federal budget with the Clinton Administration and Congress. He showed moderation on both gay rights—saying it was time to accept the Supreme Court ruling and move on—and on immigration, a moderation that will be key in the general election as the election takes place within the United States of America, not just the states of the rebellion of the so-called “Confederate States of America.” This man should be leading in the polls, but the fact that he is not says much about today’s Republican Party. He seems to be the most well-rounded candidate, with national and state experience and a record of balancing budgets and expanding healthcare.

#2 Governor Christ Christie (NJ)

Christie had a lot of details on his record of service—from being a U.S. Attorney that was appointed on September 10th, 2001, who helped to lock up and prosecute terrorists under the Patriot Act to being a governor dealing with tough budgetary and economic issues and having to govern in a blue state—that he weaved in comfortably and impressively into his answers.  He had a lot of specifics to discuss but was able to tie each of them into broad themes as well.   Christie was very eloquent and passionate when discussing everything from terrorism to balancing budgets and dealing with social security, and made an impassioned case for surveillance in a feisty exchange with Rand Paul.  Paul made good points, but Christie won stylistically and many would also say substantively.

#3 Senator Marco Rubio (FL)

Senator Rubio gave a good talk about immigration, talking about the need for comprehensive reform, and demonstrated his knowledge and experience on the issue and getting quite specific.  He talked about his own personal, family, and political background—weaving each one into a compelling narrative—and he talked about how the economy has changed dramatically just in the last few years in a way no other candidate did.  He was clear and sharp, addressed what he was asked directly, and had clever and effective attacks on Hillary Clinton.  He definitely had one of the most substantive performances in this debate.

#4 Senator Rand Paul (KY)

Paul’s points on ISIS were misleading, but he made a solid case for civil liberties and his defense of them as well as for trimming spending.  Yet his line about wanting to “collect more records form terrorists, but less records from innocent Americans” was, to use Christie’s words, ridiculous, because, as Christie also pointed out, “how are you supposed to know” people are criminals or terrorists before they commit their acts,  and that’s why some degree of surveillance is necessary.  That’s not to say that his point was invalid, or that Christie’s points don’t deserve some scrutiny, and Paul made valid points on surveillance and defended them well, even if Christie arguably got the better of him. Paul’s opposition to the Iran deal made absolutely no sense.  Still, even with his even performance, Paul still brought more substance to the table than most.

#5-#6 Tie: (former) Governor Jeb Bush (FL) and Governor Scott Walker (WI)

Governor Bush did a great job defending the humanity of illegal immigrants while still making a competent case for how to deal with illegal immigration.  He did a good job selling what he claims are his achievements in education during his governorship, but that record is actually spotty and questionable at best.  He answered the question on him being his own man well, gave complete answers that addressed what he was asked even if he stumbled verbally.  He sort of flubbed a question about his approving of a Bloomberg charity budget that included funding for Planned Parenthood (the current overblown Satan in Republican politics) but then ended that question with a strong defense of his overall “pro-life” record. Hard to say he did “great” or even “good,” he did ok.

Scott Walker was weak on immigration, against the only practical solution—comprehensive immigration reform—and instead doubling down on his closing of any path to citizenship for illegal immigrants currently in the country.  His came off as extremely anti-labor/union.  He is just as impractical on abortion, calling for a total ban with no exceptions.  With all his solutions, he was for extreme positions that are generally untenable in the general election.  He had little substantive to say, and was unable to answer even a basic question about foreign policy (likely because he knows almost nothing about foreign policy) and like the other candidates, and made no sense on Iran.

#7 (up from the kids-table-debate) Carly Fiorina

Though surrounded by generally weak competition that helped her to look stronger than she actually is, Fiorina was still able to highlight her international business experience to her advantage, highlighting her personal relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and King Abdullah of Jordan and surprisingly giving herself multiple strong moments on everything from ISIS to the economy.  As the only woman candidate for a party nervous about Hillary, many Republicans are desperate to see her rise enough to at least be vice-presidential-running-mate material.  If she does end up winning either the nomination or a VP slot, this debate will be the moment where people will say it all began.  Still, it remains to be see if she can share the stage and perform well enough with the big boys.  But look for her to be in the top ten for debate #2 and, perhaps to become one of the more substantive candidates in the overall Republican race.

