Trump Flip Flop: It helps him

Trump is re-describing his immigration policy

Trump's people are not calling it a flip-flop.  They are describing it as affirming American borders and the rule of law.   Donald Trump will enforce the law and deport illegal people.

Some critics say this is essentially the policy of Obama, the reporter-in-chief, but it misses two important things.   Trump's tone is one of exclusion and protection and while Obama is looking for excuses to let people stay.  People see and get the difference: Trump is the anti-immigrant one, the one who wants to protect the customary normal Americans from those outsiders.   And Trump's people have once again raised the issue of changing the 14th Amendment, or at least the interpretation of it, to end birthright citizenship.   Birthright citizenship is a leaky hole in the boat of American exclusion and Trump wants to plug it.

Reminder:  The Amendment begins: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." 

The Dred Scott decision had said that black people were not citizens and could never be citizens.  They might have been here for 6 generations but they weren't citizens because of their racial/ethnic identity.  This Amendment was intended to address that issue and resolve it: if you are born here you are a citizen (unless you were the child of a foreign diplomat or a child of an invading army or otherwise were not subject to American laws.)  Citizenship depends upon birth place, not race.   Race as the basis for who is inside the American tent is an old, deep, issue in America, a basis for continuing slavery, a justification for the removal of Indians, the basis for excluding Chinese and other Asians, the social justification for Black Codes, for Jim Crow policies, and legal segregation of the races.    The 14th Amendment was a line in the sand that attempted, in 1868, that way of American thinking.  It codified something in the law, but it did not fundamentally change American thinking.

This actually helps Trump

The Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s supposedly resolved it, putting meaning and enforcement into the 14th Amendment, but it, too, was incomplete.  Many American welcome the use of ethnicity, not place, as the basis for inclusion and exclusion.  Trump addresses that desire; Hillary Clinton condemns it.

Trump's people bringing up the notion of re-interpreting the 14th Amendment will seem like a trivial little legal point to many, but the implications of it are profound.  He will have a difficult legal case, but the fact that it is at issue demonstrates that this ancient unresolved problem in America persists.   The Amendment has been interpreted as saying exactly what it means by the Supreme Court, which looked at a case where a person of Chinese ethnicity faced exclusion.  They resolved it cleanly:  if you are born here you are an American citizen, even if you are of Chinese ethnicity.  

The ancient American issue: exclusion by race and ethnicity 

There is room to debate what is meant by "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" but Trump's political case conflicts with his legal one.  Trump is asserting that people here illegally are most certainly subject to American laws which is why they can be arrested and deported.  This complicates the notion that children of those people are not subject to the jurisdiction thereof, because the political case argues the direct opposite.   But lawyers are clever and can find ways, which Trump says they should, and it is conceivable that a different Supreme Court could reverse itself.

Trump is not hiding from the notion that his position is evolving.  Trump's brand identity includes the notion of spontaneity and flexibility and lack of any real commitment to policy, so the evolution in Trump's thinking does not destroy his brand.  (Hillary cares about policy, so her change on the TPP was read as politically motivated and hypocritical.)

The media is assisting Trump in his re-brand into the kinder, gentler "presidential" Trump because they are covering him extensively and describing the change, even as he maintains the position of being anti-immigrant.  Voters hesitant to vote for Trump because he is a racist or a cruel bully or because he has impossibly impractical views on issues including immigration have a reason to rethink their hesitation.  They can think:  possibly Trump's opposition to immigration is really about law enforcement, not racism.  Possibly the 14th Amendment business just closes a loophole and stops abusive "anchor babies" and isn't really racism.

This re-thinking helps Trump.

This is the essential Hillary Clinton argument

Hillary's campaign has now centered on the notion that Trump is impossible to elect, that he is too extreme, too un-presidential, he is wild and crazy.   The notion of Trump flip flopping had hurt John Kerry and it hurts Hillary, but it actually helps Trump.  People who sort of like the Trump message of America First and shaking up the system want Trump to change.  

Hillary's case is that Trump is hard-wired unsuitable to be president.  Trump flip flopping, evolving, changing, and pushing re-set refutes that argument. 

Pay to Play: The view from my patio

Doing the "Ask" at a political fundraiser.

A perspective on why Sanders did so well and why Trump has a strong argument against Hillary, if he has the self discipline to make the case and stay on script.

