Author Archives: Matthew Dickinson

Since the start of this year’s most unusual presidential campaign, I have given dozens of election-themed talks to audiences ranging from senior citizens to high-school students.  During the Q&A period after my lectures, a version of one question is almost always asked:  “Is Trump Hitler?”

The first time this happened, during a talk I gave last fall, the question was posed by a former State Department Foreign Service officer who went on to suggest we were experiencing what the Weimer Republic went through before the rise of Nazi Germany. I don’t remember my response, but I do know the question caught me by surprise. As it became apparent that Trump was going to secure the Republican nomination, however, the question was asked more frequently, and not just by my audience members. National pundits got into the act as well. Andrew Sullivan warned that Trump, and his “neo-Fascist movement” was an “extinction-level event.”  In his survey of Trump’s rise, Robert Kagan explained that, “This is how fascism comes to America.”  Trump was,  Peter Steinfels summarized, “the semi-fascist candidate.” Eventually, Trump’s wife Melania felt compelled to publicly rebut the accusation: “We know the truth. He’s not Hitler,” she insisted in an interview with Dujour magazine   “He wants to help America. He wants to unite people. They think he doesn’t but he does.”  It did little good.  Responding to Melania, the New Yorker’s Adam Gropnik replied, “He’s not Hitler, as his wife recently said? Well, of course he isn’t. But then Hitler wasn’t Hitler—until he was.”

Until he was.  That’s the key element to this Trump-is-Hitler argument.  Initially, as I began to anticipate this question after my lectures, I would try to point to the many ways that Trump is not Hitler – he hasn’t organized a putsch, or written about the need for living space, or expressed a desire to exterminate people, for instance.  Nor is the United States much like post-World War I Germany, a country with little experience with parliamentary democracy.  And there’s that cultural argument as well, if you believe that line of reasoning.  (I’m skeptical.)  Invariably, the comeback is, “Well, he isn’t Hitler yet!  But wait until he takes power…..”

After a time, I realized that the questioners didn’t really want to hear my answer.  They were already convinced Trump IS Hitler. Nothing I can say would dissuade them from that belief.  And so now, when I am asked if I believe Trump is Hitler, my response is: “I don’t know.  Is Bernie Sanders Mao?”  That usually flummoxes them long enough for me to move on to the next question.

Now, I don’t actually believe Sanders is Mao.  Not yet.  But who knows what will happen if he somehow captures the Democratic nomination?  If the choice is Sanders or Trump, it’s not inconceivable that come November a majority of voters will choose Sanders.  And then what? Anyone who has been assaulted by Bernie Bros on social media  understands that his supporters are willing to do most anything to further his cause.  In this regard, the death threats and near-riot from Sanders’ supporters in Nevada may just be a preview of things to come!

If Mao…er…Sanders does take power, the first victim is likely to be the First Amendment.  Already we are seeing free speech come under assault on our college campuses under the guise of furthering “diversity.” A generation of young students – most of them Bernie supporters – is embracing this type of mind control without a moment’s hesitation.  First they took our Halloween costumes, and we did nothing.  Next…..

Say goodbye to a free press as well.  President Sanders is almost certain to push for a state-run media organization. After all, Sanders’ supporters routinely rail against the “corporate media”.  Under the Sandersista regime, our children will grow up watching “Sanders Street.”

And it won’t stop there.  Bernie will undoubtedly push for a sizable increase in the government-controlled social welfare state as well. But where will that expansion end?  Remember, it’s a small step from government-run health care to government-run reeducation camps!

“Sure,” you say.  “But Bernie’s only attacking the 1%. The remaining 99% have nothing to worry about!”  Yes, but who is to say he will stop there?  Pretty soon it will be the 5%, then 10%, and then…. .  You can see how it ends.  Within a few years we will all be toting our little Bernie books, getting Bernie haircuts and gesticulating wildly while we mansplain socialist doctrine to the masses.

Far-fetched?  Perhaps.  But by the time the tanks roll through Middlebury square, and I’m marched off with my fellow political scientists to work the marijuana fields, it’s too late.

Is Trump Hitler?  I have a better question: Is Bernie Mao?!

On a late October night in 2004, I woke my oldest son Seth to watch an historic event: the Boston Red Sox were on the cusp of winning the World Series for the first time since 1918, thus breaking the 86-year “Curse of the Bambino”. (In an uncharacteristic show of mercy, I let my youngest son sleep through history in the making.) At 11:41 p.m., when the Cardinals’ Edgar Renteria tapped meekly back to Sox pitcher Keith Foulke for the final out, I raised a glass of single malt in a toast to all those generations of Sox fans who had lived and died with our Old Towne Team, and yet who never got to experience what I had just witnessed: a World Championship. It was an experience made that much sweeter because I shared it with my son.

