Trumpled (Alternative Leading)

[Mav]

Because Trump is working off his own playbook, it isn't possible to know whether he's crazy like a fox or just crazy. 

His playbook is drawn from the entertainment world.  Obviously, he draws from the reality TV sphere.  But some have noted that he also draws from WWE Wrestling.  Who would have thought he was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2013?  How Presidential does he look in this clip:

[flash=200,200]https://youtu.be/MMKFIHRpe7I[/flash]

As some commentators have noted, his schtick during the primaries would be well known to WWE fans - hurling insults and giving derogatory nicknames, displays of arrogance, calling on the crowd to hate opponents and groups of people.  Some have even suggested that the Cruz non-endorsement speech at the RNC Convention was set up to simulate the atmosphere of a WWE match with Trump walking into the crowd as the hero stealing the limelight.  I think it was just a rookie mistake by Trump, but who knows?

I've also been wondering whether he has been using Tom Clancy as his guide to international politics.  In Debt of Honour and Executive Orders, Clancy pretty much sidelined NATO and the US's traditional allies and instead had Russia helping the US to defeat Muslim and Asian foes.  Jack Ryan has a bromance with a Russian KGB type in the Kremlin that might be the equal of the Trump/Putin bromance.

So strong is the bromance that Stephen Colbert had an unusual answer when asked what would be the one question he'd ask Trump if he came on his show:

[flash=200,200]https://youtu.be/Rxf8-E2v9og[/flash]

[madbluboy]

Assange has a problem with the Obama admin and by extension Hillary.
They're after him.
They want to lock him up until 2116
I'm sceptical that there is anything really damaging to Clinton but just for arguments sake....

What would be the best way to play it if he does have more material to dump...which he suggests he does have.
The material relating to Sanders would best be used at the convention where his supporters could disrupt.
That "wave" has largely been ridden and negotiated.

Anything specifically damaging to Hillary would best be used a week or two out from the election when there wouldn't be time to counter and recover.

It will be about the Clinton Foundation and when they come out Hilary is toast.

[cookie2]

Hilary has something huge going or her.....Trump.

unfortunately the reverse could also be true. 

[Baggers]

unfortunately the reverse could also be true. 

Sad but true, Fluffy One. As with our choice this year the Yanks will be asking themselves at the polls, 'now which is the lesser of the 2 evils?'

[madbluboy]

http://nypost.com/2016/07/25/dems-warn-n...al-to-win/

Cocky Democrats gathering in Philadelphia this week are proclaiming that Hillary Clinton will easily defeat Donald Trump in November — but one of their own best-known strategists is ringing the warning bell.

“I think he can win, and I’m not daffy,’’ veteran Democratic consultant Hank Sheinkopf, who has worked for dozens of top Democrats including former President Bill Clinton and Gov. Cuomo, told The Post.

“Democrats are doing what they always do, telling themselves a story, and the story is that Donald Trump can’t win, and that’s just not true,’’ Shein­kopf said.

“What has been happening, and the Democrats haven’t been paying enough attention to this, is that the Republican Party of Donald Trump has become the ‘action party’ in the country and the Democratic Party of Hillary Clinton and President Obama has become the ‘passive party.’ ”

“Trump is creating an extraordinary combination of right and left in one place. He’s taking on the elites in both parties, giving all those having some grievances a place to go, and how the Democrats get out of that, I don’t know,’’ he said.

Sheinkopf praised Trump’s “brilliant’’ strategy at the end of the Republican convention of delivering a “populist message that appealed to all those pissed-off average guys,’’ while reaching out to gays and lesbians — whom he promised, to cheers, to defend against attacks — in a move that “reduced the fear of the religious right that many non-Republicans have.”

“The Democrats have convinced themselves that Trump can’t win, but I don’t think they fully realize what’s happening out there”

“The gay thing was very important in terms of adding a libertarian streak to the Republicans’ appeal, basically saying, ‘I don’t care who you are — we’ve got to do this for America. I work for you,’ ’’ said Sheinkopf.

A second prominent Democrat who has worked closely with Mrs. Clinton and has strong ties to Cuomo, other top state Democrats, and to Trump himself, said he, too, is convinced that many Democrats misjudge the Trump threat.

“The Democrats have convinced themselves that Trump can’t win, but I don’t think they fully realize what’s happening out there,’’ he told The Post.

“Donald Trump is an extraordinary person who is difficult to define and therefore difficult to figure out how to deal with,” he said.

“No one, for instance, expected him to have that LGBT reference in his speech, and that’s clearly a way to redefine the Republican Party in a way that will make it appealing to some Democrats,’’ he said.

[Mav]

The Democrats themselves are keen to negate the sense that Clinton will inevitably win over an imploding Trump.  With optional voting, the key to ensuring victory is to ensure voters turn out.  Clinton can easily lose if her voters are complacent and don't bother voting.  Expect to see many stories coming from the Dems which are designed to eliminate complacency.  But it's hard to take seriously that one line in Trump's acceptance speech will make LGBTI voters feel safe with Trump given that he selected as a running mate a homophobe who signed into law the right to discriminate.

[Lods]

Here's why Trump has the job ahead of him
270 electoral college votes needed to win.

http://www.270towin.com/polling-maps/cli...ctoral-map

[Bear]

How come none of our blokes can deliver a speech like Obama can

Come to think of it none of our women can give a speech like Obama (Michelle) can....but Melania Trump, well that's a different story ;D

Have you heard a better orator than Obama in your lifetime? I haven't.  In general i think the yanks tend to have that "preacher" style about them, and when Obama nails it, he soars. We won't see another one like him for a while.

Unfortunately when our lot are giving set pieces they sound like the boring lawyers/party hacks/union officials that they all are. They tend to be at their best in the cut and thrust of question time, which is something the president doesn't have to face.

[cookie2]

Have you heard a better orator than Obama in your lifetime? I haven't.  In general i think the yanks tend to have that "preacher" style about them, and when Obama nails it, he soars. We won't see another one like him for a while.

Unfortunately when our lot are giving set pieces they sound like the boring lawyers/party hacks/union officials that they all are. They tend to be at their best in the cut and thrust of question time, which is something the president doesn't have to face.

Plenty of style alright but substance? We'll see I guess.

[Mav]

No doubt the Yanks are better at the preacher-style of uplifting and florid oratory.  But I suspect that Australian audiences don't warm to it.  You can imagine that attempts to duplicate this style in Australian politics would be met with blunt assessments that the speaker was being a wanker.

The best orators in Australian politics are much less flowery and usually deploy a brutal wit.  Gough Whitlam, Paul Keating and Peter Costello were all brutally effective.  In particular, Keating was capable of considerable artistry, for instance one occasion where he described a visit to a house where "clocks were dripping off the walls".  But their best work was more brutal than artful.  Hawke was able to inject considerable emotion into his oratory but he won the right to do so only because he had qualified as a down-to-earth Aussie bloke by that stage.  And sometimes the overblown rhetoric, for example fixing a year by which no child would live in poverty, would come back to haunt him.