Trump too eager to win the “Who Do I Hate The Most” contest amongst voters

I don’t know if Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump really is a bigot.

 

Will real-life Trump recover from Election Day fall?

Personally, I’d be inclined to think that anybody with his kind of money would have moved out of New York City and given up any ties to the place years ago, because it exposes him to the kind of people his campaign is criticizing so often.

WHICH IS WHY I don’t find it ludicrous that there are gay rights activists from New York who say that Trump is actually one of the most reasonable business people they have dealt with.

We may well be getting a version of Trump best thought of as Candidate Don – the one who spews trash talk and blathers on incoherently at times if he thinks it will garner him votes come Nov. 8 – a.k.a., Election Day!

Family man Don may well be a completely compassionate human being whom we masses will never get to know.

Yet I have no problem with the rhetoric that Trump gets tagged with accusing him of being a small-minded bigot whose vision of “making America great” means going back to the early 19^th Century.

AN ERA IN which power and influence were put in the hands of certain white men (not all, in many ways poor people might as well have been black for all the influence they had back then).

But that aspect seems to have been forgotten by those in our society’s lower economic rungs who somehow envision that it is our interest in equality and justice for all that has somehow deprived them of the benefits they think they’re entitled to.

And it is those people to whom the Trump campaign is relying upon if they’re to have any chance of winning the Electoral College vote in November and Trump to take the oath of office in January, with Melania at his side while perverts the world over fantasize about what she’d look like if she took her top off.

This segment of society sees the political coming of Trump as the chance to take back what they view as wrongly being usurped by someone else, someone much less deserving than they are.

HONESTLY, I CAN’T help but feel that if the modern demographics of the 21^st Century really prevail on Election Day, it will be a Trump defeat. Someone is bound to ungraciously go out of his (or her) way to call him a “loser.” (Just like he did to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.).

But just as McCain’s 2008 presidential bid didn’t get any credit from Latinos for the efforts he had made previously to seriously revamp immigration policy, Trump will be ravaged by the Latino segment of the electorate.

That’s what he gets for kicking off his own campaign with an attack on Mexicans (who are, after all, a significant share of the U.S. Latino population). There are various polls showing that Trump will take even less Latino votes than did the Mitt Romney (a.k.a., Mr. Self-Deportation) of 2012.

And it’s not like just Latinos are inclined to look down on Trump. There may well be people who have been awaiting their chance for years to vote against Hillary Clinton. But Trump has the equal negatives because of whom he chose to rely upon for electoral support.

I CAN’T FEEL too much compassion for Trump. After all, he picked his own electoral strategy – and from all appearances is openly defying anyone who tries to offer him advice on how to conduct himself like a legitimate candidate for government office.

It’s just a shame that his idea of “Candidate Don” was one so brash and garish. Just think of what he might have been able to accomplish had he shown a little less arrogance in presuming that his real estate developer skills gave him a sense of how to run a country.

This is, after all, the election cycle where the predominant thought amongst voters is, “Who Do I Hate The Most?!?”

It’s a shame that Trump seems determined to get a majority of voters to, “pick me, that’s who!”

  -30-

EXTRA: Hillary win a Hoosier miracle? Or a Democratic fantasy?

When it comes to the Great Lakes states, Illinois has become the Democratic stronghold, while the other states are the ones that can flip back and forth between the two major political parties based on the mood of the nation as a whole.

Will we unite Nov. 8? Or remain split by State Line Rd.

Then, there’s Indiana – the Hoosier state, our neighbor to the east. The one place in the Great Lakes region Republicans usually can count on to gain some support in the Electoral College presidential tally.

BARACK OBAMA WON the state when he first ran for president in 2008. But the last time before that a Democrat won the state was in 1964 – the year that Barry Goldwater showed us how “nuts” he was and lost to Lyndon B. Johnson.

It may be a key to the line of thinking amongst those Indiana residents who persist in calling themselves Democrats – mostly those people who live in or near Indianapolis and Gary.

Is Donald Trump more nuts than Goldwater to the point where Hillary Clinton’s Democratic presidential bid could actually take the state? Or is this just an absurd fantasy by people with too much free time on their hands to concoct screwy political theories?

It is a line being speculated upon by those Indiana residents who live close enough to the Illinois/Indiana border that they’re really part of the Chicago area – even though some of them like to pretend they’re not.

HILLARY COULD ACTUALLY win Indiana’s 11 Electoral College votes. That would be a disaster to the hopes of Donald Trump since there are certain places in the country he absolutely has to prevail if he’s to have any chance of winning the Nov. 8 election.

