Welcome to the Stupidity Sweepstakes

• Published in: American conservative (Arlington, Va.) Vol. 18; no. 6; p. 58
• Main Author: Bakshian, Aram, Jr
• Format: Magazine Article
• Language: English
• Published: Arlington The American Conservative LLC 01.11.2019; American Conservative LLC
• Subjects: Candidates; Colonial armies; Goebbels, Paul Joseph (1897-1945); Libraries; Minority & ethnic groups; Nixon, Richard M; Political campaigns; Political parties; Presidential elections; Primaries & caucuses; Reagan, Ronald Wilson; Sales promotions; Sweepstakes; Theater; Trump, Donald; Trump, Donald J; New York; Canada; West Virginia; Iowa; United Kingdom > UK; New Hampshire; France; Pennsylvania
• ISSN: 1540-966X

A year before ground zero in the 2020 presidential campaign, the entrants in the Stupidity Sweepstakes are already off and running. Bragathon mass rallies in places like West Virginia and Pennsylvania may solidify the base of "Trump Democrats," just as Richard Nixon successfully appealed to blue collar and ethnic Democrats and an emerging Republican majority in the South in 1972, and Ronald Reagan convinced millions of "Reagan Democrats" to join the Republican presidential base in 1980. What can and should make Trump the ultimate survivor of the Stupidity Sweepstakes is the way all major Democratic candidates for the nomination have been stampeded left by a "mainstream" media cartel even more radical than they are, and by an obsession with identity politics that means dividing the electorate into buyable blocs and then pandering to each bloc by making unkeepable promises, engaging in crazed gender-bending, and speaking in tongues to linguistic minorities.