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click on graphic to enlargeDemocrats mastered this government dependence technique decades ago & Republicans follow suit so that we really have no significant fiscal difference or distinction between the two major parties – in fact we have one big government party with a Democrat wing & a Republican wing. The country is in the apathy to dependence stage ready to move to the dependence back into bondage stage.
So the 2016 presidential election will not be about Iran nuclear agreements, transgender bathrooms, alleged police abuse, reducing the deficit, Hillary's $225,000 speeches @ Goldman Sachs, or filling Supreme Court vacancies. And it will only be about jobs, jobs, jobs if Trump can catch the interest of enough people who can still relate to the principles of the founding of this nation. Otherwise it will be about continuing the government dependence that BO centers his life around.
See graph below that shows 71.3% of the total federal budget is dedicated to payments to individuals. You can follow the Death of Democracy right up the curve – below 20% in 1953, 28% in 1966, 66% in 2010, & 71.3% today.
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The government has brainwashed far too many people to think they don't have to take care of themselves. In 2011 I posted the stats that some 50.5 million Americans were on Medicaid, 46.5 million are on Medicare, 52 million on Social Security, 5 million on SSI, 7.5 million on unemployment insurance, & 44.6 million on food stamps & other nutrition programs. Some 24 million get the earned-income tax credit, a cash supplement. This is a lot of momentum toward government dependence & accordingly voting for people who will continue the government programs - & it has only gotten worse since these statistics were compiled because the employment situation continues to deteriorate – where else can people turn other than to the government? ObamaCare will further swell the Medicaid, unemployment (& SSI by extension), & EITC numbers. Premiums for ObamaCare are 75% paid for (subsidized) by taxpayers so when you hear of the large ObamaCare premium increases understand that the beneficiaries are only paying a quarter of those premium increases. ObamaCare enrollees find ObamaCare affordable because they are not paying for most of it – a political winner. Of course they are also finding out they are not getting much for their money with high deductibles that keep medical service out of reach – an ultimate loser.
Trump is aware of all of the above (& more below) but felt his initial working class message of restoring jobs & focusing on energy, trade, & immigration will put NY (29), PA (20), & MI (16) in play for a total of 65 electoral votes no other Republican could ever count on. Trump also feels he would win the battleground states of OH (18) & FL (29) for a total of 47 electoral votes. Winning these five states goes a long way in making the race competitive.
Trump has expanded his above initial five state strategy into an undefined fifteen state plan (17 by my count) to include in addition to the above five states CA (55), AZ (11), NV (6), CO (9), MN (10), WI (10), IA (6), IL (20), VA (13), NC (15), NH (4), & ME (4). Watch where he campaigns.
If Trump holds the 121 virtual certain GOP electoral votes (see map @ top), plus the 85 near certain electoral votes, & wins these 17 states it will be a landslide in his favor & a mandate for his policies. If Trump's priorities are doing away with political correctness – eliminate the fallacious destructive anchor baby claim to birthright citizenship, settle the incompatible relationship of Muslims following Sharia law & taking a U.S. citizenship oath, end sanctuary cities, & restore the enforcement of immigration laws – there will start to be a change in the ruinous mindset that has a suffocating strangle hold on America.
Another factor favoring Trump, @ least on the surface, is that since 1996 seven to ten states each cycle were decided by two points or less of the nationwide vote & since 1988 approximately 100 electoral votes per cycle were determined within two points of the nationwide vote – see graphs below.
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I say "on the surface" because the trends away from Republicans increase every election cycle – e.g., Hispanics voting strength in every swing state – NV, NC, VA, FL, CO – has grown since 2008. The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that 27.3 million Hispanics will be eligible to vote in 2016 thereby making up 12% of the electorate, an increase from 10% of the electorate in 2012. Trump thinks he will do well with Hispanics but none of the polls bear this out yet. See graphs below for historic details – Romney wound up with 27% of the Hispanic vote, a figure virtually ensuring defeat of the entire election. In the meantime the percentage of whites continues to decrease by about 2% per election cycle as shown below.