#8 (former) Governor Mike Huckabee (AR)       

Love it or hate it, Huckabee’s invoking of the 5th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution represent a creative, bold, and somewhat rational approach for conservatives to abortion and will certainly win approval from them.  He looked weak compared to Christie on the issue on social security reform, playing for sound bites instead of substance.  He did not speak much in depth on issues, instead appealing to a more general sense of the way America should be governed.  Definitely not one of the more substantive candidates.

#9 Donald Trump

Christie accused Paul of blowing a lot of hot air, but without question the most hot air was blown by Donald Trump.  His perhaps his most substantive point was making it clear that he opposed the Iraq War back in 2004 because he said it would destabilize the region.  He also made intelligent comments about single-payer healthcare working in Canada and Scotland and with getting rid of restricting the healthcare choices available that exist because of a person’s location.  At the same time, theatrically is what characterized the rest of his extensive airtime, no substance.  Lots of tough talk and generalities, but little specific for policy analysts to consider.

#10 Senator Ted Cruz (TX)

Senator Cruz resembled not so much a living, breathing human being but a doll where you pull the string and the doll spews out a number of canned, recorded, unoriginal lines.  All Cruz managed to do was rile up the base and impress no one else.  With position after position, he advocates for extremist position only supported by the right-wing base of the Republican Party that have no chance of passing Congress of being supported by the American people as a whole.  With such a lack of substance, it is not surprising that he goes all out with demagoguery.  His focus and solution for ISIS is a semantic one about focusing on Islam and emphasizing the Islamic nature of ISIS, which would likely be counterproductive by giving ISIS more legitimacy by constantly emphasizing their Islamic aspects as opposed to other aspects, regardless of that fact that ISIS clearly draws inspiration from extremist interpretations of Islam, as many religious extremists from many religionstoday draw and in the past have drawn inspiration from extremist interpretations.

#11 Dr. Ben Carson

While not tripping over his words like Jeb Bush, Carson had almost nothing (and perhaps nothing) substantive to say.  He got his mention of the “Saul Alinsky” model which will mean nothing to anyone outside the Republican base during a general election.  He either just did not answer the questions he was asked or spoke in such vague generalities that no one could have a clue what he would specifically do as president.  Using Christianity and the Bible as the basis for his tax plan showed why this man is not one that anyone should take seriously (unless they are discussing neuroscience).  Just being smart—the man is a neurosurgeon—does not qualify someone for being president.  Being a neurosurgeon in this race (the man said Obamacare was the worst thing to happen to America since slavery) seems to be Dr. Carson’s version of staying at a Holiday Inn Express…

Style Rankings:

#1-#2-#3-#4 Tie: Trump, Rubio, Christie, Kasich

Trump was able to throw everything the moderators threw at him and threw it right back at them.  He remained unbowed and unapologetic and arguably didn’t come off the worse for any of his kerfuffles with candidates or moderators and rhetorically got the better of anyone who crossed him.  The hostile questioning played right into his narrative of being a victim of the media and the Establishment, and he dominated the debate overall, getting the most time and the most coverage/buzz.  It may have been a lot of political hot air, but it was hot air at its best, wildly entertaining and engrossing.

Rubio badly needed his good performance from tonight.  From his nervous, infamous State Of the Union response speech’s water bottle antics to his numerous appearances in Senate committee hearings in which he came off as a vapid lightweight who was out of his depth, there was considerable and very legitimate concern about whether this man could hold himself together under the spotlight, retain composure, and be a man of substance.  Well, for the first time on the national stage, he did just that.  He must have spent a lot of time working on his flaws, prepping, and practicing because the Marco Rubio I saw that night was a different man: poised, confident, funny, and ready for primetime, with some of the most memorable moments from the debate, particularly with his jabs at Hillary Clinton and the Democrats.  It was his finest public performance since becoming a U.S. senator and he since seems to have climbed to the top tier of candidates as a result, with strong boosts in multiple national and state polls.