My wife and I hold political fundraising events at our home.   In May of this year we did five separate events.

We know how to do them.  We are generous (i.e. pay for everything.)  We are "turnkey": the candidate's campaign staff simply tells us when the candidate will show up, and whether they want this to be a small high-donor event ($500-$1,000 contribution expectation) or a big event with up to 200 people with a zero to $50 contribution.   Once we know what the campaign wants, we take care of everything else.  

Here is Senator Merkley, on my patio steps.  In a minute I will do the "ask".

We arrange the house.  I set up the Public Address system.  We arrange the caterer.  We supply the alcohol, the caterer supplies the food and servers.  We have a reputation for being reliable and dead-easy, so we are the first call.  

If we are in town, we do it.  Once telephone call and the campaign has a complicated event taken care of for them. 

The result is we do them for Transit District levies, for Library levies, for Senators Wyden and Merkley, for Governors Kitzhaber and Brown, for Attorney General candidates, for local and statewide judicial candidates, for local candidates for every office.   

And the campaigns as me to do "the ask."   The "ask" is when, toward the end of the event, after the candidate has spoken and before anyone leaves, a "citizen" who identifies not as staff but as a member of the public, goes to the microphone and asks people to dig deep and to give more money yet.

Here I am, asking, at a Democratic event with the Governor

I am asked to do this for two reasons.  One is that the campaign knows that the person doing the "ask" has to be someone who has given personally, and often there is a last minute surprise "additional" gift challenge, to which the campaign arranged beforehand for me to donate.  The audience, which generally has already given to the campaign, is asked to give again, and more.

Here is what I say, primarily to audiences of Democrats and people who support public services like libraries and transit districts and community colleges.   The campaigns like what I have to say, apparently, and I like to say it.   

***I tell people that all of us are sick to death of political fundraising that feels sleazy.   I tell people that campaigns need money and that a lot of people who donate money want something or other from the candidate.   Vote for this.  Don't vote for that.

***I tell people that there is something wonderful and magical happening right here in front of us, because we have the opportunity to change the system and provide money for a candidate the right way.  We are helping to clean the system because the money we are raising here is the best, cleanest money possible.  It is money supplied in the interest of good government itself.   Good, clean, selfless government, money that allows a politician to do the job honestly and well.   What better thing can you do with your money, I ask, than help make good government possible?

***So give, I plead.  Give to send a message that uncorrupted self government is possible and that we support it, and we are doing it right now.

An event for Gov. Kate Brown.  Al Bates is introducing me to do the ask.

That's it.   Done right it is about a 90 second talk.  

Sometimes I have arranged for a person or two in the audience to shout out that they will make a large gift if others join in.   I say I will join that person.   Then, ideally, people begin saying that they, too, will add $250, $500, $100, $300, until we have approximately doubled the amount of money previously given to come to the event.   
That is how it is done.  Now you know.

After the ask.  People stand around and feel good.

This brings me to Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation and the phrase I have used about Hillary Clinton for months in this blog.   I describe her--objectively I believe--as a successful practitioner in the current system of political advocacy and alliances, working successfully with donors, interest groups, media, think- tanks, and citizens.   Hillary Clinton is not unique beyond the fact that she is unusually successful and adept, but she does pretty much what everyone successful in high level politics does.  It is the system and it is how the system works.  

She is part of a revolving door of politician, speech making, book writing, media appearances, donor cultivation, lobbyist cultivation, election and re-election.  She does what Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani and the other faces one sees on Fox does.  It is how one raises the friends and the money to survive in politics.

Washington Post article.  Even the liberal press is worried.

Donald Trump is accusing her of being part of that system, which he refers to as "pay to play".  This system exists and I know that people resent it because that is what I see from my patio steps.   

I live in a world where $1,000 and $5,000 political gifts are a big deal, but I recognize that there are other leagues in which gifts are a hundred thousand and a million dollars.  (I also realize people who cannot afford $1,000 gifts mightily resent the $1,000 givers.)   People who cannot give at higher levels resent the extra access given to people who donate more than they do.  I speak to that resentment and it is the heart of my appeal to people in the "ask", to strike a blow against that system.

