by Rod D. Martin
May 26, 2016

If you’re still having trouble understanding why Trump is beating the stuffing out of Hillary, this is a very large part of it.

Why Trump Is Winning

I posted this on Facebook (having stolen it from Scott Adams). It kind of says it all, though I’ve been saying plenty else about it for a while now (be sure to read my weekly newsletter if you don’t know that).

But one person responded with a very good question: “So why did he beat the stuffing out of Ted?” Of course, she used that awful “Lyin’ Ted” moniker which is simply beyond obnoxious and ludicrously false, but I digress.

Still, the answer is kind of the same.

I’ve known Ted Cruz for many years, and I’ve never known him to be anything that any rational honest person would vaguely call a liar; indeed, the knock on him just a year ago was that he was “too principled to win.” So Trump focused in on a handful of powerful, simple ideas that took away that advantage. I think in the case of Ted they were uniquely dishonest (“Lyin’ Ted”, “establishment candidate”), and more than dishonest, surreal. But they worked.

A much better example is actually Jeb Bush. Jeb’s whole reason for being was that he was steady, even, Presidential, experienced, etc. Trump turned that into “Low Energy.” The “inevitable” man became “Jeb who?” And that happened despite having raised $150 million, which is more than his brother — and sitting President — managed in the same period in 2004.

The trouble for Hillary is that the knock on her is unquestionably true. There was in my view no truth in the attack on Ted. There was some truth in the attack on Jeb. There is nothing but truth in the attack on Hillary. She actually says in speeches that women are better leaders than men, that the world would be safer if it were run by women, and that the point of all this is to break a “glass ceiling” that no woman under the age of 35 seems to believe exists.

This makes perfect sense from her strident Boomer-feminist perspective, and I’d say that in another year it would have worked; yet in fact in another year (when she was also “inevitable”) feminism got told to take a back seat to blackness. Either way, even if that moment ever existed, it doesn’t exist now.

So what we’re seeing is two people with absolutely unprecedented negatives doing all they can to drive each other’s negatives higher. And in that set-up, one of them is appealing to half of the country, and the other is appealing to all of the country. At best, of course, neither will get much more than half: I’m not suggesting otherwise. But if you go out of your way to alienate half of the people, and the other guy is going out of his way not to, the result is usually pretty obvious.

Of course you might say that Trump has problems with Republicans (the 63% who voted against him, some quite vehemently), and with blacks (but that’s true every year), and with Hispanics (though he’s polling about even with Romney 2012 there), and of course all that’s true.

But in point of fact, in a year when the presumptive Democrat nominee is going all in on the woman card, Trump is actually holding her to a lower advantage among women than Obama, Kerry or Gore — all men — managed; and Trump’s advantage among men is absolutely unprecedentedly off the charts.

Oh, and Trump’s gone from DOA in the polling just a month ago to tied or even ahead.

Ergo my post.