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No Republican has carried MI, PA, or WI in a presidential election since the 1980s. BO carried MI in 2012 by nearly 10 points, WI by 7, & PA by 5 or about 300,000 votes in PA. Ohio, where Republicans won by 3 points offered the region's only close contest. Source WSJ 5/17.
The recent poll that showed Trump competitive in FL, OH, & PA was a Quinnipiac University poll – the least accurate pollster during the primaries & in this case they did not use a distribution that was reflective of the % of blacks who voted in 2012. Of course Trump would do well with this inaccurate distribution.
Trump has energized the Republican primary voting base that was up 64% through the Indiana primary (from four years ago) after which Cruz & Kasich dropped out & Trump became the presumptive nominee - 25.1 million Republicans voted in primaries in 2016 compared to 15.3 million in 2012. Voting in Democrat primaries is down to 21.6 million in 2016 from 26.1 million in 2008 - the June 7 primaries in CA & NJ are not included & neither are ballots cast in either party in states that held caucuses or conventions.
NY's Republican primary turnout was up 430% from 2012, CT's more than 250%, RI's 320%, & PA's 97% – source Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican polling firm. White voters have accounted for 90% of the Republican primary electorate & 62% for Democrats. 1964 was the last time a majority of whites voted Democrat in a presidential race.
Hillary has to overcome the difficulty of Democrats trying to win 3 straight presidential elections – only once, in 1988, has it been done in the last sixty years & this was aided by Reagan's 63% approval rating his last year in office. But BO realizes this also & has pushed his cabinet members to face any bad news while he appears above the fray. And it is working – BO's approval rating has climbed to 50% - higher than the 47% average for presidents at this point in their final year in office - a good sign for Hillary. This high rating occurs while 70% of the nation thinks we are on the wrong track & the Atlantic magazine reports that almost half of adults said they didn't have the money to pay for an emergency expense costing $400 without selling something or borrowing.
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When Hillary beat Sanders in the Iowa caucuses by 42 points 55% of the voters said they wanted the next president to follow BO's policies. Nationwide the share of Democrats supporting a continuation of BO's policies is 61%. Source – William Galston writing in the WSJ on February 3, 2016.
Further, 72% of MS & 52% of MI primary voters said they wanted the next president to continue BO's policies with 20% in MS, 29% in MI, 49% in VT, & 42% in NH wanting the next president to pursue an even more liberal course than BO has – according to exit polls.
Accordingly, if BO keeps his approval rating in the 50% range it is a positive for Hillary. BO is a master politician, a master community organizer, & just may pull off the trifecta.
Trump feels he can win over a significant number of Sanders supporters, especially millenials, after Bernie finally drops out of the presidential race – but this is another long shot. Although both Trump & Sanders are considered political outsiders they come @ things as polar opposites. In the simplest terms Trump supporters want less government involvement in their lives while Sanders supporters want as much free government stuff imaginable.
Millenials now make up the largest percentage share of voters – 69.7 million millenials edges out 69.2 million baby boomers – each about 31% of the electorate. The difference is that turnout of millenials in 2012 was 46% compared to 69% of baby boomers. Source: Pew Research Center.
A May WSJ/NBC News poll found that 32% of millenials would vote for Trump & 55% would vote for Hillary – a tightening from earlier in the year. In 2012 Hispanic millenials favored BO 74% to 23%.
In the fall of 2016, 60% of the voting age population will vote - it was 54.9% in 2012 (235.2 million voting age population & 129.2 million voted = 54.9% turnout). Three times in the last six presidential elections the voting age population exceeded the actual vote cast by more than 100 million people meaning that the president is actually elected by about 27% of the people eligible to vote. See graph below for 2008 presidential election – notice from far left set of bars that women vote substantially more than men.