Part of it is that the Trump camp is too ridiculously absurd to be taken seriously.

While Democrats supposedly benefit from two other factors – that the state’s candidate for a U.S. Senate seat is the well-known former governor and senator Evan Bayh who has been out of politics since 2010 but decided to go for a comeback this year.

 

Could Chicago influence in Indiana help Hillary

There’s also the fact that Gov. Mike Pence gave up his position to be Trump’s vice presidential running mate. Meaning the new Republican gubernatorial nominee is Eric Holcomb, the lieutenant governor who himself has only been in that post for a couple of months when former Lt. Gov. Sue Ellspermann decided that being president of a community college in Indiana was more prestigious than being a ‘lite gov.”

THOSE FACTORS COULD combine with the “Trump is nuts” line of logic to scare some Hoosiers into thinking semi-friendly toward the Democratic ticket.

As one Gary councilwoman, LaVetta Sparks-Wade, said of Trump, “The man has no filter. He doesn’t seem to have any control over what he says. He doesn’t seem to be able to control what he does.”

That is a sentiment common to political observers of all persuasions these days.

Yet still, I have to admit to being skeptical that Indiana will go for Hillary and there will be a clean sweep of the Great Lakes states for the Democrats – and not just because Trump himself is putting efforts into taking Ohio paired up with Indiana.

HILLARY WON THE vote in Lake County, Ind., back in the May primary, but Bernie Sanders took the state among those who wanted to vote Democrat. While more Indiana residents chose Republican ballots, and used them to give Trump a majority vote in the GOP primary.

Could it just be the wishful thinking of people so isolated in Gary, Ind., that they don’t see the rest of the world? Or could it be the outrage that the Trump people don’t see because they can’t comprehend the whole world doesn’t share their Hillary rage?

For as the aforementioned Sparks-Wade said, “If the people wind up deciding that a Donald Trump presidency is any good, then we (in society) are in trouble.”

Ultimately, we’ll get to see if “Illiana” truly comes together on Election Day for the Democrats. Or was it the same type of wishful thinking that made some people nearly three decades ago think that Michael Dukakis was cut of presidential timber?

  -30-

Republicans aren’t engaged in love-fest these days; does Trump really care?

Let’s be honest. The establishment of the Republican Party in this country is p-o’ed at the fact they don’t have a candidate in this year’s presidential election cycle.

 

TRUMP: Using GOP label for now

Sure, New York real estate developer Donald Trump managed to win the Republican Party’s nomination by taking advantage of the fact that there were 17 other candidates and NONE of them could build any traction among voters.

BUT IT’S REALLY the Trump Party now challenging Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Republican operatives are more concerned these days with trying to salvage something so they can rebuild in the months and years following the Nov. 8 elections.

Their biggest fear is that Trump manages to undermine the party operations so thoroughly that this becomes the year the Grand Ol’ Party goes the way of the Whigs. Remember them?

Of course you don’t. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if many people reading this commentary are now muttering to themselves, “What a moron. It’s spelled, w-i-g-s.”

In light of that context, it shouldn’t be surprising that Trump is refusing to publicly back House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., or Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in their own bids for re-election come November; although Trump's vice presidential choice, Mike Pence, has said publicly he backs Ryan.

THIS IS PURE political payback, as far as Trump is concerned. Because the House speaker and one-time presidential nominee have been among the two most vocal Republicans in expressing their reluctance to have Donald atop the ticket of their political party come Election Day.

 

Is this the image Trump hopes nation has of Hillary?

Now that it’s definite he won and there isn’t a thing either of them can do to stop it, Trump is going about talking his own trash. News reports pointed out that Trump’s “I’m not quite there yet” comment about supporting Ryan is almost word-for-word the same thing Ryan said about supporting Trump back in May when Trump still had a few challengers trying to build some momentum so they could beat him.

I don’t think Trump cares one bit what the other Republican candidates think of him. He figures he has his supporters – people who like his ridiculous trash-talk because it supports their viewpoint that they’re the only people in our society who ought to matter and that anything benefiting somebody else is a waste that ought to be eradicated.

 

McCAIN: Will he call Trump a 'loser' on Nov. 9?

Of course, one can argue that the Republican Party in recent election cycles has been pandering to these kind of people so much that it’s no wonder they now feel the strength to take control and quit dealing with the namby-pamby political geeks altogether.

