Quitting the Party is over reacting

Submitted by Saul Stein (United States), Jul 21, 2016 at 17:45

I agree with your assessment of Mr. Trump. When I first heard him talk about the Economy on the Larry King Show in the early 1990's, I found Trump to be a poorly educated blowhard. His predictions back then proved incorrect and his current campaign hasn't convinced me that he's learned anything since then.

However I have to disagree with the response you have chosen. Trump's winning the primaries is more a result of him "cornering the market" on the anti-establishment members of the base, while 13-14 other contestants split the remaining 60%-70% of the vote. If the Republican Primaries hosted a typical number of 4-6 competitors like most previous elections (or like the Democrat Primary!), Trump's 25% or so of the vote during the early primaries wouldn't have meant much and he would have faded out of contention after Super Tuesday or by early June. If the Democrats had 10 or 11 candidates battling Hillary Clinton for the nomination from Day One, Bernie Sanders may very well be their nominee.

The half-hearted effort by the majority in Party Leadership to back Trump, now that he has fairly won the nomination, seems to me to be more of a case of turning out the vote to avoid losing the House and/or the Senate than it does a ringing endorsement. The Convention speeches made by non-members of the Trump family came across as being more anti-Hillary than they were pro-Trump. Like you, I am not happy about the result, but we all have to deal with Reality as it is presented to us.

I don't agree with the media fixation that Trump marks the end of the Republican Party as we know it. Each of our two major Parties have a 20%-25% portion of the base that harbors extreme and mostly ignorant views - whether we're talking about trade and immigration on the Right, or Freedom, race relations and government spending on the Left. If you begin a primary season with a dozen or more candidates splitting 75% of the vote while 1 person grabs the remaining 25% for himself, you're asking for trouble. In other words, I see the Trump victory more of a result of mathematical reality that Party Ideology. Sanders would have achieved the same result if the tables were turned.

For this reason I believe that quitting the Party is an over reaction. Voting Libertarian or for your next-door-neighbor as a write-in candidate seems to me to be the more appropriate response.

The best and most appropriate appraisal of the 2016 Presidential Election, in my opinion, is that it presents the American Public with the worst choice in modern American history.

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