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In 2012 former Congressman Allen West reports that over 30 million Christians did not vote – about 8 million were registered but did not vote & the rest weren't even registered. Trump, like Cruz previously, plans to get these people to the polls. But not only Republicans are planning to increase turnout – Democrats have been doing this for all of BO's years as a national figure & now the Libertarian Party, with their ticket of Gary Johnson & Bill Weld, also are working for a large turnout improvement. California alone has increased registration of Democrats nearly 1.5 million since January 1 – a 218% increase compared to 2012.
These trade offs will abound in 2016. As mentioned above the white vote has decreased about 2% each election cycle since 2004. Over 2 million fewer whites voted in 2012 than in 2008 census data indicate. As Trump campaigns to draw out record numbers of whites (while they still exist) the other side of the coin is that Hispanics, Blacks, other minorities, & women may very well also vote in higher percentages. Republican pollster Whit Ayres reports that if Trump does not improve on Romney's pitiful 17% share of nonwhite voters that he will have to win 65% of white voters to be victorious – a percentage last received by Reagan in 1984. In 2012 Romney won 59% of the white vote & lost to BO by 4%.
Democrats have a much more diverse & growing electorate to draw upon – see graph below.
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I see where your congressman voted for the trans gender dictate.
ReplyDeleteSmh. I am much more excited about from a lot of my fellow conservatives. As a small business owner, and not a mega business owner, I know what it is like to have to deal with cities,towns, states and the bureaucrats who lord over their little fiefdoms. I also remember the definition of tact,"it is the ability to tell someone to go to hell and make him feel glad to be on the way".
Trump will govern much more conservative than you are giving him credit for. He might not give a rip about some of the things you were concerned about; prayer in school, abortion at conception, pot, etc.
But when it comes to bringing the jobs back, making the work place more viable on a worldwide basis, and in the entire economy, he will be terrific. Screw Bill Krystal. Screw Mitch McConnell.
If things don't make sense on an economic level he will not do it.
Things will be OK
It is a cobble stone road, I think the Thumper has the right jack hammer.
ReplyDeleteYour article really tells it like it is, too scary and dangerous for millions of Americans to grasp, as opposed to the easy way out - don't think, don't make waves, play the race card, and take what is left. Even a devout Trump-hater has said "I will hold my nose and vote for Hillary in the general election".
ReplyDeleteDoug - Exceptional analysis on multiple fronts. Fact that 71.3% of the total federal budget is dedicated to payments to individuals is ominous, especially when compared with below 20% in 1953, 28% in 1966, 66% in 2010, & 71.3% today. We thus may have reached a critical mass that makes it extremely difficult to elect one who plans to cut spending, balance budgets, reduce taxes, to grow the economy faster. But Trump must make this point (how to grow the economy) clearly, and motivate many in the 71.3% that a growing economy will benefit all.
ReplyDeleteOne strategy may be to state that Clinton's plans to increase taxes and spending will accelerate our total debt to the point where the Left elite may target the $23 trillion of all 401-K's to pay down the debt, especially in a $ crises (all more probable with our growing debt of $19+ trillion. BTW Some of the 71.3% have 401-K's.
To Clinton, Trump should point out these fact: Gov spending increases correlate with decreases GDP
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydorfman/2013/12/10/more-government-equals-less-growth-the-facts-are-in/#3c8a5e421cab
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2005/03/the-impact-of-government-spending-on-economic-growth
Trump should also ask Hil why she plans to raise the cap gains tax when Bill lowered them in the late 90's and the economy took off.
Yes - Dependency on Gov class, the Left elite, major architects that created dependency on Gov class (our public school system) feel threatened. They know if Trump wins, transfer payments may cease, the economy may grow, and their control of the electorate may weaken substantially. This should provide Trump more incentive to make the economic case.
Also acting more measured will go a long way too. Attacking Gov Susan Martinez was a mistake. Act more presidential Don. Pick your fights more carefully.