Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse September 8, 2017

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) September 8th, 2017; UPDATE: September 11th, 2017: Fortune favored Florida as Irma was not nearly as catastrophically destructive as it could have been, but it could just as easily have been otherwise, and next time, which may even be in a few weeks, fortune could just as easily abandon us.

AMMAN — We just saw Houston, America’s fourth largest city, become an underwater one, suffering extensive damage as Hurricane Harvey overwhelmed a region woefully unprepared for an event that had been warned about for years, even if it occurred with an unprecedented degree of historic, record-setting rainfall. Now, Florida, and, it seems, Miami, are in the path of another monster storm: Hurricane Irma, which may yet become the strongest tropical cyclone ever recorded in the Atlantic or on earth.

REUTERS/Richard Carson

Two or even more of America’s major cities may be underwater and severely damaged in the span of just a few weeks, and two catastrophic storms occurring within but a few weeks of each other will be responsible if that comes to pass; a third, newly formed hurricane, Jose, even may hit the U.S. after Irma, with a fourth hurricane now deluging the Mexican Gulf Coast and likely on course to bring more rain to Texas. For Houston, the damage is so extensive and severe and so difficult to recover from that there may never be a full recovery, just as New Orleans is not the same after Katrina, even over a decade later.

Is this the new normal, and, if so, what does that mean and what do we have to do?

*****

By new normal, I do not mean to suggest that these storms will be a weekly or monthly thing during hurricane season, as is the case this season. But I do mean to suggest that the U.S. could easily expect being hit by a catastrophic storm or two every year or every other year.

Catastrophic landscapes that were the realm of science fiction, in films like The Road and Interstellar, the original Planet of the Apes, even the Mad Max series and the Book of Eli, now seem to be a possible near-present reality. Often, these films showcase massive storms that are symptoms of planet-altering climate change amid a hopeless, depressing, desolate earth home to a dwindling and desperate human race.

Literature also contains more than a few references to catastrophic natural disasters, from Gilgamesh’s and Noah’s floods to Voltaire’s Candide’s reality-based Lisbon and the wave-swept Númenor of Tolkien. In real life, from tsunamis and floods to volcanoes and earthquakes, natural disasters and climate change have destroyed and weakened cities and civilizations alike, some of which never recovered; here in Amman, Jordan, I live not even a three-dozens miles’ drive from Jerash, a beautiful ancient Roman city that never recovered from a massive earthquake that devastated it in 749 C.E; it is haunting to walk through ancient city’s wide, colonnaded streets, once teeming with life and love, and shops and festivals, empty now except for tourists.

A once bustling city thoroughfare in Jerash- photo by author

Is this a fate that could befall cities like Houston and Miami?

In a word, yes, and, at this point, there is little we can do if that is what is to be.

Imagine Katrina, Harvey, and Irma-like storms striking the Gulf Coast every few years or worse: cities like Houston, Miami, and New Orleans devastated every few years by massive wind damage and flooding, a possibly permanent toxic mold problem—already difficult enough to deal with without recurring, frequent flooding—creating asthma epidemics and worse for anyone spending an extended amount of time there, insurance companies and local businesses overwhelmed, students unable to go through a normal school year or counting their blessings when they do, the sick and elderly not wanting to risk treatment or retirement there for fear of having to undergo a difficult evacuation. It would simply make no economic sense for locals to keep having to rebuild everything after massive frequent destruction; crops, oil refineries, fishing, tourism, all manner of industries would flop were hurricanes like Katrina, Harvey, and Irma to happen with any level of frequency within a decennial span. Insurance companies would be forced to up their rates on a population already struggling economically and now facing a daunting recovery effort, placing most of them outside of insurance protection (as is already the case). And how many times will the nation as a whole want to fund a recovery in the same region for the same disasters over and over again? 

In short, a large swath of the United States may become uninhabitable for all practical purposes within our lifetimes, its residents wholly unable to cope with the frequent fury of Mother Nature, and a society that will wisely decide it cannot fit the bill for what once termed “hundred-year events” that are now happening every few years. People will be forced to fend for themselves in inhospitable conditions or relocate unless somehow we create hurricane-proof, wind-proof, and flood-proof buildings (good luck with that).

Of course, maybe this won’t be the case. Unlike, say, global temperatures, for which we have data spanning the long-term, we only have a few decades of reliable records of hurricanes; we’re simply not sure of the full extent of the effects that the undeniable reality of man-induced climate change are having or will have on hurricanes, but there is a consensus that warmer temperatures and rising sea levels are going to increase the deadliness, destructiveness, and intensity of hurricanes. There is also consensus that we will see more storms of a higher intensity and fewer weaker storms, though there is not as strong a consensus that this will result in fewer overall storms, though that is still what research suggests. It is notable that the U.S. has never before been hit by two category 4 or 5 hurricanes in a single season, but that is about to be the case in a matter of days, with the most intense part of hurricane season just beginning and the possibility of a third or even more storms to come before season’s end.

I have personally experienced multiple hurricanes of various strengths, and would gladly go through five weaker ones than one monster storm, so I am not sure the fewer storms but more intense ones is a net gain in any true sense, and the research should not provide comfort to no one.

****

This year may very well be an exception, but it may not be, and it is quite possible that it is not; we will have to wait and see to know.

The Guardian

But we do not have to wait and see to prepare, to consider the worst that was once before unimaginable; over the past few years (and really for decades), we have been seeing the hottest years in recorded history, and we will be seeing more intense storms that will threaten not just the Gulf and southern U.S. Atlantic Coast, but also the mid-Atlantic and northeastern U.S. seaboard as ocean temperatures continue to rise and expand the zones in which the most intense hurricanes can maintain their intensity. We cannot stop these increases in the near future, but we can, with effort, try to limit greater damage further down the road, though, of course, Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement makes that all the more difficult.

But in the immediate near-future, the Southeastern U.S. is faced with a reckoning: for years, they have competed successfully with other regions in the country by offering businesses lower regulations and taxes and offering residents lower taxes, seeing economic and population growth partly as a result, as well as growing political clout in the U.S. House of Representatives. As Garrison Keillor eloquently noted recently, Minnesotans know they have to expect tough blizzards every winter; they have tougher regulations and higher taxes to be able to deal with these massive storms every winter and don’t expect a federal government handout when the inevitable happens. If massive hurricanes are to be a regular part of life in the Republican-led Southeastern United States, as in the case after any catastrophic natural disaster, changes will have to be made, sacrifices endured; this should mean that the long honeymoon this region has had disdaining the concepts of federal assistance (all Republican U.S. senators from Texas—Ted Cruz and John Cornyn—and Florida—Marco Rubio—voted against Sandy aid for the Northeast, as did the vast majority of U.S. House Republicans, including nearly every Republican from Texas and Florida), federal involvement in state affairs, regulation, and taxes should end now. Among the seven states with no state income tax are Texas and Florida, and other Gulf Coast states are among those with the lowest state income tax rates in the country; it is something of a shameless ask to request so much federal financial aid from other states willing to tax their residents more, to ask to those states to redistribute their wealth towards states unwilling to take responsibility by taking on their fair share of the burden and that opt, instead, to maintain an economic and population-attraction edge over the very states from which they are requesting aid. Those in the Southeast may also want to rethink their status as the most populous regional hotbed of both of man-made climate change and being among the most against actually enacting policy to do something about it.

America should come together and support our fellow citizens in those areas being devastated this hurricane season, but then we should demand a hard, honest look at the governing culture of some of the areas hit and demand hard, honest changes that will make them better prepared to handle what likely to be more frequent monster storms in the near future.

Those are the first few steps: the next will involve far tougher decisions about how different regions can continue on if such catastrophic storms end up happening far more frequently than has ever been experienced in recorded history. 

But if we can’t get the Gulf Coast to increase regulations that can save lives and institute the same taxes most of the rest of the country has in order to give themselves more resources that will better prepare their people and localities for disaster preparedness and response, good luck having any of those more challenging conversations down the road as we witness what is perhaps the beginning of climate change making devastation the norm for an entire region of the country.

Daniel J. Martinez / US Air National Guard

© 2017 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

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See related article:

The Most Powerful Senator on Climate Change Is a Delusional Lunatic

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Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse October 16, 2016 

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

Reuters/Jonathan Ernst

AMMAN — As much as the horror show of the second Clinton-Trump debate should bother us, on some levels the Pence-Kaine vice-presidential debate is more worrisome. I say this because that one has been acknowledged to be the more “normal” debate, and should remind us all of how dysfunctional our system is even without Trump and his candidacy. But, because of that, it is also one of the more instructive moments of this campaign season, even though the debate happened almost two weeks ago; in fact, its lessons’ importance do not dim with the passage of time, but only increase, and will be relevant for the foreseeable future.

See, the thing about the now-generally-spineless Republican Party elected officials is that we can see the next episode, should Trump lose, with breathtaking clarity: “WE REPUBLICANS LOST BECAUSE OF TRUMP. BLAME HIM. WE ACCEPT NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR WHAT HAPPENED BECAUSE WE ARE 100% FREE FROM ALL BLAME AND 100% OF THE BLAME IS ON TRUMP,” they will spout piously. But the largely uninspiring Pence-Kaine debate easily disproves that; it shows what is wrong with the Republican Party, it shows much of what’s wrong with our political system in general, and it even reminds us how thin the Democratic Party’s bench is.

What the VP Debate Told Us About Democrats

Now, a brief note on the issues with the Democrats before getting into the meatier awfulness of the other two topics. 

First, don’t get me wrong: I like Tim Kaine, and though I was at first disheartened by the pick of another white male, I knew Elizabeth Warren would have been a disaster in repelling centrist voters and in making it an all-female ticket (nothing wrong with that for me but America is still a backwards country), and I was really hot for Julián Castro and would also have been excited by Corey Booker, but after I watched Kaine speak once he was picked and learned more about him, I chided myself for wanting to be “excited” and realized that Clinton was right to pick Kaine, who had far more experience and who could credibly be said to be ready to be president more than most (and certainly far more than the younger and inexperienced Castro and Booker, give them time for goodness sakes! Patience!!); I realized my expectations as a liberal should not outweigh an ability to appeal to swing voters who are not as liberal as I am and to be ready to be Commander-in-Chief should disaster strike.  

In the debate, Kaine deserves some credit for acting like a kamikaze pilot aimed right at Trump: at the expense of his own favorability, he kept the focus on Trump throughout the debate even though it meant a “loss” to the man with whom he shared the stage, Mike Pence: suicide mission accomplished, Sen; Kaine. But on other levels, Kaine was lacking: he stumbled over his words more than a few times, his delivery was off, his attempts at humor fell flat. More than anything else, Kaine’s very presence was a reminder how thin the Democratic bench is, even if the Republican Bench is unquestionably weaker, especially in terms of substance. I remember thinking when Ted Kennedy died—the Last Lion of the Senate—there was no one else even close to him except perhaps for Biden, now aging and in the twilight of his political career. The Lionesses of the senate—Barbara Mikulski and Barbara Boxer—are both retiring this year, with only Dianne Feinstein left in their class, though Claire McCaskill can be said to be a good person to soon be of similar stature.  And Warren, whom I also like, is admittedly mostly talk and to the left of most Americans and is therefore not a viable national candidate for the same reasons Bernie Sanders is not. In the House, Nancy Pelosi, John Lewis, Elijah Cummings, Jim Clyburn, and other elder statesman will continue to serve well there, but that’s pretty much it for them as far as their career, and for the House. Booker and Castro are exciting, but that is a list of two people.

What the VP Debate Told Us About Republicans

Bench

As for the Republican bench, it was eviscerated by the one-two combination of Donald Trump and actual Republican voters this primary season. Newer, supposedly up-and-coming stars like Sens. Rand Paul and Marco Rubio performed abysmally. Tom Cotton (who didn’t run) may have an appealing veteran background, but he, like many other GOP newcomers, is also an irrational extremist who will narrowly appeal to white male voters and few others in terms of demographics or gender, which, in the future, will not be a winning formula even if Trump shocked us all with how many legs this formula can still stand upon in 2016 with what at least convincingly seems like a Picket’s Charge last-gasp of American white ethno-nationalism.

GOP: Party of Fantasy

Now, as to the most serious problem… Especially on the Republican side, people were pining about possibly having the guy in the VP slot switch positions with the candidate on the top of the ticket. While that would spare us the possibility of a Trump cataclysm, it would, sadly, do nothing to alleviate the myriad problems facing our political system before Trump announced his candidacy. 

In fact, the Kaine-Pence debate reminded me of the Bush-Gore, Bush-Kerry debates from years past, minus all the personality and excitement; yes, these two came off blander than we thought was possible, but the recent debate was worse in so many ways. Back then, it seemed the two parties lived in alternate realities on many issues and couldn’t agree on basic facts about the state of the world they cohabited. Today, those divisions are only more pronounced and cover even more issues than before, making the partisanship of the Bush and early Obama years seem almost quaint in comparison.

During the W. Bush years, no mainstream Democrat argued that Bush was responsible for or created al-Qaeda. Sure, there was fair criticism that Bush’s policies were counterproductive and incited and enabled more terrorism—an objectively true claim, as even Bush realized this when he replaced Rumsfeld with Gates and had Gen. Petraeus totally reorient our strategy in Iraq to be (more effectively) population/civilian-centric—but no mainstream Democrat suggested Bush wasn’t actually trying to win the war, that he was the main reason for the rise of al-Qaeda, or, even worse, that he sympathized with al-Qaeda and Muslim terrorists. Now? Even Trump, the Republican nominee for the presidency, has implied or said such things about Obama and terrorists and ISIS, has even clearly said he believes Obama “founded” ISIS even when given chances to clarify, and he is hardly alone in making such statements or holding such beliefs, which have existed since even before Obama took office as president (a Quinnipiac poll from this summer found that over half of Republicans—and nearly one-third of all Americans—agreed with Trump that Obama “may sympathize” with terrorists!). And most Republicans think that it’s mainly Obama’s fault that ISIS has risen as far as it has, which flies in the face of logic and history.

Compared to the W. Bush years, there is even more about basic reality on which the two parties cannot agree, and, as usual, it’s the Republicans who have fantastically constructed an alternative false reality. Republicans today doubt the seriousness of climate change or even its existence and also doubt the validity of evolutionary science and other scientific consensuses, as they did back then; many still believe in the demonstrably false claims of trickle-down Reaganomics; today it is clear that Republicans also and/or increasingly believe in a fantasy of the state of and effects of illegal immigration, that there is not a racial disparity in law enforcement and the criminal justice system when there clearly is, that Obamacare is a total disaster even though it is not (even with its poorly understood problems it has made tremendous improvements), that Syrian refugees as being admitted currently to the U.S. pose a grave national security threat when they do not, that having a minimum wage or raising one is bad even though there is no evidence for the former and little that evidence the latter is true (as long as the raise is not stupidly high), that racism is an equal or larger problem for white people compared to African-Americans when this is flat-out absurd, that there is no discrimination against Muslims in America when there clearly is, that America is not on a steady if slow but also historic economic recovery when it clearly is, that the South was not exactly wrong during the Civil War and that America was founded as an explicitly Christian nation (wrong and wrong), that voter fraud is a pressing issue of major concern when it is virtually non-existent, and, on top of all of this, Republicans trash the quality of the U.S. military when it is still by far the most powerful military in the world and is still being upgraded robustly.

