That 40% of Americans support Trump is frightening

[madaboutharry]

It depresses me. I believe Hillary will win the election, but I am still very disillusioned about our country. Trump has cast an ugly cloud over this country and he has brought out the most base instincts in some people.

I was listening to him speak in Virginia and I was becoming physically sick. I had to switch the television off. My heart started beating fast and I felt nauseated. He was yelling and screeching. The sound of his voice was like an attack. I just can't wrap my head around the fact that there are people attracted to his campaign.

And I can't understand the cowards in the Republican Party who don't have the courage to put their country above their party.

Sorry, I just feeling really down. November 8th can't get here soon enough.

[mucifer]

1. Yeah until it's over I worry about October surprises and all that crap.

So many believe the lies.

[LiberalLovinLug]

23. But that 40% is not going away after the election

And I think it's only going to get worse. Fox News isn't going anywhere and neither is 24/7 hate radio. I fear that Obama's presidency will look like a cakewalk compared to what they have in store for Hillary.

[Cosmocat]

31. It is going to get worse

I have seen the right wing get worse every decade of my adult life.

In the 90s they were raging assholes, but put a lot of time and effort into their well crafted psudeo intellectual bullshit to justify it - states rights, sanctity of marriage, babbling on about the constitution.

In the 00s, they took took the easy way out, instead of trying to put that intellectual veneer to it, taking advantage of the country's fear after 9-11 by bullying their way through things - you are either with us or with them, you are enabling the terrorists if you don't pass our medicate scam, you can't criticize the idiot in the white house because you NEVER question the commander in chief with troops in the field.

post 08, that of course all came to an end, and it has been 7 years of them waking up in the morning, looking at the worse thing they can't see, then throwing childish hissy fits about it is BHO's fault.

Along the way, they have enabled a LOT of people in this country to believe that their fear, hatred, bigotry, racism, homophobia to believe these things actually make the moral and patriotic, and even further, for good measure, they in fact victims.

There is no walking this thing back at this point ...

[LiberalLovinLug]

36. Unfortunately you are spot on

[pressbox69]

35. Don't forget THNN

Trump Hate News Network

[rusty quoin]

2. Yeah, I don't know where 40% comes from, because he is more of a cult leader.

30% seems more a number which would make more sense. It's the usual number of crackpots in any group. (See John Dean, "Conservatives without Conscience).

Maybe Republicans who never would vote Democrat, and who are not crackpots, will actually stay home.

[unblock]

3. 40% of americans don't really support trump, it's only because the choice is down to two people.

remember the trump couldn't manage huge numbers even within the republican party when there were plenty of alternatives.

plenty of people just want lower taxes, and voting for whoever the republican may be is the only way to express that view, etc.

many single-issue voters on both sides.


if anything, this election cycle shows how our voting scheme is not up to the task. it would be nice to be able to vote by ranking all the candidates, for instance.


fortunately, there's good reason to hope that trump has violated enough basic rules of politics to ensure that he won't be able to attract enough to defeat the far more rational choice.

[TrishaJ]

32. 10% of that support is from people

who are voting for Trump because they would rather destroy the country than vote for Hillary. I know some of these voters. Voting for someone other than Trump - like Libertarian - doesn't make the same point as destroying the country over Hillary's candidacy, for some reason.

[TomCADem]

4. You Can Live In The Real World, Or the World of Fox/Breitbart/Limbaugh

In that world, up is down, there is no such thing as climate change, promoting the proliferation of guns leads to less gun violence, supporting torture leads to less terror, and deporting millions of residents and applying ideological screening promotes freedom.

[world wide wally]

5. I couldn't agree more....it is depressing

I guess our country isn't known for our collective intelligence. Many of our fathers and grandfathers fought against the exact things Trump stands for.

[SunSeeker]

6. Those same idiots voted for Dubya, twice.

That's why we need to make sure to get out the Dem vote!

[kevink077]

26. Headline....

One of the greatest puzzles in US history is how that clown got re elected.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

7. It's only 40% of land lines.

[maddiemom]

8. This man has chosen to be clownish rather than a serious businessman, let alone statesman.

The most petty thing strikes me as major: his hair. Intelligent and successful men choose either to shave their heads or get a great toupee, or yes, get hair plugs. Looks like Joe Biden has done so in the front, but still letting the bald come out in back--bless his heart because I don't think voters or Jill really care(nor would I, since I have an ex-husband whose hair-loss was making him crazy--so he shaved his head). I'd grab Joe in a minute, even bald as a bat. Trump's hair is the most ridiculous and telling thing about him. Seeing him from the side makes it all the more clownish. Putting that unattractive comb-forward front and center and thinking it makes him look good---! There are so many policies and plans he's put forward that are frightening---but we shouldn't need to to beyond his HAIR!

[sofa king]

9. Think of it this way:

We shouldn't be surprised at all that stupid people support racism and racist candidates, because that's stupid. We shouldn't be surprised that they want to vote against their own best interests to make rich people richer, because that's stupid.

We shouldn't be surprised that they're the first to vote for wars and the first to cut veterans' benefits, the first to cut planned parenthood funding and the first to scream about infant mortality, or the first to deny climate change until it sinks their homes, because all those things are stupid.

So of course stupid people are going to gravitate toward the stupid candidate who says the stupid things. Just like duct tape, stupidity is most attracted to--and sticks best to--itself.

But also like duct tape, the more stupid sticks to itself, the less effective it becomes. That is what we are seeing in this election, a giant tape-ball of stupid holding together a stupid campaign by a stupid candidate who was vomited forth by the stupid people, because they think he's for the stupid people.

