* Trump has sent some zingers down range since the campaign began, my favourite being: “Hedi Klum, sadly no longer a 10″.
He is able to think on his feet. And he enjoys putting other people down. Both of which are prerequisites for comics.
* Saw Jon Lovitz a couple of weekends ago in DC. He mostly coasted by on his old stuff for the last 40 minutes of his show, but the first 25 (of a 65 min set) was all about Trump.
And not all of it was bad, in fact, you could argue Lovitz enjoyed having someone like Trump to contrast to just about anyone. Not to mention he got 25 mins out of it, which is an eternity for a guy just playing out the string like Lovitz (and still getting $30/ticket).
I think Trump is a godsend for comedians. Not only for the impressions and joke opportunities, but also for the moving of the Overton window on all topics. Especially since the guy heading out the door was impossible to joke about for the first 5 years of his term (and maybe more). A breath of fresh air perhaps. Go Trump.
* “Trump, who tends to strike hip-hop fans as having the kind of style that they’d want to have if they were a rich old white guy.”
This is exactly it. Trump surely won’t win the black or Hispanic votes outright, but he may do better than a typical Republican simply because:
1) He’s a celebrity. Most NAMs are at least dimly aware of him, and a fair number probably watch his TV show.
2) He’s the type of white guy that non-whites like: outspoken with a tendency towards bombast. And his brashness makes him more trustworthy, as they don’t feel like he’s hiding anything.
* Heather MacDonald has written on several occasions about how when she goes into black neighborhoods and asks the local residents about what bothers them most, invariably the answer is the lack of law enforcement. Maybe Trump should take a cue and do the same: a local neighborhood question and answer (no outside race hustlers allowed) and address their concerns.
As a commenter observed on another site, talking about law and order is a dog whistle to those who don’t want to be killed.
* Steve’s point about Trump being some kind of emblem for freedom is something that occurred to me recently. Friends of solid conservative credentials object to Trump mostly as a matter of taste: they’re put off by his perceived vulgarity first and foremost, and that overrides everything else.
My reply has been to note (a) that the other candidates are not obvious models of urbane refinement, and (b) that they’ve been exposed as un-free via contrast with Trump. In their unwillingness to appropriate the immigration issue, they show themselves to be in thrall to their open-borders/cheap-labor donors. The difference between Trump’s freedom–however unedifying it may be–and the thraldom of the GOP field is a factor that should weigh heavily on Trump’s favor.
I’ll see how persuasive that line turns out to be. In the meantime, I recall that another champion of freedom, a deal maker who saved his country from invasion, was routinely dismissed as a vulgarian. Maybe it’s too over the top to compare Trump to Themistocles, but there it is.
* For an alleged vulgarian, compare Trump’s adult children to Jeb’s.
* Whether Trumps wins the nomination or not is somewhat irrelevant. He’s already showed how the GOP wins, by going populist. The issue is that none of the remaining candidates can afford to do that since they are funded by billionaire plutocrats.
Notice how few of them have responded to Trump’s attack on hedge fund taxes?
At any rate in a world where blacks are voting for GOP at the tune of 30% is a world where NY & IL become swing states.
* When the time comes, I hope Trump picks Sessions as his running mate. The best way for him to avoid getting assassinated is to have an even more stringent immigration restrictionist as his running mate.
* Trump is slaying it (unsurprisingly) with fraternity brothers in at least 2 huge state schools in the deep south that I know of. Say what you will about greeks, but they are important tastemakers, especially in Dixie.
* The most realistic worry for Democrats is less that blacks eventually vote for Trump as that fewer of them vote for Hillary. Obama got quite high black turnout in 2008, then topped even that in 2012. If blacks go back to 2004 levels of voting relative to whites, Hillary is still in trouble.