Many of these gaps in reality were on full display in the debate between Pence and Kaine. In fact, throughout the campaigns, including the VP debate, the candidates on opposing sides have sounded like they are talking about two completely different countries when they describe America. On top of all that, Pence was in full-denial-mode when it came to Trump’s many verifiable insanities; either that, or Pence didn’t even attempt to actually defend or address some of Trump’s atrocious behavior.

VP Debate an Awful Look Into Our Political System’s Pre-Trump Deficiencies

So, in what would supposedly be something of a “dream” scenario for Republican elites (the same Republican elites that had unwittingly laid the groundwork for Trump’s hostile takeover), a debate where Pence, not Trump, would be the presidential nominee for their party—a nominee who would still be in denial of basic reality on things like climate change and racial discrimination and immigration and the state of the economy and would also deny the basic reality of much of the ugliness underpinning the Republican party—would be considered ideal.

So even taking Trump out of the equation, we find that we are lacking in key components necessary for a serious, substantive debate about our future and that one of our two parties is willing to perpetually deny reality and its own strong ties to dark forces like racism and anti-intellectualism and militarism and plutocracy. Without Trump, it is still impossible to have a fact-based, reality-situated discussion about our country’s policies and its future. Without Trump, we are still in trouble, and in very deep trouble. Without Trump, it is quite possible that Ted Cruz would be the nominee as he by far had the most delegates compared with any other Republican candidate (well over three times as many) besides Trump. Yes, defeating Trump’s historically awful candidacy is a necessary step, but if victory in that cause is achieved, the real work is only beginning and it will be oh-so-very-hard; the American political system was in dire straits even before he announced his candidacy, and nobody should forget that. Anyone who does, just watch the VP debate and that is all the reminder of this sad truth that anyone should need. 

And I would hope that without Trump lowering the bar to unprecedented depths that this problem would be something we would be discussing intensely; under Trump’s looming, groping shadow, I fear that discussion has been lost, failing to materialize as we try to put out an orange Trump fire all while missing the erosion threatening to send our house divided tumbling down a cliff over a longer period of time in a sinking collapse that would not be as sudden but would be as real a threat as Trump’s more dramatic and more immediate inferno of inanity.

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 September 26, 2016  

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) September 26th, 2016 (Edited/updated slightly September 27th)

Getty Images/Reuters/NY Post

AMMAN — This is too close for comfort, people. And it’s important to understand why. Here are ten reasons why what some call the “Trumpocalypse” is a real serious possibility, one with about the same odds of happening as Hillary saving America, Western civilization, and the world from a President Trump. Any exaggeration in the preceding sentence is slight, if it exists at all, I’m sorry to say.

1.)   This Isn’t like 2012. Or any other year, for that matter; the past cannot provide comfort

Numerous times I’ve experienced liberals who are confident saying “This is just like when it was close with Mitt Romney and Obama. We’re going to win.” Or pointing to this trend or that swing from another election year. This boggles my mind because I thought one of the most obvious—even omnipresent—themes from this year’s election is so much being so unpredictable and so unprecedented. Republicans had 17 candidates running for president, nearly all of whom were better qualified than Trump. And Trump won. A declared “democratic socialist” won about 4 in 10 votes in the Democratic contest. So, please, don’t tell me not to worry because X happened in X past election. This year, the rulebook seems to have been thrown onto a bonfire of the vanities. Obviously, this is because of Trump (and the people backing him) more than anything else, and he seems to pay no long-term prices for his many gaffes and scandals and outrages.

2.)   Republican voters really are a mob and “principled” Republicans actually willing to stand against Trump on principle are a nearly extinct species

I will be giving myself credit, and then say what I got wrong. In August 2015, I was one of the only non-pro-Trump people to recognize Trump’s potential to win the nomination and that important factors favored his chances of doing so. But at the time I predicted he would be a disaster as a general election candidate; that is still possible, but seems very unlikely now; what seems more likely is that it will be very close either way.

How did I get this wrong? I put too much emphasis on “The Republican Establishment” and assumed it actually represented more people in the party than it actually did. One of the reasons both Mitt Romney and John McCain lost is that, unlike George W. Bush, both were relatively unliked by Republican voters for being too moderate. But in both 2008 and 2012, a number of Christian conservatives split the base votes in favor of one main moderate “Establishment” candidate. The “Establishment” elites in backed McCain in 2008 and Romney in 2004, both of whom during important early stretches only won a plurality and not a majority of GOP voters. In 2008, John McCain only won 3 of 7 contests in January, failing to even reach 40% of the vote in any contest, and on that year’s Super Tuesday on February 5th, out of 20 contests McCain only won over 50% of the votes in 3 even though he won 9 contests overall. Then in 2012, Mitt Romney won 2 of 4 contests in January, but did not win a majority of votes in either and won less than 40% in one; for all of February, he won less than half the vote in every contest save one in Nevada, where he won 50.1% of the vote, even though he won 4 out of 6 contests. In both situations, other candidates divided votes that went towards less moderate, less “Establishment”-backed candidates so that solid chances to derail both McCain and Romney and allow a single other candidate to gain clear momentum early in the campaign were lost. Conversely, there were so many candidates in 2016 that were “Establishment”-oriented and moderate that the dynamic worked somewhat in reverse, so that even after the first Super Tuesday in March, such candidates has only won a single state (Rubio in Minnesota), and the rest went to Trump and Cruz, two solidly anti-“Establishment” candidates, with Kasich being the only other candidate to win one of the fifty states, his home state of Ohio.

What I and I think many others thought is that “Well, that crazy base Republican was beaten in 2008 and 2012, and while they weren’t enthusiastic about their candidates, the more typical and moderate Republicans who voted in the general election but not the primaries were more solidly behind McCain and Romney.” What 2016 has taught us is that there are very few “typical moderate” Republicans in any meaningful sense, because such people would not be supporting Trump; I had not realized how far gone the vast majority of Republican voters are down the rabbit hole; the Kasich-Kristol-National Review-wing of the Republican Party is only a tiny fraction of the Party overall and has little sway with Republican voters in general. Sure, when the “Establishment” candidates won in 2008 and 2012, most rank-and-file Republicans had no problem supporting them over Obama but did not do so enthusiastically; yet the assumption that many Republican being rational and principled and unable to support Trump was always a myth, as Trump’s numbers now mean that he has pretty much all Republicans in his camp. The public intellectuals, commentators, and national security professionals who are Republicans and speaking out against Trump are merely a detached intelligentsia who influence the small group of elites like them and, clearly, virtually no other Republicans. I have lost track of the specific items of behavior that should have cost Trump a significant number of Republican voters—from disparaging both John McCain for being captured during the Vietnam War and a reporter for being disabled to talking about his penis at a presidential debate to seeming to instigate both violence (repeatedly) and Russian hacking against Clinton—but as we approach Election Day, that support has only increased and is at comparable levels to Clinton’s support among Democrats. In fact, Trump’s behavior has in no way disqualified him from receiving support within his party comparable to levels of what other recent Republican nominees have enjoyed.

In other words, I foolishly believed that enough Republicans would be better people than to be able to support Trump. But if anything, enthusiasm is higher for Trump than Clinton. Granted, I didn’t expect this number of Republicans to be large (and knew it didn’t need to be that large to still make a big dent in Trump’s support level), but it’s pretty much nonexistent relative to other candidates, and thus, the race is basically a dead heat.

3.)   Millennials

Much has been written of Millennials’s lack of support for Clinton. It’s not a fading thing: it dogged Clinton all through the primaries and it’s still a major problem six weeks before Election Day. Echoes of Brexit—when an outcome that a vast majority of Millennials in the UK did not desire and that has drastically negative long-term consequence occurred because Millennials pathetically couldn’t motivate themselves to get out and vote—can be heard now in America, with not only worries about whether or not Millennials will turn out and votebut worries about who they will vote for even if they do turn out. Clinton’s relatively and notably strong weakness with Millennials compared to Obama is evident across all ethnic, racial, and gender groups, including with African-Americans and women. It’s not that they support Trump more, it’s that they often tend to support other third-party candidates or seem less likely to vote for Clinton or vote at all: polls tend to show Clinton’s support among Millennials from being close to significantly behind the combined Johnson-Stein vote, and the trendline for Clintons’ Millennial support is (mostly) moving down. 

In a close election, Millennials are a key part of the Obama coalition that Clinton cannot afford to do without. But perhaps even most frustratingly, such behavior on the part of Millennials is something the country and especially they themselves cannot afford. In the words of New York Times columnist Charles Blow, “As Bernie Sanders himself said last week: “This is not the time for a protest vote.” Protest voting or not voting at all isn’t principled. It’s dumb, and childish, and self-immolating. I know you’re young, but grow up!” James Kirchick, writing for The Daily Beast, echoes a similar sentiment: “…[M]illennial opposition to Clinton and the attendant blitheness toward the prospect of a Trump presidency…[can] best [be] described as a mix of moral relativism, historical ignorance, and narcissism.” However, some good news below…

4.)   Sanders Supporters

There is a lot of overlap here with the Millennials section above, but here, we must ask why so many Millennials think of Clinton as a soulless hack, the epitome both of corruption and a selfish “Establishment,” and a “warmonger.” Where, you ask, did they get such an impression? Easily more than any other source, the answer is Bernie Sanders. I have laid all this outin detail in the past, but what is important to note here is that before Sanders began his presidential campaign, this narrative of Clinton was basically nonexistent. Then he repeated it over, and over, and over, and over, and over again at every rally over many months, skillfully blaming Clinton for an entire system implicitly at first with a guilt-by-association campaign, then progressing to letting surrogates do his dirty work and not reigning them in, then becoming more direct, even to the degree of whipping up crowds into a frenzy and pausing to let them boo Clinton and the Democratic Party, thus creating an atmosphere of hatred of Clinton (as evidenced by many signs and just listening to Sanders supporters talk about her at rallies) that culminated in a mini-riot at the Nevada Democratic State Convention in May that I dubbed a mainly non-violent form of political terrorism. Now, is it any wonder, after claiming before that the contest was “rigged” against him and implying that Clinton was a monster, that many of his backers didn’t still don’t support her, despite his endorsement? 

Of course, many of the earlier discussed Millennials are Sanders supporters, as he was wildly popular with the younger crowd. 

As for that good news: just yesterday, an Economist/YouGov poll was released that showed a dramatic increase in a key stat: 70% of Sanders supporters were now saying they would support Clinton, up from 57% a week ago, which was up from 52% in a poll released on the 15th. The new poll also saw Trump’s support from Sanders supporters increase to 13% from 12%, which was 15% before that, while Stein’s support shrank dramatically to 6% from 11%, which had been 13% before that; as for Johnson, his support dropped dramatically as well, to 4% of Sanders supporters, down from 9% in the previous two surveys. This is welcome news, but is just one pollster’s group of polls and its findings do not seem to fit in the larger patterns that now have the race virtually tied. And despite the increases in these examples, they still show 3 out of 10 Sanders supporters are not backing Clinton, and when factoring in the fact that 13% of them are saying they will support Trump, Clinton is left with a net level of support of only 57% of Sanders supporters over Trump. These specific Economist/YouGov polls notwithstanding, Sanders supporters and Millennials, two groups with huge overlap, are groups Clinton needs to really focus on in the final weeks of her campaign in order to ensure a victory in November.

5.)   Dr. Stein and Gov. Johnson

In most polls, when third-party candidates are factored in, Clinton does worse than when the same poll shows just Clinton and Trump, the clear conclusion is that the two third-party candidates are taking more votes from Clinton than from Trump. When this trend first became clear, it was shocking: obviously the far leftist Stein would be taking virtually all her support from the left, but Johnson has between two and three times as much support as Stein, and he, as a L/libertarian, would be expected to be drawing more support from the right, and yet, the net advantage has been to Trump, meaning Johnson has a considerable portion of his support—roughly half—coming from the left. Since Johnson is “cool,” very independent-minded, very anti-foreign intervention, and very pro-weed, this means he is taking vital votes away from young Millennials all over the country and in key battleground states where marijuana is very popular, especially Colorado but also Michigan, Nevada, surprisingly-close Maine, and New Hampshire; New Hampshire and Nevada are also two of the states with the most libertarian support, and Colorado is also in the top third; in all five states, Johnson’s polling average is 8% or higher, and in New Hampshire, Colorado, and Maine, it’s above 10%; this is all in five states where the polling average gap between Trump and Clinton is 0.2% to 5.4% (and we did not even get into Stein). In other words, there is a very real chance that Johnson and Stein being on the ballot will end up covering the difference if Clinton loses any of these states even when just factoring in their liberal support (according to FiveThirtyEight, she’s currently favored in Michigan, New Hampshire, Maine—which is one of two states that does not award all the electoral votes to the statewide winner but splits some of its electoral votes based on Congressional district, with Trump up in one district and likely to get 1 of Maine’s 4 Electoral College votes because of that—and is favored slightly in Colorado, but is slightly behind in Nevada; Trump has recently closed the gap in the other four, as well). If she loses any of the states where she is favored and Trump holds onto every state in which he is favored, Clinton loses…

The situation of a third-party candidate acting as a spoiler is not merely hypothetical: in 2000, liberal Ralph Nader voters could easily have put Gore in the White House instead of Bush; Bush won Florida by 537 votes, and Nader got almost 100,000 there; in New Hampshire, Bush won by 7,211 votes, where Nader got over 22,000 votes; exit polls told us that if Nader had stayed out of the race, 47% of his votes would have gone to Gore and only 21 percent to Bush. Objectively, then, Nader and his voters cost Gore the presidency, and a similar situation could be giving us a President Trump in a few weeks.

Before Nader, the last time a third-party was a spolier was when Teddy Roosevelt’s Progressive Party run cost Republicans the presidency in the election of 1912.

6.)   Clinton isn’t Obama

Obama was an exceptionally charismatic candidate and came into the public eye with barely a hint of scandal (in part because he was so new). Hillary Clinton simply doesn’t have the same personality and charisma as Obama. Two points here: first, I would hope liberals/Millennials can energize themselves to vote on critical issues concerning our future without needing to have someone with an exceptionally charismatic personality as a candidate. I’ve had it with liberals not supporting the likes of Al Gore and John Kerry who may not have been “cool” but who would have been great presidents and would have spared us the human disaster that was George W. Bush (although if we have a President Trump I will imagine that I will recall the Bush years fondly) had younger voters then been able to put aside “cool” and focus on substance. But especially with liberal Millennials now, I am not sure we can trust them to do their fair share in this election or over time without the dangling of shiny new objects in front of their faces; Clinton is like the perfectly functioning and incredibly useful iPhone that just happens to have the misfortune of being two or even three versions old; there is very little difference between it and newer models, but it’s not the cool-thingy-of-the-moment, and therefore earns something between indifference and scorn from the typical Millennial liberal. It’s more about an individual and their personality that supporting a political party over time. In fact, when it comes to their politics, Millennials are pretty political party averse: about half identify as independents (hence they came out to vote for Obama twice, but voted in significantly lower proportions in both the 2010 and 2014 midterms, helping to give rise to the Tea Party and contributing to the inability of Obama and Democrats to enact key parts of a liberal agenda. The above factors are big parts of the reason why Trump is now competitive and basically even with Clinton.