THE TRICK ABOUT predicting a Nov. 8 outcome in this country is to figure turnout – since the one thing I’m sure about is the people who are talking up Trump now are the ones determined to vote. They can’t wait for the chance to cast that ballot.

They will be a reliable support base, and they can’t comprehend how anyone could possible like that reprehensible witch of a candidate who is married to the philandering fool who once was our president.

The real majority of our society feels just reverse; Trump’s continued hostile rhetoric about so many peoples turns them off to where they feel revulsion at the thought of him winning. But they could also get lazy and not bother to vote.

So much so that the Trump minority could actually be large enough to win come Nov. 8. In which case, the attention in the next 96 days before Election Day ought to be paid to how much is Hillary Clinton making her would-be backers enthusiastic enough to want to vote for her?

IF SHE CAN’T do that, she loses and has no one to blame but herself. If she can, then Republicans begin picking through the rubble on Nov. 9 to rebuild themselves.

 

Intriguing character, or ultimate subversive?

Trump may be engaging in a lot of nonsense rhetoric these days about the electoral system being “rigged” against him. Perhaps he can’t comprehend the idea that a true majority of people in our society are those whom he has been so relentlessly been attacking on the campaign trail – particularly in light of the demographics of our nation in this 21^st Century.

Is Trump the kind of guy who views “Star Trek” and its vision of a 23^rd Century in which our planet has come together as one and seeks out exploration with other worlds as the ultimate nightmare that he has to fight to avert at all cost?

It makes me wonder about the sense level of a guy who views Mr. Spock as the ultimate subversive force – rather than just an actor in ridiculous-looking pointy ears!

  -30-

EXTRA: In your guts, you know he’s nuts -- will we soon hear of Trump?

How long until we start getting parody campaign buttons along these lines?

For Democrat political operatives with a sense of history already are using the Internet to disseminate an old television spot from the 1964 presidential campaign; one in which an actor portrays a would-be Republican voter who can’t handle the notion of accepting the GOP nominee – Barry Goldwater – for that election cycle.

I DO FIND it intriguing that political observers of a Republican orientation often like to claim that the 1964 election was the one in which Democrats did themselves serious harm by creating the impression that the Republican Party was the one that would appeal to people of a conservative ideological bent.

Which led to the Southern Strategy of Richard M. Nixon in the ’68 election cycle and a series of future campaign strategies that one could claim have culminated with the conservative takeover of the political process that allowed Donald Trump to gain the Republican nomination this year.

We could be going through a bit of Goldwater nostalgia to remind us of the long-time senator from Arizona who made his bid for national prominence some 52 years ago.

How long until Trump-ites retaliate by reminding us that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton was, herself, one of the famed “Goldwater Girls” who came from a family of Republicans from suburban Park Ridge – or at least  until their daughter went off and experienced the Sixties while in college.

IN SHORT, WE could be getting more than our share of Barry Goldwater nostalgia in coming weeks as we remember the candidacy who, for good or bad, motivated the conservative ideologues of our nation into action.

Although the day we see a parody spot of “Daisy” against Trump, that’s probably when the nostalgia kick will have gone too far.

  -30-

What constitutes a “real” American? That’s the question we must answer

Does this bobblehead have more sense?

The latest controversy absorbing the attention of the Donald Trump campaign doesn’t surprise me in the least – the fact that he would rudely attack a Muslim couple and downplay the sacrifice their son made while serving in the U.S. military is way too predictable.

The fact that some Republican political officials are now feeling inclined to bad-mouth Trump and claim he ought to be apologetic is not only going to fail to warrant an apology, it is likely to offend the mentality of Trump backers.

IT MAY WIND up being used as further evidence by those people of how the Republican Party is out of touch with what they feel about this country.

And I don’t doubt that Trump himself is garnering some form of emotional strength from being criticized publicly on this issue. It may well be the perfect example of how differently from the masses the Trump-types are in viewing the world.

At stake is the activity of the past few days centering around Khizr Khan and his wife, whose son Humayun, was killed in action while serving in the Army.

The couple was used by Democrats during last week’s presidential nominating convention to show an example of an Islamic family making the same ultimate sacrifice of losing a family member to military service as many other families in this country have done.

 

How many bothered by front page photo?

IT WAS SUPPOSED to be an example of how nonsensical so much of Trump’s anti-Islamic rhetoric during his presidential campaign has been.

Trump, if he had any political sense, or compassion of any kind, would have let it go. The Khans would have had their convention moment on national television, and most likely would already have been forgotten.

But Trump is Trump. He felt compelled to respond with ridicule of the couple, which caused Khizr Khan to retort with comments about how lacking in humanity or a soul Trump truly is.