Christie had a great night, though it may not help him much as he is disliked by the Republican base.  Still, he was very passionate and could weave effective and emotional storytelling into statistics and policy details with ease.  He came back from a very cheap shot about hugging Obama from Paul and got the better of him in that exchange on both (arguably) substance and style.  He was able to handle very tough questions and turn them into positive laundry lists of his accomplishments.  He came off as strong, intelligent, articulate, passionate, and able to handle anything anyone throws at him.

Kasich stayed direct, positive and hopeful throughout.  He declined to attack Trump when the moderator pitched him a big fastball down-the-middle for him to be able to do so.  His overall message was inclusive and not divisive, even included reaching out to minorities that are less successful, and even though he is against gay marriage, he showed that he would show and has shown respect and tolerance for homosexual Americans in a way few if any of the other candidates have.  In fact, his whole style advocates a conservatism that leaves a big place for love and caring for people and a big heart.  In a party that often seem heartless towards the poor, minorities, and illegal immigrants, this is a message that will resound on the national stage.  Unfortunately for him, it is unlikely to resound among the Republican base.  He played his home crowd (the debate was held in Ohio) to his advantage, and presented a good balance between wonkish statistical policy accomplishments and a tender, caring heart.  His overall strong performance seems to have helped him in New Hampshire and Michigan, but not anywhere else so far or nationally.  This is not to the credit of the Republican Party and their voters.

#5 (guest-from-the-kids-table) Fiorina

There is no question that Carly Fiorina was the standout performance of the kids-table-debate of the bottom seven (out of seventeen!) candidates.  On one level, this is a big deal: barring some awful implosion, she unquestionably will be part of the adult-dinner-party next debate.  She was very articulate and good at delivering her talking points and stood far above almost everyone else on that stage, save for Santorum (see the note at the end).  And she was able to weave her experience into her answers in a way that was (rhetorically) impressive, and even managed a few decent jokes.  But at the same time, we have to remember 1.) that she was standing out when surrounded by six bottom-feeders and 2.) that no one at either debate saw her as a threat or felt the need to attack her; it was a pretty smooth ride for her without adversity.  It very much remains to be seen if she can come off as poised and polished when she is under attack from rivals and surrounded by far more accomplished and theatrically-savvy candidates.  The evidence suggests she cannot; she was crushed in her U.S. Senate campaign against California Senator Barbara Boxer in 2010 and on numerous appearances on Real Time with Bill Maher during extended discussions, she has been unable to go past surface-level talking points or discuss anything with a degree of depth and detail that shows an accurate understanding of what she is talking about, even if she sounds better than most Republican candidates.  She is also quite vulnerable on her business record, having been fired as CEO of Hewlett-Packard.  Still, Fiorina may have gained as much as anybody from the debates, maybe even more than any other candidates.  Especially being the sole woman and, thus, a weapons against Democratic charges that Republicans are anti-women, do not expect the party or voters to cast her off the island anytime soon.

#6 Carson

Like Mr. Cruz below, Carson utterly lacked substance.  Yet he was a crowd favorite, delivering heartfelt religious sentiment and amusing applause lines.  He came off as sincere and was able to stay above the sniping occurring between other candidates.  He seemed very much the non-politician (a strong asset to the Republican base) and seemed very natural and at ease on stage as well as very genuine and authentic.  He gave a particularly eloquent message about a person’s brain—not his skin color-defining him or her (though this type of answer does risk downplaying the very real racial problems that exist in America).  Though he seemed unable or unwilling to answer multiple questions, he still let his charm, ease, and message come out clearly.  If we were grading only with style points that the Republican base cares about, Carson would be ranked even higher, and this is beyond doubt as he has surged in most post-debate polls, even as high as second-place in Iowa!  To non-Republicans, he is not someone to be taken seriously; yet it is likely that the Republican base’s love of him means he could have staying-power long into this race.  Frankly, I was ready to write him off as a candidate after his debate performance, but (full disclosure) I am a liberal Democrat and I clearly underestimated his popularity with the base and how his answers would play with that base.  And as an African-American, his simply being in the race is ammunition against Democrats’ charges of the Republican Party being racist and only a party for whites.