Second point, related to the iPhone analogy: I would hope liberal Millennials can realize that the iPhone Hillary is much like the iPhone Barack, for even without the cooler design of the iPhone Barack, they are almost the same in many substantive ways; in other words, that Clinton is essentially running for a third Obama term but has a big gap between the level of support he enjoyed and that she is enjoying now is mainly due to a combination of one of three things: 1.) she’s not (as?) cool, 2.) she’s a woman (black men voted before women in America, and we had a black man as president before a woman), so “HELLO, sexism!”, and 3.) negative recent branding of Clinton by her former rival, Bernie Sanders, and by her current and decades-long-enemies, the Republicans. In the end, there IS SO MUCH MORE IN COMMON between Clinton and Obama than any differences that exist between them that it is hard explain the gap otherwise. In fact, it is very telling that Obama is still loved by Millennials liberals, but Clinton gets castigated and deemed evil incarnate for Libya and TPP, among other policies, that were actually Obama’s calls to make and more his than her policies because he was president, not her; listening to elements of the angry left’s denunciations of Clinton, you sure wouldn’t know this.

7.)   Ann Selzer, polls, and momentum.

Who, you ask? Only “the best pollster in politics.”  Her outfit just released a poll, conducted September 21st-24th, which has Trump up 2 points (43% to Clinton’s 41%), Stein with 4% of the vote, Johnson with 8%, and 2% of voters saying “don’t want to tell,” which sounds an awful lot like embarrassed Trump voters to me; the last poll her group conducted had Clinton up 4% (44% to Trump’s 40%), with the same 4% for Stein and Johnson at 9%, meaning their latest poll had Trump up 3 points and Clinton down 3 points from the last one. Oh, and the averages of all the other polling shows a tightening of the race both nationally and in key battleground states. At a time when it would be great for this to not be happening. Trump is gaining support, and Clinton losing support, with only weeks to go and just as the debates are starting.

No pressure Hillary.

8.)   Trump has spent very little money relative to Clinton

Since mid-June, Clinton has outspent Trump more than 5-to-1 ($109.4 million to $18.7 million) on television ads through September 13th and has spent far less than any major-party candidate since at least 2008. The fact that they are basically tied in light of this info is, frankly, terrifying and terrifyingly efficient.

If that isn’t bad enough, Trump’s campaign just announced it will spend $100 million in TV and $40 million in digital ads between now and the election. Imagine the potential difference that could make… and imagine if the billionaire decides to throw a lot more of his own money in as a surprise right before the end…

9.)   The major media outlets have generally done a terrible job covering this election

A whole article can (and will be) written about this, but we should briefly look at the dynamics behind how bad the coverage has been and how important the media is in shaping this race. It basically boils down to this: Trump has so much baggage and spews so many lies and misstatements that the media barely scratches the surface of them before it decides to move onto something else without properly revisiting what it had started exploring, but spends an inordinately disproportionate amount of time going over every little detail of Hillary Clinton’s e-mails/server (since that is basically all that can compete with the scandals on Trump’s side) and yet cannot even provide proper understanding and context for that (which I provided in my last article); there were even times that it seemed the news cycle contained nothing else about Clinton other than her news scandal, not her policies, not her ideas, not anything else, except maybe her falling favorability/trustworthiness numbers. The same can be said for the lazy, facile coverage of the Clinton Foundation arising from content in certain e-mails of Clinton and her staff, content that was anything but scandalous, yet you wouldn’t know this from the coverage. This has created a dangerous false equivalence in the coverage of Clinton and Trump, with the New York Times’ Paul Krugman noting a similar dynamic helped to destroy Al Gore’s candidacy in 2000. As for Trump, I myself wrote an in-depth article on his and his associates’ ties to Russia, making several connections before any major media outlet made them; there is no way that I should have been the one to do this, and not a major paper (but I’ll take it as a freelancer!); this is just one example of the general lack of proper coverage of Trump.

The end result has been that Trump is now more trusted than Clinton, as many Americans are getting a distorted view of Clinton and one that makes her seem in many ways to be on the same level as Trump, where people just seem to shrug off his scandals in part because there has been too little of a focus on really digging deeper, following up on unanswered questions, and getting the full, complete picture. In many ways, the damage is done and attempts at self-correction (some just starting) may very well be too late.

10.)  Americans are stupid

Rationality dictates that Clinton would have a sizeable lead. But we are not a rational country. It’s so glaringly obvious to the rest of the world, which is also increasingly irrational. I seriously have no idea how people will react, decide, or change their mind between now and the election because any rational person would choose Clinton and I do not know if we have more rational than irrational people. I hope we do, but for now, about 6 in 10 voters are saying they will vote for Trump, Johnson, or Stein. I’m not going to cite anything to show how stupid we are a nation; rather, I’ll let you, dear readers, engage in the mental exercise of looking up how bad our public education system is, how ignorant people are about basic history and geography, how crazy are some of the beliefs Americans have (like evolution and climate change), how many people believe in debunked conspiracy theories, and any other number of other topics.

Democracy may be failing in places like the EU, Turkey, Israel, India, & Russia as right-wing, racist, and/or xenophobic demagogues, from Modi to Netanyahu, from Le Pen to Erdoğan gain power, but far be it for the U.S. to be a spectator: it’s trying as hard as it can to follow suit, embrace hatred and irrationality and tribalism as well as groups in Syria, Iraq, Israel and Palestine, just in less violent ways. But such tribalism almost invariably leads to violence, and we are seeing racial unrest and disturbances not seen in a generation in America. If Trump wins, these fault lines can be expected to be the location of earthquakes.

*****

On top of all this, there’s always the room for late-game surprises: terrorist attacks could increase a climate of fear to favor a candidate presenting himself as a strong-man—like Trump is—and push the country to the right as has happened in Europe, Turkey, and Israel; even non-terrorist mass shootings may do more to contribute to fears about security more than add to any support for gun control; there’s also room for one or two bad jobs reports between now and the election, something which would cause the voters to blame Democratic Party of Obama, the sitting president, and of Clinton. Then there’s the promised “October surprise” coming from Julian Assange of Wikileaks, one which will release more Clinton-related hacked files and be sure to keep that topic in the limelight in the final days of the election contest…

And let’s not forget the possibility of Russia hacking our election to put try to put Trump in the White House…

And even amid the litany of well-documented lies and distortions coming from Trump of just the past week, the voters are moving slightly towards him and slightly away from Clinton. Some of these people are liberals who are ignoring political reality and suffer from any of a series of personality syndromes and have no business voting for anyone but Clinton when she is running against Trump. Well, one thing which hasn’t changed this cycle compared with others in the key final months: the left is still great at shooting itself in the foot while the right is making sure to be unified. Do I think Trump will win? I can’t say yes, but I can’t say no either. I feel ever so slightly more confident that Clinton will win instead of Trump, but now that is only by the faintest of margins and accompanied with a sense of dread. Whatever the outcome, shame on America and American voters that it was ever as close as it is now, that someone like Trump can get this far in our political system. 

Even if Clinton wins, we are a country with serious problems and will be an extremely divided nation. I wouldn’t even be surprised if she won the Electoral College but lost the popular vote with perhaps millions of liberals voting with Johnson and Stein, outnumbering conservatives who vote Johnson, even as they are not enough to swing the Electoral College to Trump. It would be a kind of revenge for 2000, but one that at this point in time could really damage the credibility of the system in eyes of voters and greatly harm the ability of Clinton to govern or the government in general to function. I would be shocked if Republicans didn’t try to impeach Clinton on the “scandals” of Benghazi and her e-mails; like the last time a Clinton was impeached, the case will be ridiculous and the motives will be almost entirely political. No matter who wins, it will be difficult, but no question will America still be far better off with Clinton than with Trump. 

But on those hypotheticals another time…

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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!

Since Trump has never held public office, the best indicator we have of what he would be like as president and how a Trump Administration would perform is this week’s Republican National Convention.  And everyone should be paying attention now because it ain’t pretty.

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse July 21, 2016   

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) July 21st, 2016

Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images

AMMAN — If you can’t admit that what the Republican National Convention being held in Cleveland, Ohio, tells us about Donald Trump and how he would perform as president is not at all reassuring, you’re simply in denial.  From beginning to end, even for some genuinely great and powerful moments, the RNC was a comedy of unforced errors and conflicting chaos.

How to Judge…

If you read me, you know I’m a proud Democrat, but don’t take my word for it as to the Trump campaign’s handling of its convention; a good number of Republican commentators have also echoed what I am about to explain below.

Republicans often make the assumption that business competence translates directly into campaign competence and governance competence.  For now, we will leave the robust, ongoing debate about Donald Trump’s business management competence aside, and simply deal with the premise of the above assumption, regardless of its veracity…

The thing about Donald Trump, as I have noted before, is that he is the only candidate for a major political party in American history who has never held public office (including military experience) with the exception of Wendell Willkie, the businessman who challenged FDR in 1940.  So with Trump, we have no political or government experience to look at to judge him on other than his campaign management, and so far, nothing is more important for his campaign than this week of the Republican National Convention.

Overall, the Convention has been an unprecedented, disorganized mess; the speaker order and schedule is often: counterproductive, illogical, and counterintuitive, with key speeches being delivered late, at off-times, with speakers often speaking to an emptying or unfilled arena.  Furthermore, the Trump campaign’s typical lack of discipline has meant that they have ceded control of the narrative through their own incompetence.

MIA in CLE

More specifically, to begin with, most of the major speakers from the first two nights, including the two senior Republicans in Congress—Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell—barely seemed to even want to mention Trump by name, and preferred to talk about the Republican Party in general, attack the Democratic Party, or attack Hillary Clinton specifically.  Only his children and friends among the major highlighted speakers seemed willing to enthusiastically speak at length about Donald Trump (all his kids who spoke, even recent college graduate Tiffany, were admittedly impressive), performances in part echoes at best from an array of B-list celebrities and no-names and others whose appearance on stage was not only questionable in and of itself, but indicated just how hard a time the Trump campaign was having pulling in quality speakers in significant numbers.

In fact, so many prominent Republicans did not attend—including every living Republican president and presidential nominee with the surprising exception of 1996’s Bob Dole—in addition to many sitting senators and congressmen, that the lack of party unity on display even before the convention began was remarkable; many of Trump’s Republican primary rivals also did not attend, including Ohio’s popular governor, John Kasich (more on that in a bit).

Schedule of Screw-Up: Day 1

Work of author

The first day’s advertised theme was “Make America Safe Again,” although “BE AFRAID!  FEAR!! FEAAARRR!!” would have more accurately described a significant portion of the evening, which was at least as much about bashing Hillary Clinton.  The keynote speaker of the evening was Trump’s wife, Melania, who did a good job delivering an impressive speech for her national debut.

The problem with the speech was that the aide most closely helping her craft it, after hearing how much Melania was inspired by Michelle Obama, simply copied almost-word-for-word, position-for-position, multiple sections from Michelle Obama’s 2008 Democratic National Convention speech (the aide’s position in the Trump Organization also raises the possibility that there is some activity going on that is illegal in terms of campaign finance law, which prohibits corporate employees from using those positions to do campaign work, compounding this unforced error).  This is a mind-numbingly stupid move and It truly begs the question: how the hell was someone who would make such a decision so involved in such an important, momentous speech, the most important speech given on the opening night of a presidential candidate’s party’s national convention?

Now, though this is incredibly embarrassing, it was a relatively simple problem to solve: admit what was obvious plagiarism, discipline or even fire the aide, apologize to Michelle Obama, and move on.

Instead of putting out the fire, though, Team Trump poured gasoline onto it, flat-out denying there was any plagiarism (it was obvious there was), with even Paul Manafort, the Trump campaign manager, repeatedly denying it, quibbling that it wasn’t that many words, among other horrible explanations.  Suddenly, denying that obvious plagiarism was actually becoming its own story, with even many Republicans shocked it was not quickly admitted to, and therefore swept under the rug.  The new controversy distracted attention from the GOP’s and Trump’s campaign’s messages from the previous day.  In addition, open displays of disunity on the first day of the campaign also dominated the coverage during the second day, adding further distractions as the convention began its proceedings on day 2.

Day 2

Day 2 was supposed to be “Make America Work Again” day.  This sounds like important stuff, near and dear to the hearts of many economically distressed Americans.  It would be a tragedy for the plagiarism scandal to distract from this important theme…

Except almost no discussion of jobs or the economy ensued, so there was not much to be distracted from.  The second night ended up being a collection of jumbled speeches that were either unfocused, or focused on criticizing Hillary Clinton.  In fact, the only major common thread through the first two days was a spirit of “F&*K HILLARY!” as the below word cloud shows.

FiveThirtyEight

So, rather than have a night focused on a positive message about jobs and the economy, and rather than have that be the discussion as the third day of the convention began, instead, there was no discernible message on the economy, and talk was dominated by a new scandal of the campaign and its senior staff lying/denying when it came to the plagiarism issue.  If this wasn’t bad enough, a new New York Times Magazine report that Kasich was offered the Vice President slot by one of Trump’s sons—apparently even offered the power to run both domestic and foreign policy (denied by the Trump team)—escalated an already existing feud between Trump and Kasich (Kasich was called a “sore loser” at one point).  So you’d think the Trump people would want to put the plagiarism thing behind them, but they continued to double down on lying and denial, until much later that day a statement was released by a relatively-inexperienced-in-speechwriting-aide took responsibility for the plagiarism, in which she wrote that she offered her resignation, which Mr. Trump refused.

Day 3

Still, own goal on Team Trump, which prolonged a story that broke late Monday night that could have been quickly quashed but which lasted until well into Wednesday, causing much anxiety among Republicans for the unnecessary drama created.  And much airtime and inkspace was devoted to this drama, on the third day that was supposed to belong to Mike Pence and his prime-time, extended debut at the end of the convention proceedings for the third night.

That night‘s theme was supposed to be “Make America First Again.” Instead, there was a collection of speeches that discussed so many different topics there was no discernible theme.  One female astronaut spoke about the space program, and then omitted (apparently deliberately) a passage endorsing Trump that had been included in the prepared statement she had provided.  Then we heard from three of Trump’s former rival.  First was Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (the one with the terrible record) who did give Trump a solid endorsement on stage.  Marco Rubio, who really got into it with Trump during the campaign, where Trump kept calling him “Little Marco” and Rubio questioned Trump’s penis size jokingly, came next: he delivered a passionless, tepid, taped address that was sent in that did not directly endorse Trump, and this was embarrassingly delivered in prime time; the audience seemed to barely react to the video.

But following the video, and also during prime-time, second-place-Republican-primary-finisher Sen. Ted Cruz stepped onto the stage.  The fight between him and Trump had gotten very ugly before Cruz finally dropped out, and his prepared text, it was reported, had not endorsed Trump.  Still, a decent minority of the delegates in the arena when he stepped onto the stage were Cruz supporters, and he was warmly received overall.  He gave a speech that skillfully marketed how many Republicans would describe the values of their party, and was interrupted many times for applause (which, sadly, was notably more muted on most things that paid attention to issues of concern to non-white communities). 

