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Sunday, August 7, 2016

Trump's Popularity: The George M. Cohan Effect?

It seems that the usual post-convention popularity balloon is rapidly deflating for Hillary Clinton.
Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
(Breitbart.com)
Poll: Clinton's Lead Over Trump Narrows to Less Than 3 Points
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's lead over Republican rival Donald Trump narrowed to less than 3 percentage points, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Friday, down from nearly eight points on Monday.Breaking News at Newsmax.com http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/Poll-Clinton-Lead-Trump/2016/08/05/id/742374/#ixzz4GcuLBcUZUrgent: Do You Back Trump or Hillary? Vote Here Now!
playbuzz.com
No matter how hard the anti-Trump people, both Democrats and Republicans, try to convince the American public that they should be terrified at the thought of Donald Trump as President of the United States of America, his popularity grows.

That's what what happened during the Republican Primaries. Despite numerous and frequent headlines about the demise of the Trump campaign, his polls kept rising.

Especially if you take into account the totally unpredicted popularity of the radical Leftist anti-establishment Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primaries, and don't forget his supporters behavior at the DNC, it's clear that we're seeing The George M. Cohan Effect on national USA politics. And what you may ask is that?
“I don’t care what you say about me, as long as you say something about me, and as long as you spell my name right.” George M. Cohan
According to the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations and other quotation reference books, Cohan spoke the longer version shown above in 1912 when a reporter interviewed him about one of his upcoming musical shows. That quote is also noted in the definitive biography of Cohan written by John McCabe. Cohan may also have used the better-known, short version“I don’t care what they say about me as long as they spell my name right,” but there’s no clear documentation for it that I could find. The classic quip about name spelling seems to have been floating around in show business and politics in the late 1800s. It’s doubly humorous in Cohan’s case, since his last name was sometimes misspelled as “Cohen.” However, it’s uncertain whether Cohan coined the saying. On the other hand, no one seems to have been able to document an earlier use by P.T. Barnum or anyone else. There is documentation for an earlier variation of the line by Cohan himself. In a reminiscence he wrote for the Syracuse Post Standard newspaper in 1926, Cohan recalled telling his sister “I don't care what they say about me, so long as they keep mentioning my name” in a conversation he had with her in 1898. (quote/counterquote)
In Trump's case, it's more than simple free publicity. American society is not monolithic/homogeneous. And it's not a simple division of "haves and have-nots." The mostly Leftist media and academics aka "the establishment" love to simplify it as:
haves= whites including Jews
have-nots= blacks, hispanics and muslims
The "establishment" gears all of their opinions/ideologies to that presumption. But the simple truth is that there's another, extremely large and ignored, "have-not" segment of the American population who feel very discriminated against and left out.  They are mostly white, but there are quite a few "ethnics" meaning black, asian, immigrant etc, frequently god-fearing, whether Evangelical Christians, Jews and even muslims. In the late twentieth century they were known as "the silent majority," and that is the growing segment of the American voting public that takes the criticisms of Donald Trump very personally.

For today's silent majority, Donald Trump is voicing what they feel. It doesn't bother them that he sounds like Archie Bunker after a few drinks. All the ganging up against Trump just makes them identify with him even more. It's not a "fair fight" when what should be a dignified political interview or news article concentrates on his wife's old profession or other things totally irrelevant.

Director Clint Eastwood
REUTERS/Carlo Allegri/File Photo
Public figures who dare to voice support are vilified. Clint Eastwood has been condemned for his support of Donald Trump.
"He's onto something because secretly everybody's getting tired of political correctness, kissing up," the acclaimed actor and director said of Trump. "That's the kiss-ass generation we're in right now. We're really in a pussy generation. Everybody's walking on eggshells."
"We see people accusing people of being racist and all kinds of stuff. When I grew up, those things weren't called racist," Eastwood added.
Given the choice between Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and Trump in the Nov. 8 election, the celebrated star of "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" said, "That's a tough one, isn't it? I'd have to go for Trump ... you know, 'cause she's declared that she's gonna follow in Obama's footsteps." (Reuters)

Three more months until the American Presidential Elections... interesting, isn't it?

2 comments:

Mighty Garnel Ironheart said...

Trump is a shill for Hillary. If he remains competitive into September he will become even more outrageous, perhaps using "f" and "s" words in public speeches, perhaps using openly racist slur words like the "n" word. If he remains competitive into late October he will suddenly pull out of the race, declaring that now everyone knows he's a winner and he never wanted to be president anyway.

Batya said...

Nobody knows. One thing is for sure. The public is getting tired of mainstream politicians.