#7 Huckabee

Huckabee was humorous and charming in his usual way, smiling throughout and getting plenty of folksy and faith-related comments out there in ways that are sure to continue to endear him to the base.  He certainly did not hurt himself even if he did not stand out.  The crowd consistently warmed to him and he did end the debate with one of the best lines of the night, seeming to hit Trump powerfully and harshly but, actually, in the end, revealing his attack was on Clinton, not Trump.  Yet that was also his only real standout moment besides the abortion answer (see above), as his other answers were predictable and unmemorable if decent.  He didn’t do badly at all, but will have to do much better if he is to rise above the pack.  Still, as a popular Fox News TV personality and as the man who came in second in the Republican primaries of 2008 to John McCain, it will be interesting to see where he is in a few months if other candidates drop out.

#8 Cruz

If Cruz’s lines didn’t come off as so rehearsed, forced, and canned, I might have tied him with Carson or Huckabee.  Both he and Carson utterly lacked substance, but Cruz really came off as a demagogic manipulator.  His lines went over well with the audience, but will only serve to alienate him more with the general public.  Still, he, like Carson, has seen something of a bounce post-debate, though not as big or consistent as Carson’s.  Love him or hate him, he the Republican base loves him and Cruz knows how to retain at least some significant support among it.

#9 Paul

Paul had a very uneven night.  Yes, he got his applause and moments defending civil liberties and smaller government, as was expected, but he didn’t necessarily come off better with his attacks on Trump and Christie.  He had less speaking time than anyone else, but also had moments where he could have given longer answers used more time and declined to do so.  Direct and simple—like his approach to government—but also leaving him a bit on the sidelines.  He showed he could pick a fight, but chose the two brawler candidates best able to respond harshly back—Trump and Christie—to get into fights with and thus, in the end, it’s hard to say he had a good night.

#10-11 Tie: Bush-Walker

Though their performances differed, they ended about equalizing each other; where Walker may have been more articulate, his performance often fell flat and to muted applause with a few exceptions, which were mostly him making jokes about Hillary; where Bush maybe got a better response from the crowd, he stumbled over his words consistently (perhaps the bar is low because of his association with his brother?)  Neither did any serious damage to themselves or anyone else with their performances, but neither really gained anything either, and others’ gains (e.g., Carson, Fiorina, Rubio) already seem to be coming at their expense (their support has dropped in multiple post-debate polls) more than any other candidates. Both ran like they were the frontrunner, trying to not do badly/lose as opposed to trying to win.  Yet, since neither are the frontrunner, this didn’t make sense and it did not help.  Even if they didn’t do badly per se, not standing out has meant they have already begun losing support to other candidates.

Honorable Mention: (former) Senator Rick Santorum (PA)

Don’t completely give up on Rick Santorum.  He is very intelligent, articulate, passionate, genuine, competent, and has a level of charisma.  He came in second behind Romney in 2012 in the Republican primaries.  He has a fairly uniquely moderate economic message among Republicans even if he is socially extremely conservative.  If anyone makes it out of the kids-table-debate-level besides Fiorina, my money would be on him.

****

Thus, we see a war here with substance versus style in the two very different rankings one would have to give the winners of substance vs. style in these debates even if one disagrees with my specific rankings.  Kasich, Christie, and Rubio would be the best combination of both, though it would seem that only Rubio has a shot among those three candidates.  Part of me would love to be proven wrong.  Two things are for certain: 1.) already, this race is full of surprises and we are still about half a year away from the first contest in Iowa, and 2.) as we watch all this unfold, there will be more surprises yet to come.  Part of me is rooting for substance to win for the sake of the quality of America’s politics, and part of me for entertaining, substance-less style, since my personal preference is for a Democrat to win in 2016.  We’ll have to stay tuned to see what Trumps what and who Trumps who for the Republican nomination and for the presidency.