His speech went on and on, as Cruz has habit of pausing for dramatic effect over and over throughout his addresses.  As his speech went on, he paused at times where people could be tempted to think he might be about to endorse Trump; but the endorsement didn’t come and the most of the crowd began to grow restless and impatient.  Some in the crowd (possibly with encouragement from Trump campaign staff, who had already previewed Cruz’s speech and knew the prepared text, at least, did not contain an endorsement) started calling on Cruz to endorse Trump; chants of “Trump!” and “Endorse Trump!” echoed and built up from the floor.  Cruz looked at those chanting repeatedly, smiled repeatedly, and kept delivering his speech, with quite the twinkle in his eye; he even seemed to feed off the anxiety and negativity of the crowd, much like a Sith Lord. As he droned on, taking his sweet time, the crowd began to grow even more restless, and boos began to rise from it.  When Cruz told people to vote their conscience—code word for the #NeverTrump movement and other non-Trump supporters, not at all lost on the delegates on the floor and a deliberate provocation on the part of Cruz, whatever lies he has subsequently utters/ed (such a skilled liar is Cruz that he can technically claim he didn’t mean anything by it to the general public)—the booing cascaded into a roar.

John Moore/Getty Images

Cruz kept going and the scene turned ugly, and as the booing got louder and louder (even, apparently, from many pro-Cruz delegates!), Trump left his family box, where he and his family had been watching unamused, and made his way to the floor, when all attention turned to him and people began to cheer Trump while Cruz was delivering the final words of his speech; cameras didn’t even catch Cruz as he scurried off stage.

Win McNamee/Getty Images

Such a scene was pretty unprecedented: an actual nominee coming to the floor to steal the show from his main defeated rival as that rival was being booed by the crowd for not endorsing the nominee.  It was all anyone was talking about that night, or even for most of the next day. Furthermore, this might have helped Trump more or less unite the Convention floor behind him, but it might have created a larger split in the Party nationwide.

Oh, and shortly after that, Mike Pence delivered an excellent political speech, demonstrating a surprising ease, affability, and poise for someone who is so reserved and one that got the crowd solidly behind him.  THAT was supposed to be the highlight of the night: Pence’s extended introduction to America. 

But it sure wasn’t after Cruz.

Poor Pence: he got upstaged by Trump during the public event introducing Pence as Trump’s VP selection when Trump rambled for about half an hour and barely said a word about Pence; he got upstaged and interrupted by Trump during their first joint-interview for 60 Minutes; and he got upstaged by Cruz and by Trump again in the sense that his team allowed Cruz to pull his stunt by giving him the time slot & opportunity to speak that day and shortly before Pence’s speech, which started late.

Day 4

Finally, on the final and fourth day, we are supposed to take seriously the notion that one of the most divisive political conventions in American history is somehow going to focus on unifying Americans, that Trump—who has throughout the whole election season has been a Divider in Chief—will somehow magically transition to a Unifier in Chief.  The first two speakers of the night—the official theme of which was dubbed “Make America One Again”—were Jerry Falwell, Jr. who gave a divisive speech much in the vein of his late yet appalling father, whom he quotes as saying that if interviewed by Chelsea Clinton, Hillary’s daughter, he would tell her that the three greatest threats to America were “Osama, Obama, and yo momma.”  He was followed by Arizona’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio, famous for making incendiary remarks about immigrants and for implementing racial profiling policies for which his office is being sued in a major class action lawsuit and in which he has been rebuked. 

So right out the of the gate, once again the nominal theme was destroyed and discarded by the speakers, like every other night, so unbelievably miserable were the coordination and organization of this convention.  Yes, Peter Thiel spoke later and movingly spoke for acceptance of the LGBT community, but his view is a minority in the party and his words don’t cancel out so much hate spewed from so many others.

In fact, in general, the level of hate and vitriol directed at Hillary Clinton is something I haven’t seen before at a forum like this.  Yes, downright nasty political speech is as old as America itself, as the musical Hamilton can show any of us.  Still, chants of “LOCK HER UP!”, at least one call to execute her from a floor delegate, and other abuse are a dark turn not seen before in at least my lifetime. Disturbingly, some Israelis say this reminds them of the hate that was directed at Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, shortly before he was assassinated by a right-wing Jewish extremist.

Trump’s impressive, warm, and talented daughter introducing him was a bright spot, and she was eloquent like his other children. 

But we are not voting for her, or her siblings, and in the end, Trump will be judged on Trump, not his wife, not his children.  And Donald Trump is still horrifying, as his speech tonight showed us, which was just a rehash of the same nonsense he constantly spews, just more polished and organized and delivered with more focus, yet still full of fear, misinformation, division, and facile platitudes.

Even on the day Trump accepted his nomination, he/his campaign still managed to be fighting with fellow Republicans and inflicting self-inflicted wounds.  The newest wound?  Two nights ago, he gave an interview to The New York Times that came out today, an interview in which he contradicted some of Mike Pence’s points on foreign policy made just the previous night, in which Trump questions the core principles of the NATO alliance.  Yes, Trump managed to upstage Pence even one more time.

See, the week of a convention, a candidate is supposed to lay low until the last night of it and control the narrative; giving an interview to a major paper without coordinating policy with his VP pick and allowing that paper to inject a major addition to the narrative the day that nominee is supposed accept the nomination and then present his narrative to the whole countryis a violation of basic convention competence. 

All throughout the RNC, the Trump campaign allowed their own actions and mistakes to create a jumble of contradictory narratives.  There is no rational explanation for this, period, let alone an excuse.

Conclusion

This convention by all traditional metrics has been at best a borderline disaster, and a historically bad one, certainly the worst since the late 1960s/early 1970s.

That is not to say that there have not been specific moments of high quality.  So far, all of Trump’s children who spoke were incredibly impressive: poised, sharp, at ease, presenting a practical narrative that avoids the ideological-bent, division, and extremism that is so pervasive in the Party today; we would only be far too fortunate if they represented the future of the Republican Party.  Mike Pence was more impressive and at ease than I expected; and I felt myself personally very moved both by former Gov. Rick Perry’s address and ex-Navy S.E.A.L. Marcus Luttrell’s address, who was introduced by Perry and who veered away from partisanship and attacking people and focused, instead, on service and veterans.

But in general?  We can learn that, outside the business world at least, Trump’s management skills, and those of the people he chooses to surround himself with, are so pitiful as to be a joke.  He is still great at manipulating the media and the mob and bullying opponents, but that is not a way to govern a democracy.

And ALL of this should matter to the voters.  And they SHOULD judge him on it.  But will it matter?  Will they?  That is up to us.  If it doesn’t matter, if we don’t judge, to quote the comedian Lewis Black after he began watching the RNC: “Democracy’s great, but it’s just not working.”

Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

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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 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)

Before last night’s debate in Miami, it looked like the Republican Party would be destroying itself between now and the national presidential election in November. Instead, last night’s debate was a clear, surprising, and impressive sign that the Party realized it was committing suicide and would be handing the White House to Hillary Clinton if it continued as it was; last night told us that the Party, however reluctantly, would get behind Trump and end the circus that had been hurting it and helping Democrats. Democrats need to respect the fact that they will be facing a strong opponent in the fall need to now prevent Bernie Sanders from going too far and doing too much damage to Clinton as she goes through the process of winning the nomination.

 Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse March 11, 2016 

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) March 11th, 2016

AP

AMMAN — Liberals like myself were watching the Trump and base-led Republican self-immolation with a sense of glee over these past few months, even as we were disturbed; the crazier Trump, the Republicans, and Republican voters were acting, the better the chances that Hillary Clinton would be president. In one of the most shocking and rapid political surprises I have ever witnessed, the fire seems to have been put out as evidenced by last night’s Republican debate; expectations of the Republican Party’s demise have just been shattered as enough elites in the Party reminded everyone that the famous organization and discipline for which the Republican Party is known are back after seeming to have disappeared for the last half-year. This is bad news for Hillary Clinton and a Democratic Party trying to run damage control in the face of a tenacious and persistent Sanders insurgency.

Marvel in Miami

I came to realize something utterly shocking and terrifying towards the end of last night’s Republican debate. The political analyst in me is incredibly impressed with the Republican Party and its candidates, but the Democrat and American in me is more afraid for America than I think I have ever been in my life except for the days after 9/11.

I realized that, almost overnight, the Republican Party (certainly not all of it, but enough of it) has realized that there is no good way short of a political miracle for it stop Trump without possibly destroying the Party and without certainly making a Democratic presidential victory a near-certainty; in light of this understanding, the Party has decided to stop trying to assault Trump and has signaled that it will simply conduct a relatively “normal” nomination contest from this day forward. In short, it has decided to stop the circus act into which the Republican nomination contest had devolved, and the understood price for this, since the Party knows it is extremely unlikely that Trump can be stopped by normal means, amounts to a tacit, reluctant acceptance that Trump will almost certainly be its nominee.

The Picture Before the Debate

Consider that just a few days earlier the situation consisted of the following:

• Not only Trump, but the big (naïve) hope of “The Republican Establishment,” Marco Rubio, had descended into the gutter, even talking about penis size on the campaign trail (Rubio), while Trump responded to this at a live presidential debate watched by millions.
• Debate after debate, Democrats had been able to present a substantive, relatively polite, rational series of debates by their candidates (including a socialist) who appeared far more adult and presidential than the leading Republican candidates who were often acting like children. Clinton, Sanders, and many others were either only too eager (or, if conservative, were deeply embarrassed) to point out this indisputable contrast.
• There was widespread talk of a brokered convention and/or a third-party to be formed to represent Republicans who did not want Trump to be their nominee, and not just by the media and non-Republicans, but many Republicans themselves. Republicans were saying they flat-out would not vote for Trump against Clinton.
• Mitt Romney, the last Republican nominee, came out with an unprecedented-in-the-modern-era speech blasting Trump, who is the front-runner to succeed Romney, and did so in a way that pulled no punches and was bereft of any hint of civility; he went on a media and speaking tour driving all this home, and the two had been attacking each other viciously on Twitter even before this.
• John McCain, the nominee four years before Romney, joined Romney in criticizing Trump, though far more civilly.
• Paul Ryan, Romney’ vice presidential running mate in 2012 and the current Speaker of the House, had come out a few days earlier vehemently criticizing Trump’s rhetoric and failure to denounce the Ku Klux Klan during a live TV interview.
• Marco Rubio, darling and a great hope to many Republicans, was on the verge of ruining himself as a political animal, and a Republican Party had every right to worry that it brightest young rising star had committed political suicide not just in this cycle but possibly in a way that would ruin his chances for major elected office permanently.
• The Republican Party was clearly in a state of civil war, perhaps at a historic level and perhaps in such a way that the party would destroy itself, with it likely to be limping (fatally?) wounded into a November fight against a strong and prepared Hillary Clinton.

Reading the Tea (Party) Leaves of Last Night’s Debate

There very likely was a meeting of some sorts, because clearly, a large number of Republican elites, probably including Party officials, donors, candidates, sitting office holders, maybe even conservative media elites and who knows who else got on the same page in the last few days. Facing a historic collapse, a severe self-inflicted tanking of the Party’s national brand and electoral prospects, and a near-certain Democratic victory at a crucial time with so much at stake, enough of these people finally put aside whatever differences they had that were propelling these meteorically destructive trends and came up with a plan to prevent a Party collapse, to begin to do damage control and possibly restore the Party’s national brand and chances of winning competitive elections nationwide in the fall, and to bring back its chances of winning the White House from almost zero into the realm of competitiveness. That these about-faces occurred so suddenly—literally in just a few days—speaks volumes to the Republicans’ legendary abilities to organize and be disciplined, abilities that many, including myself, had thought had now all but disappeared.

Basically, the hijacking has already occurred and after his hostile takeover, Donald J. Trump is the Republican Party’s de facto leader. I won’t speculate that some sort of deal was cut between Trump, Rubio, and Cruz and many of the Party leaders; though possible, I think the looming series of potentially fatal disasters was enough to bring people together out of a sense of shame, dread, and fear.

I’d be willing to wager a lot of money that both the Cruz and (especially) Rubio campaigns had some internal polling showing that Tuesday’s big contests (most of them decisive winner-take-all in terms of delegates) were not going to go well for them; with so much at stake, what else could explain why they did not fight harder against Trump during last night’s debate? If they both know that they are dramatically far behind Trump (and about to be much farther behind), what do they have to gain by further antagonizing their party’s nominee, who is dominating their party and is about to become its nominee, with way more power in their party than they will have for the foreseeable future, and for years, not just months? These low polling numbers would have to include an almost certain defeat for Rubio in winner-take-all Florida. In addition, Cruz must have taken the knowledge that Ben Carson, one of Cruz’s biggest rivals for Evangelical voters who are so crucial to Cruz’s strategy, would endorse Trump as a clear sign that his own already remote chances to win were only going to shrink significantly as a result.

Then again, the public polls were clear enough that perhaps there was no need for internals. Florida is, after all, a closed primary, open only to Republicans, making it far more predictable than this past Tuesday’s Michigan primary, which was open to independents and even members of the other party.

What we basically saw in this debate was more or less a surrender of Cruz and Rubio, though each of them is certainly hoping (praying?) for a miracle. 

As I’ve noted before, Kasich, though, is still banking on his longshot bid that begins with an Ohio victory, but this is still, as noted, a longshot. His best bet within the realm of reality is to overtake Cruz for the #2 spot with overall delegates by doing well in the final big contests where, presumably, Cruz would be much weaker.

In other words, as close to what can be called “The Republican party” acted so that now it can be said that the circus is (mostly) over.

Just before the Republican debate, live on CNN, the Republican National Committee Chairman, Reince Priebus, told the crowd that the Party would be united.

During the debate, the candidates completely avoided personal attacks, interrupting, and raised voices; no one called anyone a “liar” for the first debate in a while. Trump himself said “I cannot believe how civil it’s been up here” and spoke in far a calmer tone, a lower volume, and less bombastic language. Rubio, after the debate, said that his family has lost some respect for him because of the types of personal attacks in which he had engaged, that he was embarrassed by his own conduct, that “I’m never going back into that gutter again.” These collective shifts are dramatic and unprecedented in their rapidity in modern political history.

Now, we need to first add an important qualifier: it remains to be seen how Republican voters will reconcile themselves to all this; the worst case scenarios for the Party would have been carrying out some way of blocking Trump at the convention through chicanery that would have resulted in a breakaway Trump candidacy that would have taken his millions of supporters with him; if Trump still managed to win, a breaking away of non-Trump supporters into a third party was possible; either would have been the catalyst for the death of the Republican Party. Instead, by resigning itself to a Trump nomination and focusing on presenting a more mature, civil tone to the general public, the Party preserves the support of all of Trump’s supporters, including many new voters, and begins to allay the concerns of some of the moderate conservatives who are the most horrified by Trump’s candidacy and gives Trump time to win them over with a new, more subdued approach. This approach puts the Party in its strongest possible position for November taking into account the current circumstances.

