June 26, 2017--Jack: Love the Shove

I will return tomorrow to the reprieve of a few of my Midcoast stories because today I can't resist passing along a report about my latest conversation with Jack--

Love the Shove

"I know you're going crazy trying to figure out why Donald Trump is doing so well in the polls." Jack was in the Bristol Diner, sounding full of himself.

I confessed that was true, that I was going a little crazy, but said, "You call a 36 percent approval rating in the polls doing well? To me that sounds like trouble."

"The latest one has him at 40 percent. This after firing Comey and the naming of a special counsel."

"Which poll is that?"

"The Harvard-Harris."

"Like the Rasmussen," I said, "this one is a Republican-oriented poll. But, you're right--40 percent, 36 percent, however you slice and dice it, I would think he'd be in the low 30s. So I'm still trying to figure out why he's doing as well as he seems to be. In the polls, I mean."

"That's why I stopped by--to help you out."

"I'm listening."

"Do you like Jeanne Moose on CNN? She does those funky, offbeat stories."

"It's Jeanne Moos, and to tell you the truth she's not my cup of tea. She's a little too full of herself for my taste."

"Did you see the one she did last week with that pollster Frank Luntz?"

"I missed it."

"Maybe I can find it on my smart phone. YouTube probably has it." He began to fiddle with his phone, "Luntz  has this group of 20 Republicans he uses as a focus group to gather opinions about politics and other things. This time, among other issues, he asked his people what they thought about Trump shoving past the prime minister of Montenegro during the NATO summit in Brussels. You probably saw videos of that. How Trump literally pushed him aside. All the media people and the diplomatic types, of course, presented this as an example of Trump's boorish behavior and his bullying. I'm sure you viewed it that way too."

"Indeed, I did," I said, "It was outrageous."

"Well, take a look at the reactions of the Luntz people. It will tell you everything you need to know." He slid the phone across the table. "When you're ready, just click on this."

He showed me what to do, knowing I have no idea how to use a smart phone.

Luntz told Moos he was surprised by the group's reaction. He expected them to be divided in their responses. But they have a meter that they use to project on the screen the aggregate of the focus group's opinions, favorable or unfavorable, and when the group was shown the video of Trump pushing himself to the front of the line, their collective reaction literally went off the chart.

One woman said, "We love it! We're America! We weren't rude. We're dominant!"

Noting this was a NATO meeting and since we pay a disproportionate amount of the cost of NATO, one man said, "It's our party. We paid for this party. After eight years, he's made America great again."

Animated, another woman said, "He was just going to the front of the line where he belongs." The rest of them murmured their agreement.

Jack said, "So there you have it. Trump is making his people feel good about themselves."

"By his boorish behavior?"

"Now you're getting the point. People like you are repelled by his behavior, thinking it's inappropriate for a president."

"Indeed we do. Indeed I do. Worse than inappropriate."

"But it's this very kind of behavior that excites his people. It makes them feel, well, great again."

"Sad to say." I took a deep breath.

"You're repulsed, they're energized. They see him to be authentic. They see you to be tangled up in political correctness. He sums up for them how they feel about the elites. He says things to and about them that they have always felt but didn't have the audacity or self confidence to express. In other words, he represents them. Warts and all. Especially the warts part."

"What a country. How can it be that 40 percent of Americans think he's doing a good job."

I wasn't asking Jack, but muttering to myself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt7_BSI3faY

September 6, 2016--Enthusiastic About Hillary

I've been doing my quadrennial survey of political yard signs and bumper stickers. A methodology admittedly not Rasmussen or Quinnipiac level, but I did get the winners right the last two cycles. Pretty much including their percentages, which were the same as the yard sign and bumper sticker ratios.

So what do I see trending?

Thus far I've noticed just one Trump yard sign and two or three stickers. No signs yet for Hillary though I have seen four "Hillary for America"stickers affixed to car bumpers. Two on one car, which presents a tallying problem. Maybe I'll check in about what to do with the Real Clear Politics folks.

Over coffee, I've been hearing more enthusiasm for Trump than for Clinton. Though admittedly, this too is a small sample. The "enthusiasm" for Trump, however, has been waning the more he campaigns and runs off at the mouth.

One Trump friend said the other morning, while gesturing dismissively, "I can't stand him but I'm voting for him. Things needs to be shaken up. I don't want to talk about it."

A Hillary supporter, also gesturing dismissively, said, "I can't stand her but she's not Trump and it's time for a woman to be elected."

"So you are not even a little enthusiastic?"

"Maybe I am. She's the most qualified person ever to run for president. Minimally, more so than any recent candidates."

"On paper at least."

"Look at her resumé. All the important jobs she's had. First Lady, senator, Secretary of State . . ."

"All true and impressive--though it was by marriage that she became First Lady--but what did she accomplish in any of those roles? Having those jobs is impressive, very, but what did she achieve?"

"More than anything else that's what she achieved."

"I'm not following you."

"That she got those jobs by election or nomination. That's what she achieved."

"I'll grant you that just securing these assignments is impressive, but that's not the kind of accomplishments I'm asking about."

"Now I'm not following you."

"While she was Secretary of State did things get better in the Middle East--Libya, Syria, ISIS? With Russia? With China? That's what I want to know."

"Well, as I said, I'm enthusiastic."

Listening to this, someone sitting at the diner's counter summed up what I've been hearing--"One's a bigot and the other's a liar. You choose. Me? I'm voting Libertarian."

Confused about what to make of this, I called a feminist friend back in New York City who has been enthusiastic about Hillary Clinton since at least 2008.

She's still enthusiastic--sort of--and has no doubts about the timeliness of Hillary's campaign to crack through the highest and hopefully last glass ceiling.