More Election 2016 coverage from this author:

Don’t Dismiss The Donald: 4 Reasons Why Trump Could Win GOP Nomination

All Hail Hillary! Her Political Nature Is Just What Washington Needs

If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to me! Please feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow me there at@bfry1981)

*****

You may not respect his message, his positions, or the man himself, but you must respect his candidacy for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination.

 Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse August 10, 2015 

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) August 10th, 2015 UPDATED (see bottom)

Also published by Stupidparty Math v. Myth.

AP

AMMAN — In the ideal America, egocentric and eccentric billionaire and reality-TV personality Donald Trump would never have a realistic chance at getting the nomination of one of America’s two major parties to be its candidate for president of the United States. Many liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, would not dispute this statement.

However, this is not an ideal world, and America is far from an ideal society too. If you don’t understand the very real reasons why Donald Trump has a real chance at being the Republican Party’s presidential candidate, then you don’t understand the Republican Party, American politics, or American society. Below are the main reason why Trump isn’t going away and why he has a real shot at winning the Republican primaries, if not the general election.

1.) The Republican Party Is-A-Changin’

The Republican Party is in a state of open division and flux, and for all you Game of Thrones fans, remember: “Chaos is a ladder” (spoilers for GoT in this link). The whole significance of the Tea Party movement is that it was a bloody, forceful attempt to pry the steering wheel out of the hands of the establishment and the elites who had been in tight control of the party for years. This peaked in some ways with the 2010 midterm elections in which extremist Tea Party candidates (Christine O’Donnell, anyone?) lost some key and very winnable Senate races to vulnerable Democrats but still managed to win many elections and were the major factor in the Republicans taking the House of Representatives from the Democrats. However, Tea Party candidates were thought to have gone too far in the 2012 election, hurting the Republican Party and even Mitt Romney in Obama’s reelection. Much of the conventional wisdom maintains that the Republicans learned their lesson from the 2012 Tea Party-driven electoral disaster, and have since moderated. What has actually happened is that the Republican Party has lurched to the right, with the Republican Establishment coopting the Tea Party style and message (and lack of substance) out of the fear of being “primaried”: incumbents losing in primaries before even having a chance to go toe-to-toe with a Democrat and losing to extremists within their own party who accused them of being too moderate. The party was hardly moderate before, but even now, it still falls short of the extreme rightist platform and style envisioned by true Tea Partiers. So there is still a war going on within the Republican Party; before Trump’s meteoric rise, this was perhaps best exemplified by the clash between freshman Senator (and all-around disingenuous charlatan) Ted Cruz on the one hand, and more moderate republicans like Speaker of the House John Boehner, Representative Peter King, Senator John McCain, and the Republican leadership on the other. Cruz is hardly alone in his extremism, though: the likes of Representatives Louie Gohmert and Steve King are but a few examples.

Into this struggle for the soul of the party strode Donald Trump. Among other things, he is very aggressively taking on the Republican Establishment in a way that electrifies the base, insulting John McCain, feuding with Rupert Murdoch, attacking both George W. and Jeb Bush, and, in addition, he has enough money (“TEN BILLION DOLLARS,” to quote Trump directly) that he is not at all dependent on the establishment for financing or support. Trump also has no experience as part of the Washington, DC, political machine, thus, he can avoid having to check the rather unpopular box of “Washington insider.” So can Jeb Bush, but he has the last name Bush (and will be reluctant to criticize his brother or father) and will be tainted with that label as a result. Other candidates who want to draw the non-Washington insider vote will most certainly be competing with Trump.