All this is very, very bad news for Democrats, who need to realize that many, perhaps even most Americans, are only just starting to pay attention to these races or have yet to do so.

The Picture Post-debate

I sure hope Democrats were paying close attention to this debate because now, the current picture has changed dramatically. In general, but especially in regards to someone who is just beginning to pay attention now or will be starting to in the coming weeks, consider these points:

• Compared to the last two Democratic debates, this Republican debate was more civil and less contentious.
• Compared to a few days ago, the Republican contest is becoming less rancorous even as the Democratic contest is becoming more so.
• Compared to a few days ago, the Republican Party has signaled that it is ready, willing, and going forward with a healing and unification process, while Democratic infighting is increasing.
• Compared to a few days ago, now the Republican candidates seem resigned to the fact that most of the fighting is over, while, especially after Bernie Sanders’ surprise Michigan win, there appears to be plenty of fighting left in the Democratic nomination contest, with the potential to get nastier and more personal.
• Compared to a few days ago, when it looked like Democrats were going to be able to start unifying and winding down their race soon and that the Republicans, in a state of anarchy and/or civil war, were going to continue to tear each other apart all the way through the convention and possibly into the general election, now, Democrats are now looking at competing with a Republican Party that will be farstronger than the mess it was a few days ago.

While the Democrats were in a commandingly superior position a few days ago, the picture emerging from last night’s debate has suddenly shifted that balance greatly, even if not necessarily outright favoring the Republicans. I am personally still very confident that Hillary Clinton will defeat Donald Trump in November, but with the current situation as of last night’s developments, I think the edge is significantly smaller for Clinton and that Trump’s chances have improved dramatically compared to before last night. And this terrifies me; too much is at stake and this is too close for comfort for me by far.

The Democrats Must Consider All This Moving Forward

A whole lot rests on how Bernie Sanders decides to behave and the most important questions of the Democratic contest now lie with him, not Clinton:

• Does he really believe he has a chance to win (data makes it clear he does not), and even if he does, how far does he go in tearing Clinton down over the next few months?
• Doe he continue his trend of becoming testier, less respectful, and stepping up his attacks on Clinton, most of which are based on insinuations and implications about her trustworthiness and character, including increasingly aggressive attempts by him and his campaign to portray her as corrupt, insincere, and being part of “The Establishment,” which he blames for all the evils in America more than other group except for Wall St. CEOs and the wealthiest 1%?
• Does he continue to do nothing to stem the loud choruses of boos coming from his crowds whenever he mentioned Clinton at his rallies?
• Does he do more to reign in his extremely aggressive supporters and their vicious attacks against Clinton, many of which are sexist, selective, mean-spirited, and/or blatant distortions?
• How much will Bernie create divisiveness even as the Republicans begin to come together?
• When will Sanders put the Democratic Party ahead of his own agenda, or will he ever do so?
• How much will Bernie focus on his issues and how much will he focus on attacking Clinton?
• How hard does he try to convince his most die-hard supporters—the “Bernie or bust-ers,” to support Clinton in November?

The behavior of Sanders in regards to these questions will do much to shape the race in November and much to affect the relative strength with which Hillary Clinton heads into her nominating convention and the ensuing general election. The main concern for all liberals, progressives, Democrats, and anyone who wants to make sure Trump and the Republicans do not win the presidency in November must now be to make sure that Sanders’ candidacy moves forward in a way that minimizes any potential medium and long-term damage to Clinton and the Democratic Party, as well as maximizes Democrats’ chances of winning in the fall. 

Not a moment too soon for their own electoral prospects, the Republicans are playing the long game already while Bernie is still playing a short-term game that is half admirable for highlighting the causes he cares about and half self-delusional narcissism that is unhelpful to the Democrats’ chances of winning the White House in November. Especially with a Republican Party on the mend, the luxury of being able to have a long ideological fight throughout the Democratic nomination process without it possibly causing major damage has pretty much disappeared. Sanders and his supporters would do well to understand how the game has changed since last night’s Republican debate, as well as how the game is played in general, before they go too far and empower both Trump and the Republican Party that he now leads.

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 March 1, 2016 

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) March 1st, 2016

NBC News

AMMAN — Conventional wisdom—especially that of “The Republican Establishment”—says Rubio is the last hope of the Republican Party to stop a risky Trump (or even Cruz) nomination.  But such thoughts are of people in denial, and, as with most other things this election cycle, are flat-out wrong and months late in their thinking.   If the GOP elites were smart, they’d back popular sitting Ohio Gov. John Kasich instead, as he has a better chance than Rubio to get more delegates and mount a final stand against Trump, though the chances of this succeeding are incredibly remote.  Still, it is worth going through the scenarios and why Kasich has a better chance of doing better than Rubio, and especially Cruz.

First, let’s get Cruz out of the way.  Cruz is very popular with a certain segment of Republican voters, mainly Evangelical Christians.  In fact, Cruz banked his entire campaign strategy on dominating with Evangelical Christians; he got a commanding plurality of their support in Iowa, his only victory so far.  From that from that point on, thought, it’s been all downhill for Cruz, as Trump not only won the next three contests in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada, but he outperformed Cruz and all other candidates with Evangelicalsin all three states.  A deserved stigma that Cruz is constantly misleading voters, with encouragement from his rivals, has also been sticking to Cruz and hurting him.  

Today, on Super Tuesday, of the 12 states holding Republican contests, as of Monday Cruz has only been up in polls conducted since Trump’s New Hampshire victory in one state: Texas, his home state, and even there some polls have Trump just behind or tied.  It is highly likely that Cruz will either lose all states voting today or will just win Texas, either narrowly or clearly-but-modestly, but since Texas is proportional Trump could get almost as many delegates as Cruz even if he loses.  Regardless of Texas, losing almost every state on Super Tuesday is near-certain for Cruz; such is not the performance of a viable candidate, period, full-stop.  And in a general election, Cruz is far “too extreme and too disliked to win.”

Alex Wong/Getty Images

As for Rubio, he is not likely to in any states today, as all polling since Trump’s first win in New Hampshire has Trump up by double digits in every Super Tuesday state polled but Texas, and in most of these states, often generously into double-digit-territory.  After today, it is very probably that Rubio will 0 for 16, and Trump 14 or 15 for 16 out of all the contests thus far.  And Cruz, even if he loses Texas, may still earn more delegates than Rubio today.

Today’s contests also include some that only award candidates delegates if they hit either 15% (Arkansas, Oklahoma) or 20% (Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont) of the vote.  Based on current polling averages of recent polls, Both Rubio and Cruz are in danger of being shut out of getting any delegates in many of these states; Rubio in particular seems likely to be shut out of delegate-rich Texas, with twice as many delegates (155) as any other state voting today, while both Rubio and Cruz are perilously being close to being shut out in Georgia, with the second-most delegates at stake (76), and Alabama, with the third most delegates at stake (50). 

The news does not get better for Trump’s rivals after today: Trump is leading in all the states holding contests in the coming days and weeks that have been polled since Trump started winning.  With a dominant performance today, Trump could very well be in a position to increase his support and shut out Rubio and Cruz delegate-wise in other contests with 15%-20% thresholds for awarding delegates in Louisiana, Puerto Rico, Idaho, Michigan, Mississippi, DC, and Utah.  Additionally, two of the states voting two weeks after today are Florida and Ohio, the home states of his rivals Rubio and Kasich, respectively.  Both are winner-take-all, and Trump is leading in both states. 

In Florida, the three polls conducted since Trump started winning have Trump up between 7 and 20 percentage points (14.33 avg.); if Rubio heads into Florida on March 15th having won zero or close to zero contests out of the 27 contests that will have been held before March 15th, it is hard to imagine his numbers being better than they are now in Florida and very easy to imagine them being worse.  Furthermore, Rubio does not have the approval of Florida voters: a recent poll found that only 31% of Floridians approved of his performance as one of two Florida’s senators, while 55% disapproved; in addition, Floridians view Trump both more favorably andless unfavorably than Rubio.

Ohio, where John Kasich is the sitting popular governor, tells quite a different story: the only two polls recently released had Trump beating Kasich by just 5 and 2 percentage points (3.5 avg.), and unlike Rubio, Kasich is well-liked in his home state: the last time a survey measuring his approval as governor was conducted, in October, he set a positive personal record, with 62% approving his performance and only 29% disapproving, while the latest poll that had Trump beating him by 5 percentage points also has Kasich with a 77% favorable to 14% unfavorable rating among likely Republican primary voters in Ohio, compared with 57% favorable and 36% unfavorable for Trump.

ABC News

All the above is to make the points that 1.) Rubio maybe not be in much of a better position than Kasich before both their states vote on October 15th and 2.) Kasich is in a much better position to be competitive in, and even win, his home state than Rubio is in his.

Still, Trump, with the massive amount of momentum he will gain from his many victories today (and possibly a clean sweep), could also expand his lead enough in Ohio to keep Kasich from being competitive there, as already seems to be happening to Rubio in Florida.  Yet—with luck, and/or the “Establishment” rallying to his aide, and/or perhaps racking up either some strong second-place finishes in some of the more moderate states or maybe even a few unlikely wins in such states—if Kasich manages to keep it close in his home state from now until then, he might just be able to eke out a win in Ohio and claim all its 66 winner-take-all delegates; it’s hardly an inconceivable scenario. 

If this happens, the final stretch of the Republican nomination contests are stacked heavy with moderate states, including delegate rich states like California (172) and New York (95), and a good chunk are winner-take-all, including California (statewide and by congressional district).  This makes Kasich the only true threat to Trump, as he is the most positive and anti-Trump candidate by far and he can fairly be called a moderate, and called so especially compared with Rubio, who is, objectively, very far from being a moderate on most issues.  Even if Kasich performs well in the homestretch states, though, it is hard to envision him catching up to Trump in delegates; much more likely is a scenario where Kasich comes in 2nd with a good chunk of delegates, enough to keep Trump from getting the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the nomination and forcing a brokered convention.

Jim Cole/AP

But with Trump already (slightly) leading in Ohio before his big day today, even this scenario is very unlikely, it is just far more likely than anything involving Rubio gaining momentum or sizable numbers of delegates.  With so many different stars need to align in the heavens for this best-case-scenario for “The Establishment,” chance are still close to 100% that the Republican nominee will be Donald Trump.

Other Super Tuesday coverage from this author:

Near-certain Nominee Trump Domination of Super Tuesday Unavoidable

It Was Over Before Today: Clinton Will Easily Dominate Sanders on Super Tuesday

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 March 1, 2016 

By Brian E.Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) March 1st, 2016

Marc Nozell/Wikimedia Commons

This piece builds on earlier analysis in a separate piece, but has been updated for Super Tuesday.

AMMAN — Trump was expected to win big in South Carolina’s Republican Primary, and even when, just days before that contest, he attacked George W. Bush’s presidency, got into a fight with Pope Francis, and said nice things about Obamacare and Planned Parenthood, he still won the state by 10 percentage points and won every delegate at stake, shutting out his opponents. As a result, Trump is without a doubt the clear front-runner and is now near-certain to win the nomination, and Republican elites are in full panic mode, desperate to find someone to topple him from his lead position.

It was clear even before South Carolina that the at least a big chunk of “Establishment” Republicans wanted Rubio to be their man (especially clear when they packed the audience with people very favorable to Rubio and Bush and hostile to Trump and Cruz at the last debate in South Carolina just days before the primary).

Yet the GOP “Establishment” pinning its hopes on Rubio to dislodge Trump is an unwise move in an already losing movement: the idea that a candidate who came in 3rd in Iowa, 5th in New Hampshire, a distant 2nd in South Carolina (barely edging a 3rd-place Ted Cruz), and a distinct 2nd in Nevada is somehow going to now win a bunch of states and delegates is not rational; Rubio may not even win a single state, given that Trump is dominating almost every poll in almost every state.

The “Establishment” may not want to admit it, but Rubio is not a terribly strong candidate; though often polished, upon closer inspection he lacks depth, gravitas, and maturity, and, more often than not, wilts under pressure. And those faults do not even go into how vulnerable Rubio is with Republican primary voters on the hot-button issue of immigration.

There are four other candidates still in the race besides Rubio, and to simply assume that Jeb Bush voters who had have favored the graying, experienced, moderate former governor will mainly flock to a junior freshman senator who possesses none of the experience or gravitas that Bush does and is far less moderate is quite a faulty assumption; if anyone is likely to gain the most from Bush’s departure, it will be Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who may yet outperform Rubio when more moderate states get to have their say.

Rubio has no victories so far (don’t be misled by his speeches behaving as if he has actually won something), and Cruz’s only victory has been Iowa, on the backs of Evangelicals, who now seem to be favoring Trump and clearly did so in South Carolina. Dr. Carson will still keep many die-hard Evangelicals away from Cruz, and Cruz’s best bet for a big win, Texas, is a state that will divide delegates up proportionately in a way that will minimize any delegate lead from that state Cruz will have over Trump, and that is assuming he wins there.  

Other contests that are winner-take-all (Florida, Ohio, Arizona) currently favor Trump over his rivals.  In addition, many of the contests in March that are proportional only award candidates delegates if they hit 15% (3/1: Arkansas, Oklahoma; 3/8: Michigan, Mississippi; 3/12: DC; 3/22: Utah) or 20% (3/1: Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont; 3/5: Louisiana; 3/6: Puerto Rico; 3/8: Idaho) of the vote, meaning Rubio or Cruz could even be shut out of getting any delegates in multiple states if they do not perform well.

What’s more, while all the remaining Trump rivals save Kasich have raised and spent large amounts of money, Trump has spent dramatically less compared with Cruz, Rubio, and Carson (and, including PACs, less than Kasich, too), winning with minimal effort in terms or organization and money. Trump is essentially dominating with one hand tied behind his back.  Obama’s victory was fueled by a lot of passion, but also a lot of money and a top-notch organization; Sanders is also fueled by passion, but is also raising and spending a lot of money; alone in the modern era, Trump is winning almost solely on passion and media exposure. This is remarkable and unprecedented.

Furthermore, Trump has played his rivals so skillfully that most of them until a few days ago have saved their fiercest attacks for each other; those who took him on most strongly earlier have exited the race. Imagine if Rubio seems to truly be gaining steam, and Trump starts to actually spend money and organize heavily, or to focus his attacks on Rubio…

No, Rubio will almost certainly not be taking Trump down. Cruz will almost certainly not be taking Trump down even more so.

Trump’s South Carolina victory made a win in Nevada, where he had been polling very high before that win, nearly certain: Trump destroyed his opposition in Nevada, where he amassed more votes than Rubio and Cruz combined.  Thus, Trump has nearly all the momentum going into Super Tuesday and beyond, contests where he is dominating in most polls in most states by double digit-margins, often more than 20 percentage points; a dominant, delegate-accumulating performance early in March will only further lead to more success as many more states vote later in March.

Barring an unprecedented political miracle, the window for someone else to come out on top has closed.

Rubio being taken down by Christie in the New Hampshire debate, and thus failing to position himself to be able to challenge Trump before it was too late and Cruz losing to Trump with Evangelicals in South Carolina and Trump’s 10-point victory there will remembered as the events that sealed the deal for Trump and doomed the hopes of Rubio, Cruz, and “The Establishment.”