"Do you have any ambivalences about her?" I asked.

"Not really," she said.

"Not even about the emails and the way in which the Clinton Foundation operated during the time she was secretary of state?"

Not really," she said then added sounding half-hearted, "They all do it."

"And that makes it OK with you?"

"More or less. But, look, more than anything else," unable even to speak his name, added, "she's not him."

"Can I run by you a couple of concerns I have about her to see what you have to say? I want to do this because I intend to vote for her but not without reservations."

"Sure."

"First about her health since if she is elected when inaugurated she'll be 69."

"These days 69 is young."

"To be president? Look at the toll it's taken on the much-younger Obama."

"Women are stronger then men and live longer."

"Actuarially that's true, but did you read the two-page report about her health that her internist wrote last year?"

"Did you read his?"

"I did. It was a complete joke and a fraud, but at the moment we're talking about Hillary."

"I didn't read it."

"If I told you it said, quoting from the two-pager, that she had blood clots in 1998, 2009, and more seriously 2012 when she had a 'transverse sinus venous thrombosis in her brain,' what would you say?"

"That she's over it."

"What if I told you, quoting the New York Times, that Bill Clinton said that the symptoms 'required six months of very serious work to get over'?"

"I'd say move on."

"And that she takes Coumadin to reduce the chances of stroking?"

"As I told you I'm voting for her enthusiastically."

December 29, 2015--The "Woman's Card"

Though it is still 2015 and neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have selected their nominees, from the political salvoes exchanged over the past few days between Hillary Clinton and Donald TRUMP you could have fooled me--it sounds as if they have declared themselves nominated and already launched the general election campaign.

The initial focus is on sexism.

Both are deeply experienced in that arena, but not as always assumed.

The eruption broke out last week when TRUMP said that back in 2008 Barack Obama had "schlonged" Hillary.

He probably meant that Obama defeated her handily (the connotative meaning of schlonged); she that since schlong is a Yiddish slang term for penis, he was being not just a bully but sexist.

Would he, she probably wondered, have said the same thing about Joe Biden who Obama also schlonged? In my and TRUMP's old neighborhoods, the answer is for sure.

Rising to the bait and seeing an opportunity to get under Clinton's skin (as The Donald has so successful done to Jeb Bush and John Kasich among other opponents) he in effect warned her not to play the sexism card, implying that if she did he would retaliate in kind.

Predictably, thus challenged, to show that he couldn't intimidate her as well as to raise higher the ire of the women who despise TRUMP, Hillary doubled down and continued to accuse him as having "a penchant for sexism."

At the same time she was defending her own honor, Hillary Clinton's people announced that they were about to unleash husband Bill and that he would next week take to the campaign trail in New Hampshire. There is some worry in the Clinton camp that Bernie Sanders may steal that primary and who knows where that might lead.

Seeing the unshackling of Bill Clinton to be an opportunity, TRUMP seized it. First he quoted Hillary back to herself, claiming on Twitter, all in caps, that she "HAS A PENCHANT FOR SEXISM."

And, less playful but potentially more potent, TRUMP began an assault on Bill Clinton, tweeting that he "has a terrible record of women abuse [sic]" and that by using her husband in her campaign, she is "playing the woman's card [sic again]."

This requires a little unpacking--

How does turning "women abuser" Bill loose on the campaign trail constitute playing the "woman's card"? They seem mutually exclusive, minimally contradictory.

This then brings us to Hillary Clinton's problem with young women.

When it comes to middle-age women, head-to-head in the polls against TRUMP, she gets over 80 percent of the vote, but she languishes when it comes to young women--young women who do not reflexively see sexism so commonly on ugly display.

For the younger generation of women getting schlonged, for example, is not as hurtful as it might be for their mothers' generation who needed to fight every step for their liberation. Taking feminism and liberation as a given, younger women tend to see TRUMP's utterances as only stupid while Hillary feels the need to remind them, motivate them, to think of themselves as women first, as vulnerable women, and everything else as secondary.

What she thus may be failing to notice is how these younger women, whose allegiance and votes she covets, are not that enthusiastic about seeing Bill Clinton coming to the aid (or rescue) of his unfairly put-upon wife. Ironically a wife, for whom sexism is her default mode, being shielded by someone who, in his sexual escapades while in the White House--exerting sexual power as president over a 19 year-old intern--had, as TRUMP rightly claims, that "terrible record of women abuse."

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While on this subject, remember that less-than-felicitous phrase, "bimbo eruption," that was bantered about during Bill Clinton's first campaign and then later during his years in the Oval Office, a phrase for what his staff and advisors most worried about--that there were more Paula Joneses and Gennifer Flowers rattling around who might at any moment pop up on the front page of the National Inquirer, accusing Bill Clinton of sexual harassment. And then sure enough, up popped Monica Lewinsky.

Where are the TRUMP equivalents? There are big bucks and Gloria Allred waiting to bring their stories to the public. If there were such women wouldn't we by now have heard from them?

And wouldn't we also have heard about all the illegal Mexican immigrants mowing the fairways and greens of TRUMP's numerous golf courses? We learned about poor Mitt Romney's gardeners so, if there are any working for TRUMP, they should by now have been outed. Many mainstream reporters hate him and would love to win Pulitzer Prizes by exposing his hypocrisy.

In the meantime, I can't wait to see what mayhem Bill Clinton will soon be perpetrating. Remember South Carolina back in '08?

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Breaking News--with a margin of error of 3 percent, the latest Rasmussen Poll has Clinton and TRUMP in a statistical deadbeat with Hillary at 37 percent and Donald at 36.

Stay tuned.

"I did not have sexual relations . . ."