Trump Appeals to Dems, Too

At dinner on New Year's Eve a friend and I got into a modest political discussion while waiting for our table. My friend is conservative in the way he lives his life and in many of his social attitudes - second amendment rights, for example. Nevertheless, he plans to vote for Bernie Sanders, a revelation I had difficulty processing, creating as it did, a befuddling blur of cognitive dissonance in my mind.

In any case, he expressed both surprise and disparagement when I speculated that Donald Trump, were he to be the GOP nominee, would appeal to a lot of Democrats and could quite possibly frustrate Hillary Clinton's accession to the throne she has coveted since she was sliming women who accused her husband of various unseemly doings back in their days in Arkansas.

My friend flashed an amused sneer as if to say I had no idea what I was talking about, which was a safe assumption on his part since I often don't, but now comes vindication of my speculations in the form of a US News article. The article states that:

Nearly 20 percent of likely Democratic voters say they'd cross sides and vote for Trump, while a small number, or 14 percent, of Republicans claim they'd vote for Clinton. When those groups were further broken down, a far higher percentage of the crossover Democrats contend they are "100 percent sure" of switching than the Republicans.

Twenty percent! I wish I had that stat on New Year's Eve.

Anyway, I suppose that the very things that make Trump attractive to a lot of Republicans also make him attractive to a significant minority of Democrats. If the choice is between a superannuated liberal progressive of the sort we've had in the White House for the last eight years, a woman who evidently put the State Department up for sale during her tenure as Secretary of State, versus someone who has actually accomplished something in his life and who defies all the liberal shibboleths and the wearisome PC folly of the left, a lot of Democrats, apparently, will cross the line and vote for the latter.

Will they worry about what kind of president Trump would be? Probably most voters would, but many of them will also console themselves by asking how much worse he can be than what we've had over the last decade.

Parenthetically, it's regrettable that Jim Webb (Democrat) and Scott Walker (Republican) dropped out of the race early. Both are men of substantial accomplishment and integrity and both were highly qualified for the nation's highest office. Unfortunately, neither exuded the charisma that so captivates a superficial media eager to wade in the shallow waters of scandal, controversy and personal conflict, so neither was able to get traction with a larger public more concerned with the Kardashians' love life than with the the future of the nation. Maybe it's true that we deserve what we get.