Not being Jewish, I don't know many Jewish jokes, but David Frum has taken to telling one to illustrate the problem with Trump:
A lady walks into a jewelry store wearing a beautiful large diamond. The jeweler remarks what a beauty it is and compliments her. She says thanks and says, “It’s named the Plotkin diamond but it comes with a curse!” The jeweler asks. “What’s the curse?” She replies, “Mr. Plotkin!”
So it is with Trump. Unlike other conservatives, my principal objection to Trump is not about policy, it is about style. He is an oaf (or is at least running as an oaf) and a frivolous candidate.
Now, this would not matter very much if a seat on the veto council (
commonly called the Supreme Court) were not up for grabs. It is simply insane that the Court has the power it does, which in practice exceeds that of almost any other country on Earth. Make no mistake: the Court does not "strike down" "unconstitutional" laws. It does the bidding of one or the other of the major political parties; the question is only which one.
Very few voters can name each current member of the Supreme Court. (Test yourself now. Can you?) There is little reason to believe that voters care much about the Supreme Court in making decisions about which candidate to support. Instead, Presidential politics is in large part cyclical. After eight years of one party, the other party usually wins. The fundamentals of this year, as measured by statistical models, favor a
generic GOP candidate. Whether or not these models extend to a
moronic GOP candidate remain to be seen.
If, as I expect, Trump loses, most of the blame has to lie with the people who voted for him in the primary. They made a foolish decision to flatter someone's vanity, and the price will be considerable. Trump only won a relatively small plurality of the votes, but the field was the largest in GOP primary history, and his range of support was very consistent across states, from MA to AL to NV. And it was not just poor "angry" white factory worker types who voted for him. You don't win a town like Greenwich, CT (where GOP voters own the company that owns the company that owns the factory) by just appealing to those voters.
A sizable portion of the blame also rests with the GOP itself, which has been unresponsive to its voters concerns on immigration. Electoral politics is like running a department store: if the voters do not like what you are selling, change what you are selling. Similarly, if respectable politicians are not allowed to address voters' concerns, then they will turn to non-respectable politicians.