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Nightly Ramble: The Obvious Child

I’m in Batavia New York tonight. Roughly 30 miles from the house. There is a load of drinks going down to Carlisle Pennsylvania in the morning and I should be there around 10 o’clock or so.

My truck continues to improve as we get little bugs here and there sorted out. I am well pleased. Maybe tomorrow I’ll get some of the salt off the outside.

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The idea that Donald Trump is going to bypass the debate Thursday night is not going to harm him among his more ardent supporters any more than the idea that Hillary Clinton is a half step away from being indicted for her crime, felonies, will hurt her among her more ardent supporters. The old adage about when your argument isn’t based in fact, it’s impossible to defeat by way of fact, would seem to apply here.

I think I should also point out that the people who are praising Trump for this move, other of course then the Rabid Weasel Brigade supporting him, are liberals who don’t like Fox News. CNN for example was basically wetting their pants for the better part of last night over it. The Washington Post, similarly this morning.

In the end, then, it seems to me less than clear exactly what effect this is going to have in the race outcome. Until that is, you get into people who are on the fence and haven’t really made up their minds yet about how this race should proceed. There are a number of voices that haven’t been heard from yet.

As I said last night, I really can’t remember when we’ve seen anybody winning at Iowa actually attaining the nomination, other than W. The law of averages really doesn’t support it happening again.

And, again, there is the specter of Ronald Reagan having skipped the last debate before Iowa, at having lost that state, going on to win that I’m a nation. I’ve seen from supporters going on at length about that aspect, but there’s two points that Trump supporters seem to be missing. First, Ronald Reagan did not have the support of the GOP establishment. George Bush did, and Bush won that particular state that year..

The other point that the Trump supporters seem to miss, and I think intentionally so, is that Trump has been turning in increasingly poor performances at each debate. With Ted Cruz by some polls only being 2 points behind him, and I’m quite sure is own polling data is showing him this as well, one can easily understand why he’s not interested in playing that particular game.

As I say, the Trump robots aren’t going to care about any of that, but the average voter in Iowa will, and it’s starting to look like Cruz will end up picking up Iowa, and even if it doesn’t, he’s going to come away looking like a winner for actually showing up to the debate. Trump, meantime, ends up looking like a petulant child. That’s not going to do him any good at all amongst independence in the remaining states as we go forward, particularly when we’ve just come off a seven year run with such a personality.

And down the road I go. I’ll see you tomorrow

Addendum:  (DavidL)   Every candidate loves to compare him/herself to the Gipper, even the Donald.    However, in one  very important aspect, Donald Trump is not, and can ever be, a Ronald Reagan.   The Gipper had no visible ego.   Reagan never claimed to more than a B grade movie actor, back when had B grade movies.   Reagan never pretended to an intellect.   Whereas, Donald is all ego,   He tells you can work with Speaker Tablecloth, b/k/a Nancy Pelosi, but walks out of a debate because he can not handle Megan Kelly.   Reagan went face to face with the Hollywood moguls and Mikhail Gorbachev.   Reagan did not need a fawning media tell him how great he was.   Alas the Donald is not the Gipper.