2.) Divided They Fall

History is full of weird winners. In particular, it is not difficult at all to find examples of when one faction or person was able to triumph because its numerous opponents could not unite and stop fighting among themselves. Ancient Rome, for example, was eventually brought down by much weaker “barbarian” factions because its intermittent civil wars among different Romans devastated Rome’s strength and left it vulnerable in ways it should never have been. The Egyptian opposition to Mohammed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood could not unite in elections during the Arab Spring, and thus paved the way for Morsi’s victory and troubled presidency, which, in turn, paved the way for General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s countercoup/counterrevolution and the destruction of a nascent Egyptian democracy. Al Gore lost to George W. Bush because immature liberals in Florida and New Hampshire voted for Ralph Nader—a realistically hopeless liberal alternative to Gore and thus a merely symbolic vote that gave Bush victory in both states—because they viewed voting as a masturbatory act of self-gratification instead of a duty to vote with an eye towards the real world impact of voting and not as act designed to make you most pleased with yourself and your conscience, the real world be damned… I’m sure you can think of other examples easily.

As for the Republican primaries, there are currently seventeen Republican candidates. Though Donald trump is nowhere close to garnering support from a majority of Republicans, he still has a commanding lead over his rivals in the latest round of scientific national polling, and even if a full third of the candidates dropped out tomorrow, that would still leave ten other candidates among whom to divide the non-trump vote. The latest polls have trump with the support of about 25% of Republicans nationally. That means the other 75% of support is currently divided among the other sixteen candidates (if that vote is divided equally, each candidate would have only roughly 4.7% of the vote). Jeb Bush, in second place, barely broke into double-digits, and the other fifteen candidates did not break into double-digits. Trump is doubling (or more) the level of support of the candidate right behind him in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, what are supposed to be the first three contests for the Republican nomination.  And in Florida, where Jeb Bush was governor for eight years and Marco Rubio has been a sitting U.S. senator since 2011, Trump is ahead of Bush by 1 % and ahead of Rubio by 20 % as of the latest poll! The first three contests are just six months away or less, and Florida just seven; a lot can change, and a lot must change, for Trump to lose at least the first three contests. But if he manages to stay ahead—and it’s his to lose and the burden is on other candidates to rise up—and wins the first three contests (let alone carry that momentum into Florida and prevail there), it’s very hard to see him losing the nomination.

Normally in the Republican primaries, there is one frontrunner or two candidates duking it out, maybe one dark horse candidate, and everyone else is on the bottom. In this case, there are fifteen candidates currently averaging in single digits. Where normally the few bottom dwellers would drop out and lose campaign cash relative to those on the top, almost all the candidates here are bottom feeders feeding on scarce resources. What this means is that almost all of them are close in both polling status and resources, making the incentive for staying in the race that much higher and the incentive for dropping out that much lower. This, in turn, means that they will likely continue to divide the non-Trump vote among them for months into the primaries, only helping Trump’s chances. The battle for being number #3 (or #4?) , with enough delegates at the convention to dictate things to the eventual nominee, including maybe even forcing the nominee to pick a certain vice presidential nominee, could thus carry a significance that no recent election has shown and bring us back to the old days of backroom wheeling, dealing, and kingmaking of the old-school political conventions. A divided or unpredictable convention, in the world of twenty-first century media, would be a political spectacle like nothing we’ve seen since the Florida debacle in 2000. In such an atmosphere, a man like Trump who seems to thrive on his cantankerous relationship with the media could indeed use the chaos to his advantage and that could very well mean a Trump ascension of the Littlefinger ladder to the Iron Throne of the Republican nomination (if you’re interested, read my take on the political and foreign policy lessons from Game of Thrones).

3.) Republican Primary Voters are a Different Breed

They Republican base voters are in an active revolt against their party’s establishment, and are in a perpetual revolt against the media. Trump picking a fight with Fox News—yes, even Fox News—and debate moderator/Fox News personality Megan Kelly (who did, frankly, in some ways seem hostile and out to get him even if her questions were totally legitimate)—works brilliantly for him in important ways. See, two things members of the Republican base hate are 1.) being told by The Republican Establishment/Elites who to vote for and 2.) being told by The Media Establishment/Elite who to vote for. They way they and Trump see it, both the Republican and Media Establishment (Fox News combines both of these) are out to get Trump, and this is actually true in a number of ways. Mainstream America thinks of Fox News as representing Republicans, and compared to most media, it does in a relative sense. But the base really gets its kicks from media sources like Breitbart and Drudge that have been quite friendly to Trump. They are also even generally older and whiter than the Republican Party in general, a party already known for being older and whiter than the average American, proportionately speaking. This makes them an extreme element in a party that has, as discussed, already become more extreme. In flocking to Trump and his extreme statements, along with Trump the GOP base is giving a big proverbial middle-finger to their own party’s Establishment and to the media in general, who both seemed eager to dismiss him as a farcical sideshow. All this leads directly to the final point…