Michael Vadon/Wikimedia Commons

Other Super Tuesday coverage from this author:

It Was Over Before Today: Clinton Will Easily Dominate Sanders on Super Tuesday

Forget Rubio: Kasich Last (Extremely Slim) Hope of Republican “Establishment” to Stop Trump

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)

Maring Photography/Contour/Getty Images

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse February 21-22, 2016 

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) February 21st, 2016 Updated February 22nd to discuss new polls

AMMAN — The contests of February 20th—a caucus for the Democrats in Nevada, a primary for the Republicans in South Carolina—will quite likely be remembered as the contests that set the final field for November, as the victors of each will now almost be impossible to stop given the realities of the here and now and the rapidly approaching nature of key contests.  There will be a lot of noise between now and when each candidate is the indisputable nominee, noise that will likely change very little in the end.

Clinton:

CNN

First, let’s discuss Hillary Clinton. After losing so badly in New Hampshire, Clinton had reason to be nervous: Bernie Sanders had a big wave of momentum he was riding from his big New Hampshire victory, momentum that was generating a lot of good media coverage and millions in new donations, while Team Clinton was beset by negative press coverage and a Sanders campaign that was out-fundraising a Clinton campaign that was finding it harder to bring in new money. Recent polls even showed a much closer race between her and Sanders nationally, and one Fox News poll even had him slightly ahead. To make matters worse, polling data on Nevada, the first contest after New Hampshire, was particularly sparse and known to be unreliable, and the few polls that did come out showed a very tight race between her and Sanders there. It was very possible that Sanders would win Nevada. In that situation, Sanders would then have won two, and barely lost one, out of the first four contests; in such a situation, Clinton could have seen her sizable lead in South Carolina shrink (even if not overcome), raising questions about how loyal key Clinton constituencies would be going into Super Tuesday. A narrative of significantly weakening support would be one of the last things she needed at this point.

As I wrote earlier, Nevada was going to be an opportunity for Sanders to steal some support from Latinos and African-Americans, the latter being such a crucial demographic in next Saturday’s upcoming South Carolina Democratic primary and in the following Super Tuesday contests a few days later; Sanders’ coalition had thus far been narrow, and it would be do-or-diefor him to win voters from more diverse backgrounds than his largely white and liberal base.   A debate shortly before Nevada was a chance for him to gain with these groups, but this he failed to do as Clinton skillfully targeted her message to address the concerns of these groups, compared with his more modest attempts to speak to them using that national stage. When the Nevada caucuses finally happened, Sanders lost by a clear margin and did terribly with black voters, and while the entrance poll showed he won Latinos, 1.) most (about 90%) of those people were surveyed when the poll results showed Sanders beating Clinton in the early wave and only about 10% were surveyed after the initial wave, when far more people went for Clinton, 2.) there are difficulties in accurately polling Latinos in these situations, and 3.) the preponderance of evidence showed that Clinton outperformed Sanders with Latinos, showing that she did very well in the most heavily Latino precincts, so despite a confusing entrance poll, it seems Sanders did not beat Clinton with Latinos.

More importantly for Clinton’s immediate concerns, she demolished Sanders in terms of support for African-Americans one week before the South Carolina Democratic primary on February 27th, when huge numbers of black voters will participate. With Clinton already leading by a spread that ranges 18-38 points in South Carolina, there is almost no way to envision Sanders, after Nevada, breaking into this lead in a significant way with less than a week to go. And just a few days after that, on March 1st’s Super Tuesday, eleven states, including delegate-rich Texas, vote, with a significant portion of the overall delegates for the whole contest being awarded that day and many of the contests taking place in states with diverse population far more inclined to support Clinton.

Nine days from today is not much time for Sanders to stave off crushing defeats in almost all those states as Clinton has huge double-digit leads in nearly every state, many by more than 20 percentage points. There is no sign that Sanders’ narrow message will be able to broad support in time, but even if he altered his message now it is almost certainly too late.  This clear win in Nevada and a likely blowout in South Carolina will do nothing to dramatically shift the overall picture in Sanders’ favor, and with Clinton’s already huge lead in delegates that’s about to get astronomically huge in a matter of days, and with a large number of other states voting just days and weeks after the first Super Tuesday contests throughout March, it is almost impossible to see a path for Sanders’ winning the nomination absent a health crisis for Clinton or an FBI indictment related to its probe of the handling of subsequently classified material in relation to Clinton’s personal e-mail server, both extremely unlikely scenarios despite loud right-wing claims to the contrary regarding the latter.

Sanders did have a viable path to the nomination that still would have been difficult but far from impossible to achieve: a win in Nevada, a show of clear gains with African-Americans and/or Latinos heading into South Carolina and Super Tuesday, and picking up sizable numbers of delegates in the process of all this through early March. Now, that simply won’t happen, not in time for these key contests; the idea that huge masses of voters who already have not will quickly and suddenly buy into his objectively unrealistic program and its near-zero chances of being implemented are tiny and decreasing every day as time runs out. Instead, Clinton will be picking up more money and positive media coverage and more endorsements just when she needs to, and will almost certainly win the nomination.

The Nevada caucus will go down as the moment when Clinton secured her path that led to her nomination.

Andrew Harrer

Trump:

REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Now, it’s time to discuss Trump. I’ve been saying since early August that Trump was in a good position to win the nomination. Trump was expected to win big in South Carolina’s February 20th Republican Primary, and even when, just days before the contest, he attacked George W. Bush’s presidency, got into a fight with the pope, and said nice things about Obamacare and Planned Parenthood, he still won the state by 10 percentage points and won every delegate at stake, shutting out his opponents. As a result, Trump is without a doubt the clear front-runner and is now likely to win the nomination, and Republican elites are in full panic mode, desperate to find someone to topple him from his lead position. It was clear even before this contest that the at least a big chunk of Establishment Republicans wanted Rubio to be their man (especially clear when they packed the audience with people very favorable to Rubio and Bush and hostile to Trump and Cruz at the last debate in South Carolina just days before the primary). Yet the Establishment pinning its hopes on Rubio to dislodge Trump is a fool’s move for a fool’s quest: the idea that a candidate who came in 3rd in Iowa, 5th in New Hampshire, and 2nd in South Carolina (barely edging a 3rd-place Ted Cruz there) is somehow going to now win a bunch of states and delegates is truly absurd; I would be impressed if he wins more than a couple of the next few contests, and it is quite possible he will not win of them, given that Trump is dominating almost every poll in almost every state. It is hard to see Rubio getting a significant bounce after just losing to Trump by ten points and barely edging Cruz.

The Establishment may not want to admit it, but, as I pointed out before, Rubio is a weak and shallow candidate who wilts under pressure. And that does not even go into how vulnerable Rubio is on the hot-button issue of immigration in the eyes of Republican primary voters. There are four other candidates still in the race besides Rubio, and to simply assume that Jeb Bush voters who had have favored the graying, experienced, moderate former Governor will mainly flock to a junior freshman Senator who possesses none of the experience or gravitas that Bush does and is far less moderate is quite a faulty assumption; if anyone is likely to gain the most from Bush’s departure, it will be Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who may yet outperform Rubio when more moderate states get to have their say. Rubio has no victories so far (don’t let his speeches behaving as if he has actually won anything fool you), and Cruz’s only victory has been Iowa, on the backs of Evangelicals, who now seem to be favoring Trump and clearly did so in South Carolina. Dr. Carson will still keep many die-hard Evangelicals away from Cruz, and Cruz’s best bet for a big win, Texas, is a state that will divide delegates up proportionately in a way that will minimize any delegate lead from that state Cruz will have over Trump, there while some other states that are winner-take-all could favor Trump over his rivals.

What’s more, while all the remaining Trump rivals save Kasich have raised and spent large amounts of money, Trump has dramatically less compared to Cruz, Rubio, and Carson (and, including PACs, less than Kasich, too), winning with minimal effort in terms or organization and money. Trump is essentially dominating with one hand tied behind his back.

Obama’s victory was fueled by a lot of passion, but also a lot of money and a top-notch organization; Sanders is also fueled by passion, but is also raising and spending a lot of money; alone in the modern era, Trump is winning almost solely on passion and media exposure. This is remarkable and unprecedented. Furthermore, Trump has played his rivals so skillfully that most of them save their fiercest attacks for each other, and the only ones who took him on strongly and consistently have now dropped out, most notably Bush. Imagine if Rubio seems to truly be gaining steam, and Trump starts to actually spend money and organize heavily, or to focus his attacks on Rubio… No, Rubio will almost certainly not be taking Trump down. Cruz will almost certainly not be taking Trump down even more so.

Fresh off his victory, Trump heads into the February 23rd Nevada Republican caucuses, where polls even before his big South Carolina win already had him an overwhelming favorite; a win there seems extremely likely, and that would be three wins in a row going and a lot of momentum going into Super Tuesday and beyond, contests where he is dominating in most polls in most states; a dominant, delegate-accumulating performance early in March will only further lead to more success as many more states vote later in March. The window for someone else to come out on top in such a short period of time is dramatically low, and probably beyond Rubio’s capabilities.

Getty Images

Rubio being taken down by Christie in the New Hampshire debate, Cruz not winning Evangelicals in South Carolina, and Trump’s dominant victories in both states will remembered as the events that sealed the deal for Trump and doomed Rubio and Cruz.

*****

It’s obvious now to those who follow these kinds of things that the tops of the tickets in November will almost certainly be Clinton and Trump; in a few weeks’ time, it will be undeniable to just about everyone.

Update 2/22: Brand-new polls in Massachusetts and Michigan are very telling; a poll conducted 2/19-2/21 in Massachusetts, state that would supposedly have support for more moderate candidate’s, has Trump blowing out his competition 50 to Rubio’s 16, Kasich’s 13, and Cruz’s 10.  Even if this poll is somewhat off, it suggest a certain win for Trump.  Another poll has him doubling the support of his nearest competitor in Michigan (35 to Kasich’s 17 and Rubio, Cruz each with 12).  If a non-Trump can’t win moderate Massachusetts and/or Michigan, and if Trump can win states like those and South Carolina, the rest of the process will just be a formality.

For Clinton, as I’ve noted before, Bernie’s base is mainly white liberals, and the state with the most white liberals is Vermont (Bernie’s home state), the 2nd most New Hampshire (Bernie’s only victory so far), and Iowa and Massachusetts are tied for 3rd; Bernie only came close to a tie in the Iowa caucus and the new poll has her tied with Clinton in Massachusetts; if he can’t win the two states that are tied for being the third most favorable to him, his appeal is truly remarkably narrow, indeed, and he will have virtually zero chance of winning the nomination.  Like most other states, Michigan was polled as having Clinton up significantly, 53-40.

Every day, Trump vs. Clinton in November becomes more and more certain.

Getty Images

See an expansion of this analysis in a follow-up piece here discussing (the first) Super Tuesday

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 9, 2016   

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

Emil Lendof/The Daily Beast

UPDATE: February 10th Rubio fell from 2nd to 5th place when the votes in New Hampshire were finally cast, behind Trump, Kasich, Cruz, and Bush.  Maybe he’ll end up as a VP-nominee, but after his New Hampshire collapse—which he acknowledged had a lot to do with the debate—we can consider this article an obituary on Rubio’s chances to be the nominee, as well as an obituary for the chances of The Republican Establishment to stop Trump from getting the nomination.

AMMAN — The closer and longer America looks at the Republican Party, the more glaringly visible are its appalling faults for all to see.  For months, the more mainstream conservative media has been peddling freshman Florida Sen. Marco Rubio as a substantive alternative to the insanity of Trump, Cruz, and Carson.  Like Lincoln with Antietam and the Emancipation Proclamation, The Republican Establishment was looking for any semblance of a victory for the young senator to be able to throw its substantial weight behind his candidacy, staving off what would almost certainly be the disastrous general election candidacies of Trump or Cruz.  America got a great look at Rubio in Saturday night’s debate, and the fact that this man was seen as the last hope for more “substantive” Republicans is a damning testament to the utter lack of substance in today’s Republican Party.  Rubio’s stunningly poor performance was a form of political suicide, and, while only the latest in a series of episodes that is collectively the sad suicide of one of America’s great political parties, this episode may very well go down as the nail in the coffin of the near-term political hopes for the non-crazy-wing of the Republican Party.

Rubio seems pretty bright, but at the same time, every time I have seen him with a chance to really shine, I have felt his performances have been pretty weak and show a serious lack of depth.  From his now-infamous water-bottle hijinks during his 2013 State of the Union response to his shallowness during the Iran hearings to this recent terrible debate performance, I have found that Rubio looks appealing at a first and casual glance but then you can really see him wither under the spotlight and under pressure.  Much of his campaign narrative is based on flat-out distortions and outright lies added on top of his Cuban-American family’s American Dream story.  He performed generally well at a number of debates, but during those crowded debates that were sparse on detail he was not viewed as a threat by his fellow Republicans who shared the stage with him.  That changed in the last few debates before the Iowa caucus, and he started taking hits from other candidates.  With his late-Iowa surge and seeming like The Establishment was ready to back him, Rubio went into New Hampshire with a huge target on his back.  Even before the debate, Chris Christie took up the banner of the anti-Rubio cause, and he rammed it right into Rubio during the debate, possibly skewering Rubio’s chances to be the anti-Trump candidate.

The way Christie’s beat-down went down was quite remarkable, and I am simply stunned at how poorly handled it was by Rubio.  For one thing, Christie and Rubio have been tangling with each other for some time, and attacking Rubio for lacking experience and depth is not anything new for Christie.  Objectively, experience and depth are among Rubio’s greatest weaknesses, and to not have a good response lined up for such lines of attack is, simply put, incredibly stupid and irresponsible as they are such obvious lines of attack. Without a doubt, he and his staff committed a mortal sin in not preparing better for this moment.  In the days before the debate, Christie loudly signaled his intent to go after Rubio on these very terms, so Rubio had absolutely no excuse not to be prepared.  Even one of his supporters, former candidate Rick Santorum, had trouble naming any accomplishments of Rubio’s.  This incident generated a question for Rubio from one of the moderators during Saturday’s debate about whether Rubio had the experience necessary to be president.  Basically, the moderator was giving Rubio the perfect chance to address what is the obvious elephant in the room as far as his presidential ambitions are concerned.  It is an opportunity that the Rubio and his staff should have been awaiting and relishing.

So, how did Rubio respond to the question?  He very vaguely and very briefly mentioned some “accomplishments,” then went into an attack on Joe Biden as an attack on experience, then ended with a rehearsed line about how Obama “knows exactly what he’s doing,” that he is trying “to make America more like the rest of the world.”  He spent very little time explaining his own record, and the pivot to Obama had nothing to do with the question.  The moderator then turned to Christie, who was also referenced in the question, and Christie went right into Rubio.  He talked about how senators are a lot more talk than action, and how he as a governor was more about action and problems solving, and how he is held accountable in ways that senators are not.   Rubio had mentioned three accomplishments, and Christie pointed out that Rubio did not even bother to show up in the Senate to vote on one of those “accomplishments.”  He compared Rubio to Obama, who himself was a first-time senator with little national experience when he won the presidency, making the case to his Republican audience that Rubio was another Obama and that the nation could not afford another Obama.  Christie’s attacks were met with applause.