It seems that Khan has captured the sentiment of many people – as there are many Republican operatives who wish Trump would just shut up. After all, GOP candidates don’t usually go about criticizing military personnel or their families.

THIS IS EVEN an issue that has brought together Illinois’ two candidates for a U.S. Senate seat – both Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., and Democratic challenger Tammy Duckworth made a point on Monday of seeing who could come out and publicly bash Trump the hardest.

The long-time Naval Reserve officer in Kirk and one-time Army helicopter pilot in Duckworth both wanted it known they thought Trump would make a completely unfit Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. military if he actually won the presidential election.

Did Mark Kirk repudiate Trump thoroughly,...

And not just because of the draft deferments he got some five decades ago that kept him from ever having to serve in the military during the Vietnam War – I’ll give Trump the benefit of the doubt and accept that he really had bone spurs in his heels that would have made him physically unfit for military service, even though he also has boasted that the Philadelphia Phillies expressed some interest in him playing baseball professionally when he was a teenager.

But I don’t think Trump will be swayed by any of this. Maybe not even the fact that his vice presidential running mate, Mike Pence, says he wishes Trump had kept quiet about this. Because I’m sure there are people who perceive individuals like the Khans as somehow not deserving of the ability to think of themselves as being part of this nation.

... or did Tammy Duckworth top him?

THEY PROBABLY VIEW the sacrifice of Humayun Khan as being less than significant. In fact, much of the “meat” of their political philosophy is a serious debate over who deserves to be able to think of themselves as belonging in this country to begin with! What with all their rhetoric about deportation and exclusion of certain individuals who aren't Anglo enough for their tastes!

It wouldn’t surprise me if they see that Chicago Tribune front page on Tuesday with a full-color photograph of Khan’s headstone, and are offended that a military headstone would bear the star and crescent symbol of Islam where they think the Christian cross ought to be.

A lot of things that reflect the reality of modern-day society offend them, and they perceive this presidential campaign as a conflict to restore the old order of things. That is something that the bulk of us ought to keep in mind when we ponder our own thoughts about whether we should have Hillary or Donald in the Oval Office.

Do we really “make America great” by returning to many of the nonsensical hang-ups we had in the 19^th Century; or come full around and accept the realities of where we are in the 21^st?

  -30-

Which Trump can we say has most outrageous NY Post front page?!?

Until Sunday, it could be said that one of the New York Post’s most outrageous front pages ever was that one from 1990 that informed us of how incredibly proficient real estate tycoon Donald Trump was sexually.

 

Does this front page ...

But now, we may have to seriously judge whether “the Donald” has been topped, and by none other than his own wife.

FOR THE NEW York Post managed to find out that some 21 years ago, an aspiring model Melania Knauss did something that many would-be actresses and models do – she posed for photographs in the nude.

Those photographs appeared in a French magazine that no longer exists.

But rather than just report that the woman who has since become the third Mrs. Donald Trump and could wind up as the nation’s first lady if her husband’s presidential aspirations are successful, the Post carried the story to the next level.

They found the photographer who took the pictures and bought the rights to publish them. Then, they did.

MEANING THAT FOR those people who bought the Post on Sunday got to see a busty young woman in all her physical glory. We got to see more detail of Melania than most so-called men’s magazines would have given us.

Not even Playboy bothers to publish explicit nudity anymore (they really want us to read it for the articles).

But the Post let us know exactly what it was that caused Trump to desire Melania and make her his latest (and presumably, final) wife.

 

... make this one seem deadly dull by comparison?

While also giving the masses of us who are dirty-minded and looking for any excuse to drool something to lust over.

I WONDER IF people will try to put used copies of the newspaper on eBay or in other ways claim the issue to somehow be collectible and valuable.

Then again, I’d be afraid to handle a copy unless I were wearing rubber gloves, because I’d fear exactly where somebody was touching themselves while they were simultaneously handling their copy of the newspaper.

Eew! And, yech!

Even the 1990 story that told us how the woman who became Trump’s second wife, Marla, supposedly boasted about Trump’s sexual prowess to her girlfriends (one of whom then blabbed all about it to the Post) somehow now seems tame by comparison.

THE POST BACK then would have had to have given us pictures of Trump himself in the act of coitus with his then-mistress to match the level of creepiness that has been achieved now.

Of course, Trump himself has claimed he’s not peeved about the Post’s latest actions. He’s giving us the official line that the photographs have artistic merit. He can’t very well claim the woman isn’t his wife. Age hasn’t changed her physical appearance all that much.

