Clear the decks! E.J. Dionne has a prediction! I repeat... E.J. Dionne has a prediction!
The reason why this is so momentous is that Washington Post op-ed columnist E.J. Dionne has an absolutely humiliating track record with his Donald Trump predictions. It has been so bad that it would not be surprising if he had refrained from making any more Trump predictions ever. However, it appears that Dionne just couldn't stifle his inner pundit clown. Before we get to his latest Trump prediction, let us first review his descent into hilarious self-humilation which began on April 3, 2016 with this doozy: This time it really is the end of Trump. Really.
Really? Okay, if you say so, E.J..
...the killer news for the man who values winning above everything else is that he has dropped well behind Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) in the polls in Wisconsin, which holds its primary on Tuesday. A loss there, particularly a big one, would greatly complicate Trump’s already difficult path to a delegate majority of 1,237.
You could look at the week as an aberration that Trump, the magician, will somehow surmount. In fact, these episodes tumbling one upon the other ratify what Trump skeptics said all along: that he is utterly unprepared to be a serious candidate, let alone president of the United States; that an endless stream of insults against all who get in his way wears thin over time; that he is winging it and stubbornly refusing to do the homework the enterprise he’s engaged in requires; and that trashing ethnic and religious minorities can win you a fair number of votes but not, thank God, a majority of Americans.
...In the case of Trump, journalists are so worried about their old mistake of underestimating the man’s staying power that they now risk making the wrong mistake of missing his fall.
But not you, E.J.. You saw that Trump fall oh so clearly.
Trump’s troubles threaten to go beyond Wisconsin. He could now lose in other big states that vote next, including Pennsylvania, California, New Jersey and possibly even his home state of New York. If this happens, it will be far easier for the Republican Party bosses (such as they are these days) to deny him the nomination. Trump will come to look less like the rank-and-file Republican favorite and more like a flash in the pan.
Too bad E.J. Dionne on April 26 couldn't go back in a time machine to a few weeks earlier to warn himself NOT to write his column since Trump performed a clean sweep with overwhelming victories in all those states. Yeah, the April 26 E.J. Dionne would have definitely stopped the April 3 E.J. Dionne from this hilarious pontification:
...an utter Trump implosion might free the Cleveland convention to turn to someone entirely outside the current crop of candidates, someone unsullied by the ugly and vulgar GOP primary campaign. A sinking Trump would have far less power to resist such an outcome. Democrats need to prepare now for the strong possibility that they will not be lucky enough to run against The Donald.
Funny, right? But wait...there's MORE! He just couldn't help himself.
Most importantly, journalists need to remember that ratings and page views are not the same as votes and that Americans may love circuses but ultimately want elections to be more than Barnum & Bailey productions. Trump has entranced the media and ignited a minority of Republican primary voters. He has never, ever won over anything close to a majority of the American electorate. We demean ourselves as a people if we think that Trumpism is the wave of the future.
Hi, E.J.! The future is now. Wave!
Okay, apparently after that prediction, E.J. Dionne seemed to have learned his lesson and refrained from any more embarrassing Trump predictions...until he relapsed in a most spectacular way on October 19, 2016 with Trump is headed toward a major loss. The GOP can’t say it wasn’t warned.
I bet your post-election self wished he could have warned the October 19 E.J. Dionne to shut the hell up with the predictions.
Trump is in danger of being one of his party’s biggest losers — and, as President Obama pointed out on Tuesday, a whiny one at that.
...Republicans may be hoping privately that Clinton’s effort to expand the Democrats’ map actually succeeds. It may take a true partywide catastrophe for the GOP rank and file to come to terms with the United States that exists, not the one they wish they could call back into being.
I bow before your amazing predictive powers, E.J..
So months and months have gone by and fortunately for Dionne, he has resisted the temptation to make himself a laughingstock again...until August 2. However, in deference to his dubious track record he seems to have gained a slight bit of predictive damage prevention awareness by putting in the qualifier "could" as in, "How Trump could lose his base."
How Dionne COULD make us laugh again.
To pull off his electoral college victory in 2016, Trump needed the votes of traditional Republican conservatives, but he also had to add on non-ideological working-class voters, many of whom found Mitt Romney unappealing in 2012.
Wait, what! Trump had a victory in 2016? Didn't you guarantee a major loss for Trump? And the GOP can't say it wasn't warned by our brilliant Washington Post pundit.
For clues about the political turmoil and coalition-management challenges the president and the GOP face, consult “The Five Types of Trump Voters” by Emily Ekins, the director of polling at the Cato Institute. The bottom line of her research is that Trump and his party can’t win without the conservative faithful, but the conventional right alone cannot guarantee victory.
Heads Trump wins. Tails Dionne loses. Always.
A narrow majority of Trump’s voters, Ekins found, fell into two traditionally Republican groups, “Staunch Conservatives,” who made up 31 percent of his backers, and “Free Marketeers,” who constituted 25 percent. She also identifies a smaller, less loyally Republican faction, “The Disengaged,” who amounted to 5 percent of his supporters.
And then there are "The Clueless" of which E.J. Dionne is a part who amount to 95 percent of the liberals. Especially liberal pundits.
But two other large Trump groups, whom Ekins labeled “American Preservationists” (20 percent of Trumpists) and “Anti-Elites” (19 percent), are quite different from regular conservatives. In particular, Ekins notes, both “lean economically progressive,” which is why the health-care issue is so problematic for Trump.
Not to be confused with the "National Fundamentalists" and the "Anti-Disestablishmentarians" or whatever other meaningless psycho-babble buzz words I can pull from the top of my head to impress liberal Washington Post readers.
...political leaders trying to hold diverse groups together need to demonstrate finesse and both the appearance and reality of successful governance. Finesse, needless to say, is not a Trump long suit. And every day that brings a new Trump revelation, new questions about Russia or sheer craziness (the Mooch interlude or the president’s reported description of the White House as “a real dump”) puts increased pressure on a rickety alliance that can only bear so much. When Trump most needs that base of his, it may no longer be there.
"Could" and now "MAY no longer be there." Hedging your bets to avoid the prediction pain of 2016, E.J.?
Exit question: How deep into the toilet do you predict that E.J. Dionne will plunge his head on Election Night 2020 while retching in reaction to the reported results?