4.) Trump Knows How to Play the Media to His Advantage Like a Harp

Trump is also brilliant at playing the media here; his provocations ensure he is dominating the news coverage and this is depriving oxygen to other candidates desperate for attention and airtime and who are at risk of suffocation, while at the same time any hostility from the media plays into his narrative that the media is out to get him and is trying to control the election, a narrative that the Republican base is only too eager to believe. That the Republican Establishment’s principal way to go after him is through the media itself is not lost on the base here, either. So in many ways, what others see as mistakes that will “doom” Trump’s campaign are actually nice big plates of red meat for the Republican base, the exact type of people whose support he needs to win primary contests and win the nomination. He is the incarnation of their resentment and they seem eager to support him because of that. And the more these feuds continue, the more that the media, frankly, can’t look away from him because they know covering him will draw viewers and make them lots of money, as the recent debate’s ratings proved (see below). The satirical newspaper The Onion captured the sentiment the best with a faux piece satirically “written” by Trump for parody purposes titled: “Admit It: You People Want To See How Far This Goes, Don’t You?”

*****

I am not here to say that I think Trump will win. I am here to simply say that dismissing him as a sideshow is naïve. Currently, he is the show (not only was the debate featuring Trump the most-watched primary debate ever with some 24 million viewers, it was the most watched program ever broadcast [only] by cable news and easily beat the NBA finals’ and a typical Monday Night Football game’s ratings). Again, as mentioned, someone has to climb up from the pack and beat him. Bush had (see below) been the second highest in the polls, and has raised a lot of money ($100 million+ including his PACs). But he has not been impressive thus far and would need to greatly improve his performance for him to win, and his greatest advantage—his name—is also his biggest curse. Walker had (see below) been third generally, but not even generally above 10 %; he, too, would need to cover a lot of ground to reach first and hardly distinguished himself during the debate even if he did ok. Both Rubio and Fiorina had a good night (the latter only at the kids-table debate where no rivals treated her as a threat or challenged her), but one good night for candidates so low in the polls does not bestow a crown upon either, and they are both quite vulnerable in their own ways (to be discussed in a forthcoming piece). With early signs showing Republican voter support strong and not falling for Trump in multiple unscientific flash polls and in the first scientific poll released since the debate (the latter showing him still nearly doubling the second-place candidate who is now Ted Cruz!), with Bush and Walker falling to be tied now for sixth place, the burden is on one of these problematic candidates or another to make up the gulf in popular support between them and The Donald. Love him or hate him, just don’t be writing Trump off yet.

UPDATED: Another national poll just released today taken wholly after the debate has Trump up to 32 % with a big post-debate boost, almost tripling the support for second-place-Bush who is at 11 %. Ben Carson (!?) has jumped to third place with 9 %, and Walker and Rubio tie for fourth place at 6 % each. In addition, a new Iowa-specific poll has trump increasing his lead, putting him at 19 % to Walker’s and Carson’s tied second-place 12 %, followed by Bush at 11 % and a big boost to Carly Fiorina nipping at Bush’s heels with 10 % and Cruz just behind her at 9 %… As I suggested above, one can almost see Trump as a Roman emperor watching his rivals hack at each other as gladiators in the Colosseum in the sense that he rises above the (polling) fray and the rest take votes away from each other…

More Election 2016 coverage from this author:

The Republican Field & Debate: Substance vs. Style: What Trumps What?

All Hail Hillary! Her Political Nature Is Just What Washington Needs

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