Rubio responded with a somewhat misleading attack on New Jersey’s credit rating, and then, strangely, repeated the line about Obama wanting to change America, that Obama knew exactly what he was doing.

Then Christie devoured the neophyte Rubio, to raucous applause:

“You see, everybody, I want the people at home to think about this. That’s what Washington, D.C. Does. The drive-by shot at the beginning with incorrect and incomplete information and then the memorized 25-second speech that is exactly what his advisers gave him.  See Marco — Marco, the thing is this. When you’re president of the United States, when you’re a governor of a state, the memorized 30-second speech where you talk about how great America is at the end of it doesn’t solve one problem for one person. They expect you to plow the snow. They expect you to get the schools open. And when the worst natural disaster in your state’s history hits you, they expect you to rebuild their state, which is what I’ve done. None of that stuff happens on the floor of the United States Senate. It’s a fine job, I’m glad you ran for it, but it does not prepare you for president of the United States.” 

Rubio then attacked Christie in a cheap way that earned him boos, and then Rubio shocked and amazed: he repeated then “Obama knows exactly what he is doing” spiel, so that Christie could point out, to laughter and applause: “There it is. There it is. The memorized 25-second speech. There it is, everybody.”  With the crowd clearly against him, even booing him, Rubio then seconds later made the same speech Christie was criticizing him for an additional two times in response!! 

The Establishment Republicans must have been bashing their collective heads against their collective walls.

The two started sniping and talking over each other, but just before then end, Christie lobbed this attack at Rubio, to applause: “It gets very unruly when he gets off his talking points.”

Rubio simply reacted as if he had no way to counter Christie and had not even thought of how to do so, and even kept repeating a line he had just been destroyed for using seconds earlier.  About forty-five minutes later, Rubio was trying to respond to accusations of not fighting for his own immigration bill, and Rubio’s response at that moment, rather than defend his own action, was to again deliver his line about Obama wanting to change America, to boos.  The defining moment of the debate for most, besides possibly a Bush/Trump clash (I would argue that was the #2 moment of the debate), was Rubio playing right into Christie’s hands as just described and looking like a robotic, shallow fool for his efforts.  

Patricia Mazzei

After the debate, as if incapable of adjusting, he has been campaigning in much the same stilted way.

This is not a serious man running a serious campaign when you get past his and his campaign’s surfaces; rather, we see a self-entitled, immature rookie with little depth.  He would get demolished by Hillary Clinton in a national one-on-one debate.  For all the comparisons of Obama and Rubio, there is a vast gulf between the two when they were running in that Obama had actually put a lot of thought into his candidacy and the issues and could respond at length to any question without simply delivering rehearsed lines; his intellectual depth was never in doubt even if his experience was.  Now, Marco Rubio’s entire campaign is in doubt after a gaffe that is generally representative of his faults and weaknesses, and it is a gaffe that is nothing like anything Obama ever did during a debate or on the campaign trail.

Rubio was poised to be a star going into the New Hampshire primary, with the stars aligning to make him come in at least second in the contest, perhaps even giving him a surprise win.  That so many of the more serious and intellectual Republicans were placing their hopes on such a weak candidate says a lot about the state of the Republican Party and its lack of seriousness and depth.  To quote Gov. Christie when he addressed Rubio in an earlier debate, with this latest debate, “You already had your chance Marco, you blew it” (or, to quote The Economist, “Mr. Rubio flunked his chance”).  It is quite unlikely now that Rubio will come in second-place, but it is likely he will do worse than even third as both Govs. John Kasich and Jeb Bush have been surging after their strong debate performances, ground games, and positive messages.  

Trump retains a large lead in polling but a majority of voters likely to take part in the Republican primary and over a third of voters likely to participate in the Democratic primary are still not firmly decided on whom they will vote for today, and then there’s New Hampshire’s apparent famous independents who can vote in either primary.  Trump is likely to win, Kasich or even Jeb! Bush are likely to come in second and/or third, (if Kasich is # 2 or even wins this could especially be problematic for The Establishment because Kasich will likely get almost no traction in the South and will steal thunder from candidates who could) but almost anything is possible with so many candidates and so many undecideds.  Going into South Carolina, it could still look like Trump is the front-runner with a muddled picture of who will be able to rally the opposition to him; the Republican side could be anarchic and chaotic for some time to come, as it has been for the entire campaign season.  And while on the Democratic side, Bernie has been keeping a huge lead in polling over Clinton, she appears to be narrowing the gap.  Those undecideds will make or break New Hampshire for candidates of both parties, then.

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 February 1, 2016   

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) February 1st, 2016

Also by Brian: Why Trump Will Win Iowa: All Major Trends Point to Trump Triumph

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

AP Photo/Paul Sancya

AMMAN — Looking at Iowa—also known as The Hawkeye State—several thematic observations can be made about the state of American presidential political campaigns as the full election season of 2016 officially kicks off.

1.) The Republican Civil War Has Now Devolved Into Anarchy

The last week before the Iowa caucuses will be remembered as the time when any pretense that the Republican Party was not in an anarchic civil war melted away.  There are so many fractures and faultiness being exposed here that this resembles less the American Civil War between North and South than the current Syrian Civil War or the Thirty Years” War.  While there is a clear front-runner, the entire rest of the tier—well over half of surveyed Republicans’ support is divided among the dozen non-Trump candidates—is a mess.

A whole separate article (or series of articles!) could be written about how we got to this point.  For now, we can look at the the most recent schisms in light of recent events, which together demonstrate beyond a doubt the anarchic state of things for the GOP.

a.) Trump’s war with Fox

Ever since the first Republican debate, it has been clear that Trump has not liked Megyn Kelly; Trump went after her and Kelly’s network stuck by her, escalating the feud to include Fox.  Eventually, Fox News head Roger Ailes and Trump spoke, and let it be known they were on good terms.  However, it soon became clear that the personal good terms did not seem to extend how Trump felt about the network or Kelly, and over the past few months, regular pundits on Fox have been critical of Trump and Trump has been critical of Kelly and her network.  He flirted with the idea of skipping the last debate before the Iowa caucuses since Kelly was going to be a moderator, but did not sounds particularly emphatic regarding this possibility.  That changed when Fox News issued an official press release mocking Trump in very a satirical (and unprofessional) tone.  Trump responded angrily by definitively pulling out of the debate. 

I am not sure if people realize how incredibly unprecedented this is: both that the one major news organization that can be seen as a mouthpiece of the Republican Party was publicly attacking its front-runner a few days before the final debate before the nominating process officially began with the Iowa caucuses, and that the front-runner withdrew from a debate he had committed to almost at the last minute.  Either by itself would have been unprecedented enough.  This might have never happened before in American history, and certainly has not happened in the modern era. 

For a party that has so long been characterized (and characterized itself) as the more organized and disciplined of the two major parties, very few occurrences could so dramatically illustrate the rapid decline and internal chaos now afflicting that party.  Thus, a few days before the first contest in which Republican voters would begin choosing their nominee, the nation’s preeminent, most successful, and most dominant conservative news outlet was in open conflict with the the conservative party’s front-runner.  As a result, Trump announced that he would hold his own event to raise money for veterans instead of attending the debate, and the debate had the second-lowest ratings of any of the seven Republican debates held thus far.  And Trump did manage to raise $6 million for veterans, including a donation he made himself for $1 million.  While people can debate about the decorum of how veterans and their causes are used as political football, this is simply how American, and especially Republican, politics operate, and it is hard, objectively, to single Trump out on this measure.  At least in Trump’s case, $6 million was raised that would not have been raised otherwise. And he did this while his opponents squabbled and tore each other apart, hurting each other but not Trump.  Trump even opened by saying he would have liked to have gone to the debate, but framed it as a matter of principle, but mentioned also that Fox had reached out to him repeatedly, “apologized” (Fox did not use that word in its account), and was very nice, but that it was just too late.

Yes, somehow, Trump managed to (relatively) elevate himself above the debate’s political bickering and actually do something that helped people, and the network that was attacking him and decidedly not favoring him enabled this whole contrast to take place in the first place.  Apart from certain conservatives who are decidedly anti-Trump and tried to frame the whole situation as Trump being a coward and wanting to avoid a debate, the consensus from respectable pundits on both the right and the left, from Chuck Scarborough to David Gergen, is that Trump came out on top over Fox.

b.) Trump’s war with the right’s ideological intelligentsia

What passes for the Republicans’ version of an intelligentsia has been very anti-Trump from the start.  Now, one of the preeminent publications of conservative intellectual thought, National Review, has devoted almost an entire issue to attacking Trump in one of the biggest media broadsides directed at Trump to date.  The problem for The National review is that today’s Republican Party is clearly very much not an intellectual party and the party rank-and-file is in revolt against such intellectual elites, especially since the rise of the Tea Party, thus this little issue will have almost no effect on the race; very few Republicans will actually even read it…

c.) Trump vs. Cruz

They played nice for some time, but once the two were close in Iowa, the gloves came off, and their attacks against each other have definitely escalated.  There is something intensely satisfying about seeing such a darling of the Tea Party weighed down by Trump’s birtherism attacks, since the Tea Party has long embraced ludicrous birther conspiracy theoriesabout Obama.  Trump and Cruz have been hitting each other hard in the final days in Iowa, but only Cruz seems to have suffered significantly as a result.

d.) Cruz vs. Rubio

While there were previews of this fight before the latest Trumpless debate, that evening was when the two began their main assaults against each other (Rubio saying then that Cruz is “willing to say or do anything in order to get votes”), and now it is ugly.  With immigration as the central issue, Cruz is trying to portray Rubio as a capitulator and supporting what he terms “amnesty,” while Rubio maintains that Cruz’s entire campaign is “built on” a “lie:” Cruz’s sly, morphing position(s!) on immigration.  The two seem to have landed some good blows against each other, with neither clearly standing above the other, but Rubio is now trending up while Cruz is trending down.  In the final days before the caucuses, Cruz has directed most of his attacks against Rubio, seeing him as the biggest threat since he could emerge as a second second-place Trump-alternative over time, the position Cruz is currently tenuously occupying.  Cruz, then, is not running a campaign to beat Trump so much as he is trying to make himself appear as the only viable alternative to Trump.

e.) Most of the other Republican candidates vs. Cruz

Not only Trump and Rubio, but most of the rest of the candidates seem to be going after Cruz now, especially Rand Paul, because they see Cruz as the biggest obstacle between them and Trump; it seems no one wants to hurt Trump if it will only help Cruz run off with the nomination, something that says a lot about how fellow politicians—the people with whom a President Cruz would need to work—view him.  Maybe they also just don’t like him and see through his blatant posturing…

f.) Cruz vs. the media

Cruz has always portrayed the media as his enemy, and has tried, unsuccessfully, to play negative coverage and questions on his flip-flopping on immigration, his loan scandal, and about his constitutional eligibility to run for president as smears by the media.  His attempts to outright dismiss these issues  when pressed by the press (especially during and after the last Trumpless debate) have fallen flat.

g.) Iowa Republican leaders vs. Cruz 

Iowa’s long-term Republican governor, while not endorsing anyone, has come out strongly and somewhat unprecedentedly against Cruz.  And his Secretary of State has condemned Cruz’s campaign for mailing out false, manipulative flyers (see section 2.)

h.) Cruz vs. The Republican Establishment

While it is not clear who The Establishment will rally behind, this much is clear: it hates Cruz (see below)…

i.) The Republican Establishment vs. itself

Early in Trump’s candidacy, The (vaunted) Republican Establishment was decidedly anti-Trump and some of them had helped Gov. Jeb Bush build up a well-over $100 million war chest.  My, how things have changed: now, on one level, many of Bush’s donors are looking to bail on him and find a new candidate; on another, The Establishment is so anti-Cruz that some of themhave begun supporting Trump against Cruz as the lesser of two evils, though it remains to be seen both if this is a temporary measure or not, i.e., if they will turn on Trump if they can first vanquish Cruz.  For those who aren’t resigned to, or leaning towards, Trump, there are too many other candidates they favor collectively to be able to say any one of them has a clear advantage (“buzz” about Rubio has been constant, especially from Fox, but as of yet this has not materialized into enough support to mean anything significant for Rubio).  Where The Establishment will end is anyone’s guess, although we can certainly rule Cruz out.

j.) Rubio vs. Bush

Bush and Rubio have been going after each other for months, but one of the most intense moments was at the last, Trumpless debate, when Rubio hypocritically called out Bush for changing his position over immigration, citing Bush’s book; Bush had one of his best moments of the debates as he literally laughed off the charge, saying “So did you Marco!”and sold himself well as someone able to get things done, while Rubio just feebly repeated the same charge against Bush, again citing Bush’s book (where was this JEB! before?).  As the race goes forward, this rivalry between a former mentor and his former protégé looks only to get worse.

k.) Rubio vs. Christie

For whatever reasons (most likely because they are now competing for some of the same Establishment support) Gov. Christie and Rubio have been really getting into it recently.  Both in recent debates and on the campaign trail, the two have sharpened their attacks against each other are attacking each other more and more frequently.  At least in the debates, Christie seems to have gotten the best of Rubio usually; like Bush, Christie has skillfully pointed out Rubio’s hypocrisy, even sort of coming to Bush’s defense.  How these two interact, especially coming up in New Hampshire, where they are neck-and-neck, will be worth watching.  

Rubio may very well become the next Cruz, both to his benefit and to his detriment…

l.) Evangelicals vs. themselves

Evangelicals are divided.  But Evangelicals are more divided in Iowa than in they are nationally; Cruz’s higher margin of support with Evangelicals over Trump is weaker in Iowa than it is nationally.  In Iowa, Trump, by various measures, has the support of slightly more than two Evangelicals for every three Evangelicals that support Cruz.  Since Cruz is placing almost his entire candidacy on the support of Evangelicals, this is something of a problem for him.  Jerry Falwell Jr.’s recent endorsement of Trump also suggests problems for Cruz.  Additionally, Dr. Ben Carson is also taking a significant chunk of the Evangelical vote, even though he is far behind both Trump and Cruz.  It Trump wins Iowa and does well among evangelicals there, does this translate into more support for Trump among Evangelicals nationally?  It very well may…

m.) The Republican base vs. The Republican Establishment

No surprise here: this was one of the major stories of 2015 and even before that (just look at John Boehner’s tenure as Speaker of the House and the rise of the Tea Party) and will continue to be a major theme this election year; Donald Trump’s rise is only the main manifestation of this trend…

Reuters/Brian C. Frank

2.) The Last Stands of Ted and Bernie?

First, let me be clear: I am not making an outright comparison between Sens. Cruz and Sanders.  While Cruz is clearly an amazingly calculating liar, I will show in an upcoming piece that Bernie is not as extreme as some would make him out to be.  But the one thing they do have in common, other than being sitting senators, is that they need to win Iowa to give their campaigns any real chance of being competitive going forward.

