Let's Play Politics without Playing Dumb 2016

Hi, good to see you again.

Once again "It's been a long time, I shouldn'ta left you..."
Life has kept me hyper busy, I was away most of last summer on a film series (I'm blessed) but there is so many thoughts I want to share in response to some wonderful and intelligent friends’ comments on social media, especially Facebook, who seem to have caught what I call "Trump-itis".

You know the condition caused when people are exposed to so much Trump coverage that alarm bells go off in a person's subconscious and results in them spending a lot of time and posting a lot of words discussing Donald Trump’s presidential chances with no eye or ear to the fact-based realities of his chances of being the next President of the United States.

So in short I wrote all this. Trump has little chance of being president of the United States, if a majority of the electorate shows up.

Now I do have a lot to say about a lot of recent NYC and of course especially Brooklyn news, like the planned streetcar line, the method of redevelopment in East New York, the (I'd estimate) 500 new units of housing coming to small area of Crown Heights destined to shift lift further from "affordable", and best of all The Brooklyn Community Foundation, a non-profit that is directly and positively impacting Brooklyn communities.

So posts on all that will come. However I’m going to put that on hold to address more of this Trump fascination.

First, I'd ask you to humor me and do this: swap Bernie Sanders for Barack Hussein Obama, and Donald Trump for John McCain (remember early 2008 John McCain? The very experienced, war hero, centrist who speaks plainly and has the support of all sides!!) and it becomes obvious that a lot of what's happening in media coverage year is playing out like 2008. Personally on the Dem side I know many friends support Hill over Bern, and that's fine because it doesn't matter. We all on the Dem side essentially have the same politics, it's a matter of who we prefer and trust (for a number of reasons) to enact and fight for a majority of those policies.

I believe voting matters, but given the opposition, at this point if the Democrats nominated that creepy robot in the new Boston Dynamics videos everyone will come around and support it. It doesn't matter, after the convention there will be one Dem candidate and we'll all support them.

After the Dem convention someone electric probably joins someone's ticket maybe one of the Latino-American political twin Castro brothers from San Antonio TX, and then they go campaign, with 2 (maybe 3) former Democratic presidents in tow, because the Dems won't make the mistake of 2000 again and not use the sitting president's bully pulpit to galvanize turnout among African Americans especially (which is one reason why the talk of if Bern can get support from the African American electorate is silly)

So no matter who is nominated on the Dem side, no significant number of voters on the Democratic side are going to defect to Trump, Rubio or Cruz. Just like no significant number defected from Hillary to McCain in 2008. I'm sure some people in 2008 refused to vote for Obama, but ultimately twice in the last two elections, with wars and soldiers abroad and a bad economy all making people feel unease, the majority of presidential voters picked the guy who supposedly couldn't overcome the heated anger of the Right wing.

Trump doesn't have the numbers to win. And the entire GOP set of candidates this year are too extreme (Except Kasich who interestingly, Trump's wins is pushing out of contention) to get any major traction with the entire electorate.

And a note about Trump’s “wins”.

Primaries in most states are closed, meaning usually when Trump wins he's winning ONLY among Republicans, he's getting no Democratic votes and no Independent votes because most of those voters are not allowed to vote in the Republican primary. For example in Nevada there are approximately 750,000 self-identifying Latino’ s in the state.

Of that number about 16% are and were able to vote in the Republican primary and Trump won 7% of them with the other Republican candidates splitting the remaining 9%. Trump declared that he had won the Latino vote in Nevada, and if you’re counting that 16% as the entire vote, yes his 55% of that 16% is a win, but it’s not near all the Latinos in the state. The Democrat and Independent self-identifying Latino's in Nevada are over 70% of all Latino. Trump didn’t "win the Latino vote in Nevada" he spun it, said he did, and everyone keeps repeating.Please stop.

Many people are writing, and endlessly reposting these and other numerically inaccurate stories about Trump, and Trump's chances and its a waste of time, energy and a distortion of reality. A better more important more long impacting story is about the remaining vocal fringe of unabashed racist Americans that make up a significant number of his supporters.

It’s a difficult habit to break, reporting sensationalism. The news media gets more money in views, paper sales, and TV ratings by talking up Trump, they think they have to. But it's as useful as when the NYC media pretends to be excited for a new New York Knicks and Nets seasons, knowing damned well they are not going to be anywhere near the championship when the season winds up.

The real issues are making sure more than 40% of the eligible electorate comes out to vote, because the national electorate swings overwhelming democratic. (It doesn't seem like that because of news and congress, but the congressional districts have been rigged by Republican (and sometimes Democratic) governors to corral people into voting districts based on their party affliction.

So I suggest the real issue is getting more people to vote. I suggest we share those articles about denial of voting rights, about voter registrations drives.

Post more articles about what people need to be sure and do so they are prepared to vote. That information better ensures a democratic win. Sharing the news on how much our vote matters is the best news to share this election season.