A VIEW OF TRUMP – AT 11:45 A.M. ET:  Michael Goodwin is one of the most incisive writers around, and so, even though I may sometimes disagree, I take him seriously.  He has a view of Donald Trump that has evolved.  Although I'm not a Trump supporter, I thought it was important to reprint it.  From the New York Post:  

My gut tells me much of the contempt for Trump reflects contempt for his working-class white support. It is one prejudice gentry liberals and gentry conservatives share.

It is perhaps the last acceptable bigotry, and you can see it expressed on any primetime TV program. The insults don’t all seem good-natured to me. I grew up in central Pennsylvania, surrounded by the kind of people supporting Trump, and I sympathize with their worsening plight.

For generations, they went all in for the American dream. Their families fought the wars, worked in the factories, taught school, coached Little League and built a middle-class culture. Now they are abandoned and know it.

Nobody speaks for them. The left speaks for the unions, the poor and the nonwhite, even shedding tears for illegal immigrants and rioters and looters. The GOP speaks for the Chamber of Commerce, big business and Wall Street.

Trump alone is bringing many of these forgotten Americans into the political system, much as Obama did with millennials and black voters. Trump has done it with full-frontal attacks on lopsided trade deals and a broken immigration system. His message is a potent brew of populism and nationalism that reaches across the partisan divide, and the public response is stirring the country.

In fact, many who despise Trump concede he is right that globalization and the open-border flood of cheap labor, while benefitting many Americans, has hurt many others. But instead of working to fix a broken status quo, many on the left and right echo each other’s venomous attacks against him. One day he is Mussolini, the next he’s Hitler, and he’s routinely accused of hate speech and racism.

What is his great sin? Breaking the taboo about what ails the middle class? Daring to challenge a power system that only pretends to have the consent of the governed?

The shame is that others didn’t beat him to it.

COMMENT:  That is very well said, and it needs to be said.  It's too bad, though, that Trump is such a flawed messenger.  Ronald Reagan spoke to many of these same concerns, but he did it so much better.

Can Trump grow into a better candidate, and move the nation in the right direction?  No one can predict that.  The "stop Trump" groups and individuals are meeting and planning, but the primary voters will eventually decide whether he'll get the nomination.  I'm guessing he will.  Late reports have it that the "stop Trump" crowd is giving up on the idea of a third party and is trying to find some candidate who can save the day.

But Dwight Eisenhower isn't available.  Neither is Ronald Reagan.  And David Petraeus stumbled. 

The two big questions in the primary season are, "Will Trump be stopped?" and "Will Hillary be indicted?"

It's come to that.

March 20, 2016