Donald Trump has a powerful and persuasive argument to make.  People agree with him.  I see it in the faces of people who are shouting out their extra gifts.  Trump is a flawed messenger of this argument because he is associated with sleaze and pay to play of his own, but he says he has reformed, that he sees the light clearly because he used to play the game, and the game is crooked.

New, "kinder, gentler" Trump lets Pence make the charge

Some things about Hillary's behavior are unclear and muddled and maybe-legal and barely-legal and arguable, and Hillary supporters can close their eyes to accusations of Hillary "scandals", in part because her accusers are so partisan.   But one thing is evident and undeniable:  Hillary is part of the system.   And people find the system generally corrupting and they resent the extra influence of people richer than themselves.  It feels dishonest and un-American.

I know that feeling is out there, in front of me on the patio.  

Trump could win this election.

Voters are Open to a Trump Re-Brand

A Majority of Voters Like Trump's Message, but not the Messenger.   Watch out, Hillary.   Trump is rebranding and it might work.

I saw two things on Sunday that should scare Hillary supporters.

First:  People are open to a Trump re-brand.  On Face the Nation they showed a focus group run by Frank Luntz.  Luntz does work for political and corporate clients looking at messaging and the words that consumers and voters find persuasive.   He coached Republicans to call the estate tax the "death tax" and to call a Medicare-style option in the Affordable Care Act a "government option" rather than a "public option."   He is effective in teasing out the best ways to sell an idea or to kill it.

The panel consisted of people who had liked Donald Trump at first but who then soured on him.   The voters said they have recently concluded that Trump is too wild and crazy to be trusted as president.  "He's lost me," one woman said.   "He's become outrageous."   Other panel member echoed her.   Trump needs to think before speaking, the panel said.  

This is the Hillary Clinton message, and it was working.   

But nearly all of them said that they would be open to voting for Trump if they thought he could change his style and talk about the important things instead of being an insulting bully.

Click here: a 4 minute view of a focus group that should frighten Hillary supporters

There is something appealing to voters about Trump's message of shaking up the system.  "Hope and Change" worked in 2008 and it has appeal in 2016.  Hillary Clinton has ceded the message of change to Trump, and it is a dangerous choice because the Sanders vote showed a great many people want change and we don't get it from her.   Her message is that Trump is a dangerous vessel for change, so we are stuck with her.   

But we aren't stuck.  Hillary gave to Trump the power to fix the thing that was wrong: Trump himself.  

Second:  Trump is rebranding.  It seems almost satirical to say that it is news that Trump gave a speech in Akron, Ohio yesterday and stayed on script, read the teleprompter, and didn't say anything massively stupid or insulting.   But that is what Trump did and it is, indeed, newsworthy.  Because a self-disciplined Trump is a new Trump.

Trump in Akron

I have attended Trump speeches live in New Hampshire, Florida, South Carolina, and Nevada.   There is a great deal of crowd noise and Trump-crowd interaction in these speeches.  The microphones on televised speeches point at Trump, not Trump and the crowd both, so the crowd influence is understated.   But in the Akron speech the microphones reveal a realistic understanding of the event from the point of view of a crowd participant because the crowd noise is very audible.   Trump was interacting with the crowd but he stayed on message.   He was clearly using the teleprompter but was no longer reading from it as if by rote.  He looked natural and extemporaneous.   And he talked about national problems and solutions.

Click here: a new Trump

The speech wasn't Trump riffing about Trump, and his polls, and his gripes, and what a winner he is personally.   It was about America and Americans.   The Hillary campaign left an opening for Trump and Trump is seizing the opportunity.  He is growing up.  He is "acting presidential."  It may be too late for Trump to change opinions, but he is showing us something new, for now, here.

Hillary is--so far--sticking to her brand.  She is continuity and stability.  She is "new" in the sense of being female but she is not new in the sense of policy or purpose.  She is not going to shake up Washington.   Her election frame is: continuity versus crazy.

Trump is--now, maybe, if he can stick to it--changing his brand.   He is "hope and change" but now carried out by a grown up politician, no longer a wild and crazy schoolyard bully.   His election frame is hope and change by a new guy who is up to the job versus same old political system by a tired old corrupted practitioner of the system.

Before:  Playboy prince Hal, in bad company, unready.

