donald trump

Arizonans are the last people on earth who should act surprised about Trump.

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Surprising? Not to me!

Joanna Allhands, like many of her colleagues in the Arizona MSM, is simply mystified by the success of Donald Trump.

But why? That’s the question I keep asking myself.

We could blame it on our pocketbooks. Most of us feel worse off than we were eight years ago, despite assurances that the economy is on better footing. Wages have stagnated. We’re working longer hours with fewer benefits. And for what?

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Anatomy of the “both sides do it” strategy

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

Birther Pie Chart

At long last, it appears that the Birther conspiracy is enough of an embarrassment to the GOP that they are not only dropping what seemed to be an official position of tacit tolerance, if not encouragement of it. Republicans are now actively distancing themselves from it and the way you can tell for certain they are is they have shifted into full “Democrats do it too!” mode. More specifically, they are accusing one Democrat – none other than Hillary Clinton herself! – of manufacturing the whole thing. I first noticed it on MSNBC’s UP with Steve Kornacki this past weekend, when GOP flack Amy Holmes was quick to raise the accusation when the conversation on the panel turned to the Birther topic. I thought her response was interesting, to say the least, and it turns out that Republicans, including none other than GOP primary front-runner Donald Trump(!), have been pushing this line hard lately, as Dave Weigel explains in the Washington Post.

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Male politicians may shy away from attacking “women” but many will attack the hell out of certain women (contains link to my radio interview)

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

Carly Fiorina

I got asked to be on KJZZ, the Phoenix area’s public radio station, on Wednesday morning to discuss the upcoming election season and how the two major parties would be targeting female voters. This is because the National Federation of Republican Women is in town for a conference this week.

I think I did okay and was glad for two things: That this wasn’t the typical situation where I’m on a panel with two Republican men (it was just me and Here and Now host Steve Goldstein chatting alone in the studio after he played a taped interview with a Republican strategist) and that I had anticipated that we would be discussing the contrast between Hillary Clinton and rising GOP primary candidate Carly Fiorina and prepared accordingly by reading up on both their campaigns.

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Sorry Trump fans, but it’s good having grownups in charge

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

“The fundamental cause of the trouble in the modern world today is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”—Bertrand Russell.

I brought a handful of books to Sedona with me when we were up there but the one I read from start to finish was Jimmy Carter’s A Full Life: Reflections At Ninety. As the title suggests, it’s a straightforward account of Carter’s entire life spanning his childhood on his family’s farm in Plains, Georgia, to a career as a submariner and nuclear engineer in the Navy, and then his lengthy career in public service. I have to admit to rolling my eyes through parts where he would describe his religiosity and the pride he took in his missionary work (not my thing) and puzzling over a few occasions where he described his “moderate views on race” during the Civil Rights era but, for the most part, Carter’s account of his life left me more impressed with the guy than I already was.

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The not-so-mysterious reason so many GOP women like Trump

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

Donald_Trump_hair
Not for his looks, for sure.

On my post-vacay trek to the gym I decided to watch Anderson Cooper as I rode the exercise bike. The top story of the night was, of course, the GOP primary and CNN’s latest poll that has Donald Trump in the lead plus favorable ratings, including by gender:

But there is no gender gap among Republicans on favorable views of Trump: 60% of Republican women voters have a positive impression as do 57% of GOP men. Outside the Republican Party, women are less apt to hold a favorable view of Trump, just 17% of women voters who are independents or Democratic leaners see him favorably, compared with 29% of non-Republican male voters.

That’s a startlingly high favorable rating among women, though not really, as the video from CNN’s Randi Kaye demonstrates. Iowa Trump supporter Heather Halterman feels that Trump’s ugly comments about various women are not degrading and are secondary to her vague conception of the “good ideas” he has for a country “going down the drain” and his promise to protect her two sons from the (again, vague) threat posed to them by immigrants from south of the border. Halterman also likes Trump’s “pro-Israel” stance (who knows why?) and some non-specific things he has said about the tax code and building up the military.

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