This is the best job they can do, and this is the best job they have ever done. And it's still not going to come close to working because most Americans are not this stupid.

[Hekate]

17. Succinctly put. Big ol' ball of duct tape works for me, and most are not that stupid.

Now we just have to make sure the Dems gotv this year and two years from now, because it's beyond stupid to sit out elections, especially midterms.

[sofa king]

20. You speak the truth!

May our deeds prove the letter.

[LiberalLovinLug]

22. lol

It's a serious point you make but that was a funny read, in a darkly humourous way.

[pnwmom]

10. It shows how attached people are to party affiliation. Many of those are voting for him

only because he's the GOP nominee.

[progressoid]

11. I don't think they all support him. Many just hate Hillary.

[SleeplessinSoCal]

12. It also reflects the success of vilifying HRC for 25 years.

Yes. She didn't help. And I still fault Bill for many, many things he did in our name. But Trump is seriously unqualified and un suited for the job. And she is perfectly suited for POTUS at this point in time.

[StevieM]

16. Four years ago she was incredibly popular. Her job approval and favorability numbers were

in the mid-60s.

The GOP launched a relentless smear campaign against her, which included using the tragedy in Benghazi. It was reprehensible.

[SleeplessinSoCal]

25. It's what they do best and exclusively. n/t

[pamela]

13. I can't even watch him anymore.

He makes me ill and it depresses the hell out of me that anyone supports him. The night of his convention speech I had a nightmare that he started a nuclear war and it was so realistic and frightening. Last night, I dreamed he moved into my house and I kept saying "Don't you have any friends you can stay with?" lol

I honestly have to turn the tv any time he is on now. He really disturbs me.

[Cary]

14. One of my idiot friends just posted anti-abortion propaganda

They have ducked back into the weeds but Trump has said he would appoint their judges. I think that explains a lot.

[StevieM]

15. He has a one in five chance of winning. That is terrifying. (eom)

[DFW]

18. You and about 500 million Europeans as well

My wife was with me here in the States until last Wednesday, when she returned to Germany and I flew down here to Dallas. We talk every day, and she is tired of being pestered by everyone she talks to with "could that maniac really win? How could 40% of the Americans seriously support him?" They all remember that Hitler and the NSDAP won the election of March, 1933 with less than that. But the USA is not in the dire situation Germany was in back in 1933. They just don't get that 40% of us really think we need a ranting demagogue to save us. And save us from WHAT? Putin? ISIS hordes massing at Ciudad Juárez or Windsor, Ontario? What?

They are all aware of the "I-Hate-Hillary" crowd as well, even if they don't quite understand why. But this has been going on ever since the 1992 presidential campaign, and at least they're used to it, even if they don't quite get the reason behind the savage nature of so many of the attacks. The Germans have seen hate campaigns against their own women politicians whom some considered too "uppity" before--Rita Süssmuth of the CDU, Ingrid Matthäius-Meier of the SPD, e.g. But the hate campaign being waged against Hillary from both ends is something they don't get. I can't say that I blame them.

[Cosmocat]

30. I know a couple people who have sons/daughters doing study abroad

in Europe, and their kids are pulling their hair out because they can't go anywhere without people there asking them about it.

[DFW]

33. I go back to Europe at the end of the week

I know already that I'll "have some 'splainin' to do" from then until the election. Not so much as to whether or not Hillary will win, but rather how a major American political party could nominate someone such as Trump in the first place.

For the next two months, the USA might as well call itself Suzy Creamcheese, because the world is asking us, "what's got into ya?"

[jtuck004]

19. "I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half."

Frequently attributed, often in the context of strikebreaking activities during the Great Southwest Railroad Strike of 1886. See for example Philip Sheldon Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States, Volume 2? - Page 50 (1975). A contemporary source has not been identified. Varying forms of the quotation circulated in the labor press as early as 1893, with or without the attribution to Gould.
-Wiki
_______________________

It seems that same opinion goes back over a hundred years.

[Lunabell]

21. Pretty scary when you think about it.

These people are the ones we work with and see every day. Scary.

[vlyons]

24. We live in a degenerate age

There's not much we can do to change other people. But there's a lot we can do to maintain our own mental tranquility and peace. The republican party has become a vast criminal enterprise, fueled by greed, power, and corruption. They do not want to spend a single penny on anything but the war machine. Don't fall into hopelessness and despair. We have to work together to win at the polls.

[jambo101]

27. Gullible people

Also amazes me how so many can be so easily conned by the rightwings obvious smear campaign and character assassination of Hillary who IMO is the most qualified for the job and has been found to have done no wrong doing.

[BigBearJohn]

28. No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public

[Ligyron]

29. Laughter is the best medicine

and there is much to laugh at about Trump and the other cons.

Keep in mind - he IS going to lose.

Take joy in the fact that in ten years many of their supporters will be dead and they are not being replaced in numbers large enough to sustain them. The vast majority of young people are progressives.

Hillary will appoint liberal Supreme Court Justices, perhaps three and maybe even four, securing and insuring a sane court for a generation. Citizen's United and many other shit decisions will be reversed. Women will maintain control over their bodies from here on out and sensible gun laws could be enacted. The possibilities are endless and exciting.

You are watching a death blow to GOP and Cons play out on live TV. Those angry peeps will eventually fade out and become irrelevant.

Cheer up!

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

34. 40% only represents those who ADMIT to supporting Trump. What about those too cowardly to admit?

That's why we need to follow President Obama's advice and work like she's 40 points down.