(Fred Weinberg) -If you’ve ever been involved in a political campaign, you know that, to the people in the war room, everything counts.
If the opposition says “boo”, the candidate has to call a press conference to say “yah!”
If a friend of the opposition says that the sky is blue, meetings must be held to define blue, ascertain whether or not blue has a positive or negative effect on the campaign and carefully craft a response which says that red is better.
Talking points must be carefully crafted and stuck to. If you win, you haven’t had much fun for six months to a year and if you lose, you really don’t have much fun at all.
Unless, you are Donald Trump.
That’s why the political class hates him so much.
He is telling the absolute truth about money. He gave a lot of money to a lot of candidates of all stripes so he could get things done in business.
One of the real reasons they hate him is because they can no longer tap his checkbook. And, as he, himself, says, that’s one of the worst parts of the system. Not that campaigns cost money but that money gives you special access—even to people like Lindsey Graham or John McCain whose public persona is such that you would think they would be happy to talk to everyone. They’re not. Trump brought that out and they hate it.
It takes a really rich guy (or gal) who is financially invulnerable to tell the truth about the seamy side of American politics. Most everybody else is too worried about their pathetic careers.
One of the reasons the media has a love-hate relation with Trump is that they get a lot of copy from skyblue vs. skyred debates and their bosses make a lot of money selling advertising to both blue and red candidates and their advocates.
So they love the show Trump creates, but they would rather get back to normal because they understand normal and they really don’t understand it when their normally predictable viewers like someone they don’t.
Still, we went from a week ago where commentators—most of whom have never played the game—were insisting Trump was over to the very same people in the face of real polls saying he was really surging suggesting that maybe it was real, after all.
Can Donald Trump actually win the Presidency?
Pat Buchanan told Meet the Press that it is possible Trump will get to the Final Four or maybe even the finals, to use the March Madness metaphore. To extend that metaphore, when you get to the final game, anything can happen. Ask the late Jim Valvano and his 1983 North Carolina State Wolfpack. Or, better than that, ask the Houston team that was widely expected to cruise to the title.
While the NCAA might cringe at Buchanan’s wordsmithing, the fact is that he may be right.
And here’s another interesting sidenote.
While polls—which have Trump at or near the top—are the stock in trade of the “political experts”, the fact is they often under-represent real people. The pollsters like to tell you how “scientific” they are but the fact is that they have had serious sample problems in the past 15 years as the internet and cell phones have become a serious factor.
It’s possible that Trump’s real number is higher than the polls are reporting because it’s possible that people who normally wouldn’t vote will go out of their way to support a guy who they viscerally like. And who sticks it to the conventional politicians.
Which brings up the final question. Could Trump handle the Presidency?
I’m guessing that the entire Republican field would agree; certainly better than the clown occupying the office now.
Mr. Weinberg is publisher of the Penny Press. Get to know more about him by visiting www.PennyPressNV.com.
