If the election was held today, who would win?

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

#272freiwal

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

Clinton would just squeak by, although a Trump win wouldn't be out of the question. Fortunately, there are these things called "debates," in which there's at least a small expectation for candidates to talk about something of substance.

[/b]I wish

Most American voters wouldn't know substance if it crawled out of the screen and bit them in the nose.  The most substantive news program in the last 20 years had to be couched in satire and run on a comedy channel.

This isn't just Americans.  Millions of Britons English voted to leave the EU, then were caught googling "What is the EU?" the following morning. 

Soundbites.  Simple sentences with small words, repeated.  Slogans that make you feel good.  Member berries.  This is what wins elections now.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

I still have faith in this country to not elect this generation's iteration of Goldwater.

Firstly, Goldwater was still worse.

Was he?  His backers were all super-HPs, hardcore white supremacists,  but I don't think Barry himself cared about race.  Barry was the prototype of the modern conservative, but lacked the sensitivity to win others to his message.  He might have scared the s*** out of a lot of people as President, but honestly, it wouldn't have been a disaster.  The civil rights legislation of 1964 had already been passed, and there's no way he could have turned that back.  He might even have gotten us out of Vietnam.  (Hopefully not by nuking Hanoi.)

Goldwater was tone-deaf, but at least he had a firm grasp of policy.  Trump OTOH knows exactly how to tune his message to energize the deplorables he seeks, while simultaneously having zero understanding of, or desire to understand, policy.  That makes him much more dangerous.