Thursday, June 25, 2015

Trump combs in second in New Hampshire poll; hilarity ensues


It's been an interesting week since I wrote Trump is Penguin for President.   I linked to the entry over at We Hunted the Mammoth, where I compared trump to the equivalent candidate in 2012.
@Pandapool: Trump is running for president.
I am unsure if that is hilarious or frightening yet.


I'm on the side of hilarious.  For starters, my wife observed that Trump's announcement reminded her of Penguin running for Mayor of Gotham city.  I agree.  Both Trump and Penguin are cartoons of a poor person's idea of what a rich person is like.  It's just that Trump actually exists in real life.

As for future comic potential, I'm optimistic that Trump will provide as much material as Herman Cain and his Plan 999 from Outer Space did in 2011 and 2012.
So far, he has. Check out Trump in CNN's Trump's New Hampshire surprise.

John King, Nia-Malika Henderson and Robert Costa discuss the latest N.H. poll that puts Donald Trump as the runner-up for the Republican primary.
I doubt what Trump said about Jeb! is true, but it is funny.

For a more serious take, here's an analysis of the poll results from MSNBC: Donald Trump Ranks 2nd In NH Poll. Why?

Donald Trump is just behind Jeb Bush in New Hampshire, according to a new Suffolk University poll. The Morning Joe panel discusses.
The conventional wisdom is that Trump isn't winning the nomination, although he is having an effect, especially on Walker and Rubio.  Follow over the jump for more on Trump.

Not all the polling news is good for Trump, as Daily Kos pointed out in Just for kicks, this is what Clinton's hilarious landslide over Trump would look like.
Kentucky is about as far from swing-state status as you can get. It was Barack Obama's seventh-worst state in 2012: He lost to Mitt Romney by a punishing 23 points. No one in their right mind expects Democrats to carry it next year.

However ... Democratic pollster Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling just tested a matchup between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in the Bluegrass State, and the results are, simply, hilarious. Even though Clinton currently trails the rest of the GOP pack by anywhere from 5 to 10 points in Kentucky, she leads Trump by a 45-42 margin.

Imagine that! A Democrat winning Kentucky! That hasn't happened in 20 years, when Bill Clinton edged out Bob Dole by a single point. It just shows how truly despised Trump is, but it also leaves us giggling over a follow-up question: What would happen if this 26-point swing were replicated nationwide?

What you'd get is the map at the top of the post, which has Clinton winning an insane 45 states and taking a beyond-comical 513 electoral votes to just 25 for The Donald. That's an FDR-level landslide, leaving Trump with just a teeny outpost of red in the far west, plus a dot here for Oklahoma and there for West Virginia. That's it, and nothing more.
Here's the map.


There's more.
Of course, this kind of analysis is just for fun—it would be a little difficult for Clinton to win 110 percent of the vote in D.C., even against Trump. And this one poll doesn't mean Clinton could expect to see such a huge and uniform shift nationwide, plus in any event, plenty of Republicans would hold their noses and vote for that monstrous hairpiece in the end.

But there's no doubt that Trump would be a disaster of epic proportions for the GOP, so pray for him, my friends, hard and often. We could use a big win, and some big laughs—and Trump would guarantee both of those things.
That's not all.  FiveThirtyEight shows why Trump does so poorly against Clinton in Why Donald Trump Isn’t A Real Candidate, In One Chart.
Taking into account name recognition, Trump’s net favorability rating (favorable minus unfavorable) of -32 percentage points stands out for its pure terribleness at this point in the campaign. Like his unfavorable rating, it is by far the worst of the 106 presidential candidates since 1980 who are in our database.


For this reason alone, Trump has a better chance of cameoing in another “Home Alone” movie with Macaulay Culkin — or playing in the NBA Finals — than winning the Republican nomination.
Trump may not be running for long, but while he is, he will be great entertainment.

Stay tuned.  I have an entire post of recycled comments about Trump as Penguin for President to share.

6 comments:

  1. I predict he will find an excuse to drop out before the first primary. He loves saying that he " would have won easily" way too much to risk actually losing in the humiliating fashion that he would.

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    1. He might pull a Herman Cain and drop out after the second debate, but he's managed to burn enough bridges connecting him to the entertainment part of his business that he has less incentive to do so now than he did a week ago. First Univision and then NBC dropped him. Also, he's polling very well right now. As long as that's the case, he has every incentive to stay in.

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  2. He has until he has to submit his financials, which if he lies on the form it is perjury. I believe he has up to 120 days from his original announcement. So that's his drop dead date

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    1. So he has until the middle of September. I have a feeling the "Trump bump" might continue until then. If so, then his ego might overwhelm his business sense and he'll remain in the contest.

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  3. He has until he has to submit his financials, which if he lies on the form it is perjury. I believe he has up to 120 days from his original announcement. So that's his drop dead date

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    1. Thanks to your duplicate post, this is the most commented on entry for the month of June 2015. Congratulations and thank you!

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