And it isn’t like these are the photographs from 1975 that purport to be former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis that are so grainy we can’t really tell who it is whom we can see in all her full-frontal glory.

Although that didn’t stop Hustler magazine from publishing them then. Does this now make the Post the equivalent of publisher Larry Flynt? Do Post executives envision Woody Harrelson portraying them too in a third-rate film?

PERSONALLY, I ALWAYS felt that one of the problems with the Trump phenomenon is that Donald himself had his ego over-bloated from all those years of the New York Post elevating his every stupid trivial act into a ridiculous headline.

 

Does this covered cover top them all?

Because those of us with sense can see the Post was merely going for the cheap headline. They filled space and sold a few papers.

While Trump probably thinks he got written about all those years because he’s a deep-minded public persona whose every exploit is worth noting.

Unfortunately for us, these things do draw attention. Because let’s face it – we’re not going to soon forget the Post, while I’ll be the first to admit we’ve already forgotten what it was the New York Daily News deemed worthy of Page One!

  -30-

Can you hear Olympic anthem in our skies? What could have been in Chi

President Barack Obama is expected to be in Chicago some time this week to make known the worst-kept secret – his presidential library and museum will be put in Jackson Park, not far from the University of Chicago and the Museum of Science and Industry.

 

What could have been this month in Chicago

But if one goes back a decade ago, Obama was supposed to bring the eyes of the world this week on Chicago to a site just a little further to the north, as in Washington Park.

BECAUSE THAT WAS supposed to be the site where an Olympic Stadium would be constructed – an 80,000-seat temporary structure that would have the opening ceremonies and major events for the Olympic Games that are scheduled to begin on Friday.

As for Jackson Park, it too was supposed to be part of the Olympiad plan – the plan was for a stadium to hold field hockey events would be built there, and that facility eventually would be converted into fields where soccer could be played.

But we all know how Chicago’s bid to be the host city for the 2016 Summer Olympic Games fell through. It turned out that amongst the four finalist cities that were seriously in the running, Chicago literally came up Number Four – as in the first one that was knocked out of the running.

It seems the International Olympic Committee was determined to put the games in a city south of the Equator – and Rio de Janeiro was the only such city in the running that year.

NOW I KNOW there are people out there who will vociferously argue that Chicago is so much better off not having been chosen. All the construction that it would have taken to turn the South Side into a series of venues usable for international athletic events would have cost us a bundle.

And for all the whining and moaning taking place these days about the Zika virus and the chances that world-class athletes will wind up being infected while there, you just know that with the homicide rate in Chicago drawing so much public attention, there would be all the world speculation that a world-class athlete would wind up getting gunned down in the bad-assed streets of Chi-town.

All it would take would be one stinkin’ little incident and the world would be dismissing a Chicago Olympiad as being an even bigger mistake than the ’96 games that were played in Atlanta.

OBAMA: Bringing eyes of nation to Jackson Pk

But I can ‘t help but wonder what could have been if we’d being hearing the Olympic theme echoing across the skies of Chicago, and countless renditions of national anthems from around the world providing inspiration to those world-class athletes getting a chance to say they performed their deeds here instead of Brazil.

IT COULD HAVE been an event of the scale of the World’s Fairs of 1892 or 1933 – something that could have gone into our history as a communal experience we all shared.

Something to show that Chicago is capable of a more serious public event than the Taste of Chicago or Lollapalooza!

It also could have been the chance to put to use those parks of Washington and Jackson, which I suspect many people in the metropolitan area don’t know much about because they’re just the South Side. In fact, I literally know some people who can’t tell the difference between the two and think they’re just one large strip of open land.

If anything, Chicago needs to have a significant happening on the South Side so as to let people know the city does not come to an end at Roosevelt Road and that the French were being a bit ridiculous when they issued tourist advisories to their citizens saying there’s nothing of interest down south.

TO THAT END, it is good to know that the Obama library will wind up in Jackson Park. An attraction for many people who probably will have to look up on a map to see where it is, because otherwise they just think of it as generic South Side turf.

But an Olympiad could have been a once-in-a-lifetime event. And the fact that our officials had plans how to convert all the constructed athletic facilities into something the city itself could use permanently could have reduced that factor many cities experience of expensive Olympic stadia that wind up sitting vacant in the future while their construction bills continue to be paid.

And we could have seen events of inspiration that could have helped elevate our civic mood to a point where we overcome the malaise we feel these days in Chicago.

  -30-