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Monday, August 17, 2015

Yes Donald Trump is the Moderate Candidate in This Race

     This isn't saying much when you consider what Mike Huckabee said on Sunday.

      http://thinkprogress.org/election/2015/08/16/3692100/huckabee-paraguay-rape-abortion/

     He says that even a 10 year old rape victim must bring the rapists' baby to term. What war on women?

     Trump on the other hand has all three major exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother, and knows Planned Parenthood does a lot more for women than just abortion-though it seems that the conservatives have made him back up from that a little. Still on abortion he's the moderate.

     Matt Ygleisas and Ezra Klein argue that in a larger sense Trump really is the moderate candidate-between the GOP and Dems. It's a very interesting take, actually. There are different ways to conceive of moderate. Usually this is imaigined to be the mean between the Dem and GOP position.

    However, another way is the median position of poll respondents on a variety of issues.

   "In a fascinating paper, Broockman and Doug Ahler look at the results of a survey that gave people seven policy options that ranged from extremely liberal to extremely conservative on 13 different issues."

   "On some issues, the most popular position in the one smack-dab in the middle. This is true for the environment, and for gay rights. But on most issues, the "center" of public opinion is often off-center — sometimes substantially so."

   "On marijuana, the single most popular position was full legalization. On immigration, it was "the immediate roundup and deportation of all undocumented immigrants and an outright moratorium on all immigration until the border is proven secure."

  http://www.vox.com/2015/8/15/9159117/donald-trump-moderate

  So how about that? A candidate that was for full legalization of pot and expelling all the 11 million undocumented immigrants and a moraturium until the border is secure? Or someone who's for single payer and virulently anti-abortion?

 Turns out there are many such folks in the electorate.

 The key is to understand that 'moderate' need not mean 'centrist.'

 "These are the kinds of voters Trump could appeal to: voters who hold a basket of opinions that aren't quite represented by either party. Voters who want to deport all unauthorized immigrants while also spending more money on Social Security, or voters who are skeptical of free-trade agreements even as they're virulently anti-abortion. As my colleague Matthew Yglesias wrote, these voters definitely exist:

"The Trump worldview isn't just a grab bag of popular issues. It holds together. Political scientists Donald Kinder and Cindy Kam have shown that Medicare and Social Security are more popular among highly "ethnocentric" white voters, while anti-poverty spending is less popular among this demographic. Those "ethnocentric" whites are precisely the ones who are most hostile to immigrants and likely the ones who are most friendly to the anti-Obama "birther" messages that made Trump a political sensation in the first place."

 "Trump's ideas are sometimes very liberal, sometimes very conservative, and sometimes completely incoherent. And that's true for a lot of voters, too."

 As Yglesias says, there is a big difference between the idea of a third party for elites and for the average man in the street.

"The past few weeks have revealed what a successful third party might look like in American politics. Not the milquetoast, deficit-cutting third party of elder statesmen's dreams but something very different."

 "A third party that makes waves in American politics would look a lot like Donald Trump (an idea even Trump has been hinting at lately).

 "Indeed, Trumpism is what a third party would have to sound like to get traction in America — a grab bag of issue positions that appeal to a substantial minority of the electorate but that neither party wants to wholeheartedly embrace because the ideas are too toxic in the elite circles that fund campaigns. But a Trump-like figure can run a national campaign on a Trump-like agenda since he's rich enough to fund himself."

 http://www.vox.com/2015/7/15/8962821/donald-trump-third-party

It comes down to Bloombergism-Michael Bloomberg-and Trumpism

"When big shots in the worlds of politics, business, and media muse about alternatives to partisan politics, they tend to come up with an agenda cherry-picked from the establishment wings of both parties — an agenda that adds up to a globalization-oriented, business-friendly platform watered down with light dollops of concern for the indigent, the global poor, and the environment."

 "The politics of former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg — not coincidently, a man who was simultaneously a titan of business, politics, and the media — are an excellent template. He was liberalish on social issues but deferential to the police and armed forces; open to tax hikes to reduce the deficit and to government spending on infrastructure and basic research but fundamentally skeptical of the welfare state; friendly to the aims of environmental groups but hostile in practice to noisy green activists; disdainful of labor unions (especially in the public sector) but admiring of immigrants."

 "These were also the politics of the Simpson-Bowles Commission and its fabled "grand bargain" on long-term deficit reduction. Before that they were the politics of No Labels and Unity '08, two brainchildren of graybeard politicians and semi-high-minded political consultants who wanted to heal partisan wounds by having elites join hands across the aisle."

 "Trumpism is like the opposite of that. And with good reason. It consists of ideas that are endorsed by substantial blocs of the electorate but that lack representation in high-level US politics."

 "Bloombergism is precisely backward. It makes for fun elite discussion because it is popular among elites. But precisely because it is so popular among elites, both parties' agendas already bear its fingerprints, and the space for it to power a third party is limited."

 As Yglesias notes, economic nationalism is a vote-getter. The anti-immigrant rants are actually very popular along many swaths of the electorate.

 So while his immigration plan may be absurd and vile it's also very popular.

 http://www.vox.com/2015/8/16/9162049/trump-deport-citizens




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