(Shakespeare, in Henry IV,  parts I and II,wrote that misbehaving Prince Hal dismissed the bad influence of friend Falstaff and became a hero to England as he stepped into his role as King and protector.  We like the story.   Humans have deep experience with this process.  They watch and approve when their undisciplined teenage boys grow up into sober mature men who take on the serious responsibilities of adulthood and leadership.  Humans--voters--are open to that narrative.   It is a familiar and welcome story:  teenage boy up to no good--then a period of trial and experience in the army or in college or in work--and out comes a fully adult man of good judgement capable of leadership.  Maybe, at long last, Prince Trump is ready to become King.)

After: King Henry V, Ready and able to lead

Trump needed to signal a transition, and the campaign personnel change was enough to alert the media that a change was afoot.  The media legitimized this as a reset event.   The jury is out on whether Trump can pull it off by staying in character as the sober responsible adult, but if he can do so he can become president.   

The voters in the Luntz focus group welcomed a change in Trump and were urging it on him.  

That is the thing that should frighten Hillary supporters.   They were pulling for him.   They wanted what he was selling and they wanted him to be worthy of carrying it out.

Trump Brand: "Wild and Crazy" or "Spontaneous and Genuine"

A struggle is taking place over the nature of the Trump brand.

Isn't it too late to change the Trump brand?   Hasn't the 24/7 exposure to Trump already given people more than they need to know?

Yes and no.

Yes, they have all the sound bites and mental video clips necessary to form a first impression and then a powerful long lasting one.  But, no, the interpretation and "spin" on what people have witnessed is underway.  Every likely voter has seen video of Trump saying Mexican immigrants are criminals and rapists, well except a few good ones, and voters have seen Trump say he knows more than generals.  The question is whether this is proof of Trump being unfit because he is wild and crazy (Hillary's interpretation) or because he is spontaneous and genuine (Trump's interpretation).

Trump's interpretation means that Trump could change and that the "reset" idea that is being promoted vigorously by the conservative media is plausible.   Trump's new campaign people are trying to sell a new version of Trump, an electable version.   The struggle is over whether Trump is capable of change.   If the crazy is hard-wired in, then no.   If the crazy is just showmanship sloppiness, then yes.

Hillary is Hillary: locked in as a veteran successful practitioner of the American political system of politicians, interest groups, money, media, lobbyists.  She succeeded inside the system, so she got rich.   Hillary is trying to show Trump is locked in, too: a narcissist careless cruel rich boy bully.   Here is a two minute movie clip from "Dazed and Confused".  It shows a teenage bully, getting his comeuppance.  This is the Hillary campaign's view of Trump: Click here: The Hazing Scene

Huffington Post calls it "spin"

In furtherance of this notion of wild and crazy Trump the Clinton campaign has put out this ad:  Click here for 30 second ad: Wild Trump could start nuclear war

The Trump people are hard at work promoting the other case, Trump is moderating, that change is possible and it is really happening.   It was just a phase. Yes, Trump will do mass deportation, but he is adding nuance he rejected in the primary season.   The conservative press describes it as the new Trump, expressing the real Trump now unleashed by his new campaign staff.  Firing Manaford was the big public event pushing the "reset" button.

Breitbart:  change is real

The election campaign is not over and the results are not certain.   I had suggested that Hillary do something big and dramatic to signal she can change: dispose of the Clinton Foundation.  Now that Trump has suggested it this has gone from unlikely to impossible.   This dramatic tactic only works for Hillary if it is her idea, not something she does at Trump's demand.   I see no plausible way for Hillary to push reset.

The Examiner's headline

Meanwhile, Trump is attempting a public reset.   But Hillary is not without tools of her own in the form of videotape of Trump, like that shown in the 30 second ad above.   

So here is the battle.   Hillary will say that videotape is proof positive exposure of the real Trump.   And Trump will say it is all pretty much irrelevant because it is tape of the previous Trump, the one he has disavowed.

Message to Hillary: Give your supporters hope.

The Obama message in 2008:   Hope and Change

Hope and Change are still good themes.   Americans elect presidents hoping that they will change things for the better.  That includes hoping the candidates will change enough to fix the things about themselves that the voter doesn't like.

Trump reset:  Maybe it will work.

Hillary needs to watch out.   Trump is attempting--and sort of accomplishing for 48 hours so far--a personality change.   He is trying to show he can be nicer, more presidential, less a bully, not a racist.   For the moment he is kinder, gentler.   He said he was sorry if he caused pain.