Cruz’s desperation, in particular, is showing, as his pitches grow weirder, his tactics more extreme, even downright dirty: the Republican Secretary of State for Iowa has even called out Cruz for sending out misleading flyers to voters likely to support him falsely claiming that they would be guilty of voting “violations”  that would be on their “public record” if they did no go to the caucuses, essentially scaring voters who favor him into turning out.  Here, we truly see the level of respect that Cruz has for people in general and his supporters specifically.  Incredibly and tellingly, Cruz essentially defended the move by saying that the end justifies the means: “I will apologize to nobody for using every tool we can to encourage Iowa voters to come out and vote.”  The latest polls in Iowa have shown a steady Trump lead, a Cruz drop, and surge for #3 Rubio, while in New Hampshire, Cruz, far behind Trump, also appears to be losing ground, where others are gaining on Cruz or pulling even with him; if Cruz fails to prevail in Iowa, he could very well fall out of the top few places in New Hampshire, making it ever harder in a crowded field to build support nationally, where Cruz has only held a distant second place to Trump for less than two months, a spot he gained only just after rising to the #2 spot in Iowa, suggesting the two situations are related.  As I wrote a week ago, all the major signs point to a Trump win, whose support is also deeper than Cruz’s.  However, if Cruz does manage to defeat Trump—most likely by poaching other candidates’ supporters—he might be able to go forward successfully as the main anti-Trump candidate, as his success there would make it difficult for Marco Rubio or anyone else to build much momentum going forward.

Andrew Burton—Getty Images

As for Bernie, I don’t think a single sane commentator would suggest otherwise than that his campaign has surprised all and outperformed expectations by a large margin.  That being said, seventeen out of twenty-three polls since January 1st, including the six of the last seven polls (and one of those seven is the gold-standard final poll by polling virtuoso Ann Selzer), have Clinton ahead of Sanders, and her support is also more committed.  It seems the only way Bernie could beat Hillary is if he was able to have an Obamaesque effect on voter turnout, and while he does seem to have generated substantial enthusiasm, the level seems to fall far short of the unique, historic, Obama-level Iowa caucuses support.  Still, it remains close, and since, unlike Cruz, he was not trending down in the final polls, it would seem Bernie has a better chance of prevailing than Cruz.  At the same time, if Bernie cannot win in Iowa, it is extremely difficult to envision a path for him to the nomination save for some disaster for Clinton, like a health problem or an FBI indictment regarding her e-mail situation, both of which seem highly unlikely.  Why is Iowa so crucial for Bernie?  That’s because Bernie’s core support comes from white liberals, and, apart from his home state of Vermont and neighboring New Hampshire, no state has a higher percentage of white liberals than Iowa, and only Massachusetts ties it; these four states are also the only states out of fifty where white liberals make up at least half the Democratic electorate.  So Bernie is quite fortunate in that the first two contests for the nomination are in states that are as favorable as possible to him, two among the four states that are most predisposed to support him; if he is unable to win in Iowa, it would reconfirm the suspicious of those who have reasonable doubts about his ability to have widespread appeal and to win a general election, let alone a nomination.  It will be close, but Clinton has reason to be confident in victory (though hardly overhwhelmingly so), while, at the same time, Bernie really needs this a win here to stay relevant.

3.) “Iowa, You’re Fired!”

One final thought: especially if Trump (but also, to a lesser degree, if Sanders) wins in Iowa, expect (respective) Party elites to seriously begin a discussion about demoting Iowa from its current spot as the lead state in the nomination contest calendar.  This would be quite welcome and healthy, as Iowa in 2016 does not represent America as a whole well and Iowa’s caucuses are inherently undemocratic and involve a lot of social pressure and no privacy in voting.

Read follow up article: Politics From Iowa to New Hampshire: Out Of The Frying-Pan Into The Fire

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 26, 2016   

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) January 26th, 2016

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

Eric Thayer/The New York Times

AMMAN — Unless something crazy happens, Donald Trump will win in Iowa on Monday night, the first official contest of the Republican race to be the party’s nominee for the presidency.  There are several major quantitative and qualitative factors behind me making this prediction (and, frankly, any election prediction): 1.) recent developments, 2.) long-term developments, and 3.) polling data; all three point solidly towards a Trump triumph.

1.) Recent developments

Recent developments alone are, combined, pretty damning for Cruz and solid for Trump.

a.) As I wrote before, Trump solidly swatted away Cruz’s attempt to dislodge him from the lead spot both in Iowa and nationally, with some help from Sen. Rubio and from Cruz himself, the latter of whom did not have a single effective response when attacked or questioned.

b.) The thing about Iowa and New Hampshire is that, being the first two states in both parties’ nomination contest calendars, candidates spend more time there than in any other states during the nomination process. Since Iowa only has about 3.1 million people New Hampshire only about 1.3 million people, and no other states of comparable size get that much personal attention from candidates, this mean that Iowans are seeing more of both Trump and Cruz per capita than people in any other state other than New Hampshire, and will therefore have a much more up-close-and-personal view of the candidates than voters in almost any other state.  And they will realize that Trump is just more likable in comparison to Cruz.  Even I feel like I’d rather grab a beer or watch a game with Trump instead of Cruz.  And Iowans tends to care more about this kind of stuff since personal interaction with candidates actually factors into their thinking in such a way that most voters and most states can only dream about.  In drawing more and more to Trump as the days to the caucuses become fewer and fewer, Iowans are mirroring something which many Republicans realized long ago: that Cruz is intensely and widely disliked, even by many of his Republican colleagues.  In fact, outside of the Republican base, pretty much everyone hates Ted Cruz: I am talking about the people, including Republicans, who actually know Cruz well personally and work with Cruz professionally, from his college roommate all the way to his Senate and congressional colleagues, including the only recently former Speaker of the House, John Boehner.  Even Iowa’s own Republican governor just recently came out against Cruz, a highly uncommon move for a governor in the middle of his state’s contest.  What passes for the Republican intelligentsia (which seems to have hit a real nadir in influence this election cycle) has taken something of an ideological stance against Trump and seems to favor Cruz.  However, more significantly, mainstream and/or Washington Establishment Republicans, though not necessarily happy with Trump, seem to prefer him over Cruz, and seeing Cruz within striking distance of winning Iowa, seem to now be surprisingly (and sometimes energetically, in the case of 1996 Republican presidential nominee and former Senator Bob Dole) coming out swinging against Cruz and expressing a preference for Trump over Cruz, just in time to have an impact on the Iowa race.

c.) Another quality that Iowans getting relative major in-person time with candidates tend to care about is the nebulous “authenticity” vibe; while Trump is seen as exceptionally authentic because he has almost no filterbetween what pops in his head and what comes out of his mouth (or his Twitter feed, for that matter), Cruz appears to be an actual human filter: incredibly inauthentic and ridiculously hyperbolic; almost every move of his seems to be incredibly calculated, from his speech to Middle Eastern Christians and his filibuster speeches to his debate performances and immigration statements, Cruz may actually be one of the most cynically calculating and disingenuous politicians to ever be so prominent nationally. Even an answer to a non-political question about what music he listens to was turned by Cruz into an opportunity for him to pander and divide in the most calculated of ways.  Iowans will have been seeing this forced, rehearsed aspect of Cruz for weeks now, and I doubt it will help him in relation to The Donald; in fact, I suspect that the longer they are exposed to him, the less they will like him, just like his colleagues in Congress.

d.) Palin’s endorsement (and Falwell Jr.’s): for some reason, Palin is still big with Evangelicals and there are lots of Republican Evangelicals in Iowa. In fact, the Iowa Republican constituency is tailor-made to be influenced by a Palin endorsement far more than populations in many other states, and it comes just at the right time for Trump, even allowing for the newest episode of Palin family drama. Not long after Palin’s endorsement, Trump also just today won a key endorsement from Evangelical heavyweight Jerry Fallwell’s son, which will only help him even more with Evangelicals, Cruz’s key target constituency.

e.) Finally, there are no serious scandals plaguing Trump right now, while Cruz has both loangate and birthergate 2.0 (a large chunk of Republicans now doubt Cruz’s constitutional eligibility to run for president), neither of which can yet be dismissed and neither of which Cruz has responded to effectively, especially for self-styled no-nonsense Iowans; he certainly has not done anything to mitigate their impact in time for the February 1st.

2.) Longer-term trends are also in Trump’s favor

Even before Trump announced his candidacy, there was a clear and deep anti-establishment mood among the Republican rank-and-file.  In addition, there was a clear and deep anti-immigrant mood among the same.  While Cruz, contrary to his narrative, long waffled and calculated what position would benefit him the most politically and shamelessly but skillfully flip-flopped, Trump barged in and harnessed both moods more commandingly than any other candidate; he harnessed them to ride to the front of the pack and has not looked back since, even when it seemed he might be overtaken, and thus far, he’s maintained his lead consistently.  Trump has also absolutely dominated media coverage since he entered the race, and very much to his benefit, in a way no candidate has even come close to matching.  On top of all this, as I wrote before, having such a large number of Republican candidates also favored Trump, mainly because Trump is such a unique candidate while the others are largely having trouble differentiating themselves and/or simply cannot attract wide support.  But perhaps more than anything else, Republican elites from media bosses to Tea Party politicians have been fueling a number of trends—anti-intellectualism, disdain for experience and professional politicians, Islamophobia, an embrace of wild conspiracy theories, an increase in extreme rhetoric and extreme positions and even extreme congressional redistricting, and others—that laid the groundwork for the rise of a Trump when before such a thing would have been unthinkable, even just a few years ago; indeed, Dr. Frankenstein and his monster did share a name for a reason.  Much like with the creation of the Tea Party itself, those fomenting these trends thought they could control the effects of their actions, but they utterly failed to grasp the situation and seem to be suffering a figurative fate similar to the French Revolution’s Jacobins, with Trump becoming the Napoleon who will undo them.

3.) Polling

Almost exactly one month after Trump announced his candidacy in mid-June, polling averages began having Trump in the #1 spot since mid-July, and with the exception of November 5th and November 6th, when Dr. Ben Carson ever-so-briefly held the lead in the Real Clear Politics polling average, Trump has held onto that #1 spot since mid-July.

As the FiveThirtyEight podcast for this week noted, yes, the final weak has been volatile and unpredictable in the past for Iowa, with surprise wins for candidates who were behind, but, at the same time, clear trendlines were already visible that favored those who won; in the case of the Iowa Republican caucuses, all polling trends have Trump rising and Cruz dropping, not just in Iowa, but nationally, too.  In fact, Trump just in the last few days had his highest support in any of CNN’s polls: 41% (and only one other poll since he entered the race had him that high, one from mid-December), which was more than double Cruz’s support, which was only at 19%.  A television discussion of the CNN poll also showed that Trump had both the most enthusiastic and the most loyal supporters, and by far.  Additionally, the lowest lead margin for Trump in all national polls for all of January is a whopping 13 percentage points.  In over sixty polls since Trump took the lead in polling averages, Trump has only trailed in four polls, to Dr. Carson, between late September and early November, and has been #1 in every single national poll since then.  Furthermore Trump is now dominating Cruz with Evangelicals, a group on which Cruz is very much strategically betting his campaign.  

He is dominating and has dominated in in early key contests, too.  In Iowa, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker held the lead there when Trump entered the race, but Trump overtook him in early August; then, Dr. Carson overtook him there in late October, only for trump to retake the lead from him in early November; Trump kept the lead until Cruz rose above him in mid-December, but lost that lead just two weeks ago.

This unfolding narrative fits in with what I wrote in early August: namely, that Trump’s competitors were more likely to be competing for support with each other for similar voters than with Trump, who would tend to draw different types of voters, and that the middle-of-the-pack was polling so lowly that very few candidates would drop out anytime soon since it would not take much for them to rise to striking-distance and they would continue to divide the non-Trump vote in such a way that no one would be able to rise to really compete with Trump in a sustained way.  So far, when he has been competing for similar voters (e.g. with Carson and Cruz), he seems to be fending them off after these candidates enjoyed a peak period that was followed by their declines that correlated with Trump surges.  This was the case nationally, and appears to be the case with Iowa, too.  

*****

Yes, all the stars are more-or-less aligning in Trump’s favor, and just in time for him to win the first contest for his party’s presidential nomination, in Iowa on Monday, February 1st.  Expect with a high degree of confidence for Trump to win by a slim to medium margin.  And, with the weird nature of caucuses, which are not a blind voting system but actually a series of conversations between supporters, some of Cruz’s supporters may bolt to Trump if they are feeling like flocking to a winner, meaning Trump has a decent chance to even exceed the margin by which polls will be predicting him to win.

Of course, there is one final late development that must be discussed: after (and, it seems, because) Fox News released a shockingly inappropriate tongue-in-cheek statement mocking and targeting Trump, Trump, who had already flirted with boycotting the debate because his pseudo-media-nemesis Megyn Kelly (who had, to be fair, very aggressively questioned him more intensely than other candidates in the first debate, touching off a feud) was going to be a moderator, went from flirting to making it very clear that he was “most likely” not going to participate in Thursday’s debate (almost immediately after he said this his campaign  let it be known that he was officially not participating).  To be fair to Trump, he was not unreasonable, with Kelly being selected as a moderator combined with the Fox News statement, in suspecting that the debate setting might be less than fair for him.  But at this point, with Trump having more or less dominated in six previous debates, with the debates already having shown voters hours and hours of each candidate, with him being up in all the early states (including Iowa), and with the prospect that the other candidates would rip each other apart (especially #2 Cruz and #3 Rubio being the likely targets) while he could remain aloof and apart from such a spectacle, and with him having very little to gain as the man clearly in first place, it is hardly an illogical move on his part; besides, the narrative of Trump vs. the Media and The Political Establishment has worked very well for him before and will continue to work well for him going forward.  That he will apparently be trying to raise money to help wounded veterans instead of attending the debate is not a bad touch, either.

Even if Trump does attend the debate, it far less likely that this debate will affect Trump’s position than it will see those trailing him shift their collective support among them slightly-to-moderately in attacking each other.  Others will likely go after Cruz fiercely to chip away from his weakening support to augment their own, especially Rubio, while those who have a chance to overtake Cruz will likely be careful about picking a fight with Trump, who has shown himself to be an excellent brawler to the degree that those attacking him are more likely to have such attacks backfire on them and hurt them than they are likely to hurt Trump.  If he does not participate, ironically, though, it may embolden his opponents’ attacks against him during the debate.  How these attacks and a Trumpless debate would play out remains to be seen. 

Whether he is in the debate or not, expect a Trump victory on Monday night, as even before this debate it seems that Trump has already proven, if the polls are being solidly conducted, that that he has by far the support of the most Republicans nationally for months and currently increasingly has the support of the most Republicans in Iowa, while his closest competitor was already losing support on multiple fronts for multiple reasons.  The reasons Trump has his support increasing now, and the reasons that Cruz has his support dropping now, will virtually certainly not be reversed by Trump’s non-participation is that is indeed how Thursday’s debate proceeds. For these trends to reverse, Cruz would have to shine spectacularly as the clear winner and then some, and his many other opponents are not about the let that happen.

For all these reasons, the political gods seem to favor Trump, and Trump should emerge as the clear winner Monday night, barring any shocking last-minute developments or some unforgivable collective oversights by many leading polling firms.

What would a Trump victory in Iowa mean for the race in general?  That will be explained another day…

Mary Altaffer/AP Photo

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

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)