Friday, May 13, 2016

DAVID GERGEN IS ALMOST READY TO GO HOME WITH DONALD TRUMP AFTER THIS BAR CLOSES

You've probably seen this:
Billionaire investor and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban isn't holding back his opinion about his frenemy, Donald Trump.

"There's that guy who'll walk into the bar and say anything to get laid. That's Donald Trump right now to a T. But it's all of us who are going to get f-----," Cuban said during an interview at the SkyBridge Alternatives (SALT) Conference in Las Vegas on Thursday night.
Cuban has been saying this for a while (e.g., last December on Larry Wilmore's show), but, yeah, it's true. The thing is, Trump's approach works -- not just with angry blue-collar Republican voters, but with members of the political establishment.

David Gergen, for instance. Judging from his latest column at CNN.com, Gergen's almost ready for some hot Trump action. Emphasis added below:
... [Trump] is now moving into a phase where he will be judged less on his ability to campaign than to govern. And governing is about getting other stakeholders to go along with you and your ideas -- not whether you can run them over....

Thursday was a beginning, and from all reports, Trump handled himself well. In taking a more conciliatory approach and in paying respect to Republican leaders by coming to them -- rather than insisting they come to him -- he appeared genuinely interested in mending fences....

The far more important tests of whether Trump has the right stuff to be presidential will come in the weeks ahead. [Paul] Ryan and other Republicans quite reasonably want to see a change in Trump's tone as well as substance. Trump is obliging so far. He didn't take any shots at Republicans after their meetings, and he has softened his vow to ban all Muslims -- it was a mere "suggestion," he now says.
(That last bit isn't true, but never mind. It's nearly closing time, and Trump may not be Mr. Right, but he could be Mr. Right Now.)
... In his landmark book "Presidential Power," scholar Richard Neustadt argued that the most important power a president has is the power to persuade. So far, Trump has persuaded some 10 million voters in Republican primaries to support him.
(Ooooh, he's so ... persuasive.)
But now, to win, he must persuade another 50 million or more Americans of all stripes to stand with him. He cannot win if two-thirds of all women, 80% of all Latinos and more than 85% of African-Americans continue to disapprove of him.
So ... if his negatives with those groups drop from abysmal to merely awful, he's worth a tumble? Is that how I should read this?
Voters know he is an effective brawler, but that's not what will matter to them in November. They must now be persuaded he will be a president who will be a constructive force for change. He has six months, starting with Thursday's meetings on Capitol Hill.
If you haven't been in a coma since last summer, you know there is no possible way Trump as president could "be a constructive force for change." What's more, he's not even going to try to prove that he can be "constructive." He's going to continue demonstrating that he's in it for the self-aggrandizement and in order to be be destructive, except that he wants us to believe he'll destroy things we want destroyed.

Gergen desperately wants to believe otherwise -- and any day now he'll tell us that Trump has passed this test. He's definitely going to go to bed with Trump, as will much of the rest of the mainstream punditocracy. By fall, we'll be told there's one unf---able candidate left in the bar -- and it won't be Trump.

7 comments:

AllieG said...

Gergen is example number one of how Washington TV pundit is even more of a lifetime job than Supreme Court justice. He's been on my TV since Carter was President. Gloria Borger, too. They both have to be way older than me, and I'm on Medicare! They obviously have no contacts, do no reporting, and haven't had an original thought since predicting GHW Bush would easily dismiss Bill Clinton back in May of 1992. Why are they still around? Where are our younger hacks?

Victor said...

For DC punTWITS, in bar parlance, where the old saying is, "A 2 at 10, becomes a 10 at 2," it's 'A 2 in November of 2015, becomes a 10 for November of 2016.'

Ya gotta do what you can to put lipstick on the ugliest pig, or else the ratings will drop - this, of course, only applies to Republican candidates. With Democrats, it's always open-season to bring them DFH"s down a notch or two - or a few dozen.

OY!!!

trnc said...

I have it on good authority from Messrs Mitchell and Barron that Trump can totally deliver on any action Gergen is interested in.

O’Hollern said...

This has been my fear all along. The pundit class will eventually warm to Trump and start convincing us that he's not really all that bad. They will legitimize him. And, of course, many of the eunuchs in the Washington press corps have a tendency to develop unseemly man-crushes on faux macho men like George W., Chris Christie and John McCain. All Trump has to do is invite a few Howard Fineman types along for a ride on his jet and crack some dirty jokes to get them swooning.

Feud Turgidson said...

Well, YEAH! Bill & Hill found him so innocuous they went to one of his weddings (Don't tell me which one; I want to maintain the element of surprise.); and let's face it Obama and Colbert are in some secret competition to see who can zing Don's doofus the hardest, which is a sign of general social acceptability of Trump talkery.

The MEDIA was ALWAYS going to be in the bag for the Don.

Ten Bears said...

Best idea "Bill and Hill" ever had.

Be careful what you wish for.

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