People won't believe it unless he can maintain the new character, but people who are half-tempted to vote for him, but are legitimately concerned that he is a bull in a china shop, are looking for some slender thread of evidence that gives them hope. They might take a chance that Trump will act grown up, more presidential, not say really stupid mean racist things and start a war.   Trump is trying to give people hope.   

It is hard to change a personality when one is 70 years old, or a well established brand like Trump's, but his effort to show he can change just might work, and Hillary needs to watch out because  then he would become a very plausible candidate.

Now it is Hillary Clinton's turn.  She needs to give her supporters--both committed and wary--some hope.  People need to hope Hillary will change.

Hillary needs to make a dramatic break with some big parts of the past.  She doesn't have to say she is "sorry" and certainly need not say she is "guilty" or "wrong."  But she cannot just tinker around the edges.   She needs to say and show that the "old Hillary" is past.   The Clinton Foundation is a perfect opportunity.

She needs to shut it down.   Being president and First Spouse is a big enough job and a sufficiently big portfolio that one does not need a side-job.  One does not need a billion dollar foundation to fill in the empty holes in a life otherwise unfulfilling if one is living in the White House.

Suggestion to Hillary Clinton:  Shut down the Clinton Foundation, period.  Give all the money to the Warren Buffet Foundation and tell him to do his best and not tell you what he is doing.

Complicated Arrangement.  

Another Suggestion to Hillary Clinton:   Give away all your money.   That's right.  All of it.  No need to save out for yourselves, for Chelsea, for the two grandkids.   You and they will be fine.   Chelsea can always write a book and give speeches on the legacy of the Clinton years.   She will have lots of money, and the grandkids will always be the grandchildren of presidents.  They will be fine.  Give away your house, all the money you have earned, every bit of it.    You don't need money.  You will live in the White House.   You will be taken care of.   After the White House--if you are still alive--you can write another book or give a few speeches and make more than enough money.   You don't need what money can buy.   You need what having money keeps you from buying: credibility in expressing that you have understanding and empathy for regular Americans, and documentation that you are in politics for the service not the money.

There are stories--apocryphal stories--that First Class passengers on the Titanic attempted to take their gold with them when they jumped into the water to the life rafts reserved for them.  They sank, weighted down by the gold in their pockets.  Don't be one of those people.

Show you can change.   If Trump can do it, you can do it.

The act of giving away your money and shutting down the Clinton Foundation would demonstrate to the public that your head is in the game of being president and representing the people of America, period.  No distractions and no conflicts.  It is not one of two jobs, the presidency and the Foundation, it is the job.  Nothing the Clinton Foundation could do would have a fraction of the influence of what a Hillary Clinton presidency might do, especially a presidency less hounded by investigations and hearings and charges and implications and op-ed pieces all claiming that you are conflicted between public and private, the presidency and the Foundation.

Voters don't like the notion of "pay-to-play".  So she should not do it.

Shut it down and walk away. 

Give your supporters hope.  They cringe at the thought of four or eight years of House hearings and investigations and sworn statements.   Of lawyerly resistance to Freedom of Information Act requests, and depositions, and allegations of conflicts, and denials of conflicts.    Of more examples of the Clintons skirting as close to the law as possible.   

Give people hope.  Give people change.  Walk away from it, Hillary.   Walk to the White House.

Kinder, Gentler Trump

Trump is adjusting his brand.   Trump is New and Improved!

Marketers understand this.  Consumers experience it.    Brands have power.  And sometimes the contents of the brand needs to change.

I am experiencing this with my melon crop.  Consumers know what it means to be a "cantaloupe."   A Tuscan style cantaloupe is enough like the more-familiar cantaloupe that people try the newish-but-still-cantaloupe, and prefer it.  (It has richer flavor and a sturdier netting so it holds up better in transport.)  People accept them.  They think they know them: a cantaloupe.  They buy them.  

 Local melon shoppers don't know canary melons or Santa Claus melons so they don't try them, so they sit unsold.   You can see a mix of the three melon types in this photo of them on my wash-stand.   The Tuscans have the "cantaloupe" beige color, but with dark green ribs.  The canary melons are canary yellow; the green one my hand is on is the Santa Claus.  I can give away the new melon varieties--which are stunningly wonderful, and friends I hand them to discover they love them--but stores cannot sell them.   Cantaloupes have a brand--an expectation of what it means to be a cantaloupe-- which can be extended to include Tuscan style melons.   But the notion of "cantaloupe" only extends so far, and it doesn't include the other two.

"Cantaloupe" includes the ribbed Tuscan melons, but not the others.

Trump is keeping Trump brand, but extending it--not destroying it.

We know the Trump brand: denunciations of stupid, incompetent predecessors and political rivals, spoken in harsh terms, with simple blunt words.  America should use "extreme" tactics, should do so "viciously", should torture suspected enemies, assassinate enemy family members, imprison Hillary, deport millions, monitor Muslims.  The Trump brand presents a policy of authoritarian nationalism on behalf of the traditional American tribe of native born whites and a tone of harsh belittling treatment for those not included.

Breitbart Story: Pivot to Humility

Trump is doing two things simultaneously with hiring a new campaign team.   He is stepping up his harsh scorched earth criticism of Obama and Hillary Clinton--a straightforward affirmation of his brand.   He is simultaneously showing a "New and Improved!" version of  himself, which may provide better appeal to white educated women, a group he is currently losing badly to Hillary and a group he must recapture if he is going to win the election.   Trump wins among white voters and especially white men without college degrees.   He loses among educated white women.

I observe among that group of people a strong sense that Trump fails the "presidential" test.  He is too blue collar, masculine, rough.   But Trump is trying to pivot.
  

   **Trump admitted he spoke too harshly and said he regretted doing so.  He is sorry.

   **Trump visited Louisiana and its flood victims and did the head-of-state work of consoling the victims of tragedy.  Empathetic Trump.

  **Trump spoke to the problems of poverty of "African-Americans"--a group he had previously used as a foil to push against, not for-- and said his presidency would assist them, and he wanted their vote.  Trump isn't racist, see?   You don't have to be racist to vote for Trump.

What is Trump doing?  He is doing what he needs to do.   

Trump apologizes for having been mean, which is itself a news story.

He is preserving his brand, denouncing Obama and Hillary in the strongest terms, while simultaneously extending the brand so that it appeals to a wider audience,  presenting himself as someone empathetic--a kinder, gentler Trump.  The new Trump gives GOP voters skeptical of Trump a basis for thinking their earlier judgement was too fast, that Trump is capable of change and therefore they could dare vote for him hoping Trump would grow into something they would like.   

Trump shows he is a caring person, not just a harsh one.

Trump is showing a "feminine" side: loving mom, not just dad holding a paddle for spanking.  He is still the strong, masculine authoritarian no-nonsence leader, but he cares about the people in his tribe.

New!  Now with the option of Cranberries!

Trump is expressing the Trump brand extension in a speech and the Trump oriented media and is assisting Trump in getting the word out.   There are skeptics that Trump can stay on this new message, but that makes the extension of the message all the more newsworthy.  Serious people sit at round tables on cable news shows and discuss Trump's ten-word semi-apology. Trump can be nice!  Can it last?   Can Trump stay nice?  Does he really mean it when he says he wants to help black people?  Can Donald Trump both be mean and nasty and also be nice to some people?  Keep watching for breaking news of Trump being nice.  Or keep watching for breaking news of Trump reverting back to being nasty-only.  Trump is a master at manipulating the media.  

Trump is preserving his brand while extending it.   Trump is still Trump, the familiar trusted Trump, denouncing incompetence, corruption, losers, foreigners, and especially Obama and Hillary.   But now with a great new feature.

Guerilla Tactic: Humiliate Trump

A Trump statue has appeared in five US city parks.   Fat.  Ugly.  Tiny penis.

The statue is the effort of Indecline, an anarchist/humor group, to have fun at the expense of Donald Trump by posting a grotesque lifelike statue of Donald Trump, overweight and sagging with soft fat, naked with a tiny penis hidden within blonde pubic hair, and no testicles.

Indecline issued a statement:  "Unlike the statues, it's our hope that Donald Trump, our modern day Emperor of Fascism and Bigotry is never installed in the most powerful political and military position in the world. These fleeting installations represent this fleeting nightmare, and in the fall, it is our wish to look back and laugh at Donald Trump's failed and delusional quest to obtain the presidency."


Photos and a story have gotten around in the mainstream media and liberal-oriented websites. The Fox News story described the removal of the statue.   The story was amplified by a comment from a New York Parks official, which gave some official approval to the notion that it was laugh at Trump: "NYC Parks stands firmly against any unpermitted erection in city parks, no matter how small." 

This could backfire.   

Trump is the one branded the bully.  Trump is the one who joyfully humiliates.  Trump is the big man on top--the winner--who rubs into the dirt the noses of Weak Jeb, Lying Ted, Ugly Carly, Zero Graham.  

People like seeing bullies be brought down to size and the self-important emperor being made a fool of.   The slogan on the statue, that Trump "has no balls" alludes directly to the story of the emperor having no clothes, his being deluded by public adoration into thinking he wore beautiful--but nonexistent--clothes.

So what is the downside?    White resentment at being picked on.  

By any rational measure of bullying versus being bullied Trump is more the perpetrator than victim.  Right?  Trump is the bully.  He does 99 percent of the mean stuff.  Rubio's brief effort at teasing Trump back simply served to weaken Rubio, not damage Trump, except insofar as it revealed that Trump cannot resist rising to every bait thus going on television to defend the size of his "hands", i.e. penis.  

It will be dangerous for Hillary if the statues seem to come from her or are sanctioned by her in the least.  Trump's supporters and potential supporters among white less-educated voters are very quick to see "reverse discrimination" and criticism they consider unfair.  His voters feel picked on and unappreciated. They feel that affirmative action and encouragement of diversity are attacks on them.  They feel blacks, Hispanics, and women have it really easy--way easier than whites and especially white men--enjoying a tailwind of benefits and benign customs and that "normal people".  White men, have it tough--much tougher than blacks.

-------This phenomenon was joyfully sung about in 1959, in the Charlie Brown song: 

   Who's always writing on the wall?

   Who's always goofing in the hall?

   Who's always throwing spit balls?

Answer:  Charlie Brown.  And his response is: "Why is everybody always picking on me?"

Two minutes of fun music: Click here : "Why is everybody always picking on me?"----------

This morning on the Fox News morning show a twelve year old girl who returned from a hunting trip with photos of a trophy giraffe, wildebeest, a zebra, and other animals received critical comments on her Facebook page.   The Fox approach to the story was to upbraid her critics for their vulgar and upsetting criticism.  She was the victim of violence.  She was the sweet and innocent party, just minding her own business.   The theme of the news piece was that the politically correct and privileged elites were picking on the normal, innocent people, just doing what they have every right to do, the wholesome and legal sport of collecting African trophy animals.   Why is everybody always picking on her and people like her?

(Twelve year olds shooting African trophy animals is, in fact, legal.   It is not un-controversial  and it could be predicted to draw criticism, but it is legal.)

This could be great for Trump.   Or he could blow it.

If Trump acknowledges the statues and either defends himself or upbraids the artists then he will have once again re-affirmed the thin-skin-crazy-Donald meme, which would be disastrous for him.  The accusation is that Trump is easily distracted by silly things, especially personal slights and insults.    This might bait Trump.   This could be a home run for the Clinton side if Trump self-destructs.

Can Trump ignore this insult?

But the statues are unquestionably mean, insulting, and intended to humiliate Trump.   People are laughing at him.    Trump could become an object of sympathy.  This falls into the narrative of normal people--i.e. white males--being picked on, by the mainstream media, by the Hollywood types, by the self styled cultural elites, by women, blacks, Hispanics, all the privileged people who have money and power and education and the benefit of affirmative action.   

Overweight white men will look at the grotesque image of Donald Trump and think it is unfair, that Trump is chubby but not that fat, that Trump is being picked on.  It will confirm, regarding political name calling and bullying,  that "both sides do it" so Trump's behavior isn't unique, it is "only fair", and equivalent to what Trump dishes out, therefore normalizing Trump's behavior, excusing it, and making it fair and balanced, not "crazy."   That would undermine the Hillary Clinton narrative, and that would be the backfire.  It would further solidify the Trump mood of resentment: white people are under unfair attack and are being picked on unfairly.

Trump understands the Charlie Brown of the song:   I didn't do anything.   I was just minding my own business, being normal.  "Why is everybody always picking on me?"