Years later I remember asking Seth how he felt on that historic night, when church bells rang throughout small New England towns, grandfathers wept with their sons, and the ghosts of Billy Buckner, Grady Little, Mike Torrez and yes, the Babe himself, were finally and irrevocably exorcised. He paused for a moment and then replied, “I don’t remember. I think I fell asleep.” Upon reflection, I wasn’t surprised by his response. Seth hadn’t really experienced the Red Sox’ long, tortured history, had no idea who Enos Slaughter, Mookie Wilson or Bucky “Bleeping” Dent even were, had no real understanding of why Fenway Park is a religious shrine. (When I brought him to games there, he would bring a science fiction book to read during down time.) And it’s not like this was a once-in-a-lifetime event – the Red Sox have gone on to win two more championships since that historic victory.

I was reminded of Seth’s reaction last night, when my twitter feed was inundated with posts reacting to Hillary Clinton clinching the Democratic nomination, thus becoming the first woman to run as a major party’s nominee. On her twitter feed, Clinton posted this picture, with the caption: “Don’t Let Anyone Tell You Great Things Can’t Happen in America.”

It was particularly poignant moment when Clinton, in her victory speech, referenced her own mother, saying, “”I wish she could see her daughter become the Democratic Party’s nominee.”

More than one tweeter noted that they were in tears watching this historic moment: “Crying for all the women who never got a chance to see this. #historymade #Imwithher.” And this: “kind of sobbing #historymade”. There were lots of references as well to the shattering of the final glass ceiling: “I’m celebrating by drinking tears of the patriarchy from my glass made of shattered glass ceiling. #HistoryMade”

Many of the tweeters noted that they had woken their young daughters, so that they might watch Clinton’s victory speech and experience the historic event together, much as I had woken my son many years ago.  More than one included this photo in their tweets.

In reading these tweets, I could not help but wonder: Were the young daughters crying too? And how many of them will remember this event? It’s no secret that the biggest dividing line between Clinton’s and Sanders’ supporters – maybe bigger than income, or race – is age. Glass ceiling notwithstanding, Millennials – those born after 1980 – vote overwhelmingly for Bernie, while Clinton does much better with the over-fifty crowd. Surprisingly, perhaps, polls indicate that the age divide extends to women, with Sanders running stronger among young women, while Clinton’s support with a women increases as one moves up the age ladder.

For many Millennial women, the notion that Clinton’s deserves their support because of her gender makes little sense and, in fact, seems somewhat patronizing. Yes, they realize that no women had become a major party nominee, never mind president.  But that had less to do with some metaphorical glass ceiling than it did with the failure to find an effective woman candidate. And when they look at the two Democratic candidates, and their stances on issues like income inequality, dealing with Wall St., the environment, health care and education, they find it hard to make a case for Clinton over Sanders. As one of my female students explained in an op-ed piece she wrote justifying her vote for Bernie, “Voting for Hillary, at least for me, would have meant that I was content with the pragmatic, incremental changes that she’s proposed, and that I was skeptical of Bernie’s ability to beat a Republican nominee – and maybe even his ability to run the country.” A vote for Bernie, “the Democratic socialist from Vermont,” she argued, “essentially means that you think the current political system (largely controlled by wealthy individuals and corporate interests) isn’t working. You reject the consumerism, me-first way of life of our parents’ generation and envision a more sustainable, more caring and more economically just America.”

That is a sentiment widely shared among my students, men and women, and among Millennials more generally. This doesn’t mean they don’t recognize the historic nature of Clinton’s candidacy, or that they believe gender discrimination is no longer a problem in society. But they grew up in the era of Title IX, at a time when more women than men are graduating from college, and when the gender pay gap is diminishing. To them, their gender seems less likely to determine their fate than it did for Clinton’s generation, and there is little reason to believe it will determine how one behaves as President.

Perhaps more importantly, Hillary Clinton does not strike many Millennials as the ideal symbol of gender equality. Instead, she seems to be the product of a political establishment that they reject as corrupt and incapable of change. Clinton’s long history of association with scandals, from Whitewater through Lewinsky and her husband’s impeachment (and they don’t forget she stood by her man) to the current email server controversy, makes her less a symbol of change than a reminder of politics as usual. And more than one student has noted to me that Clinton got her initial political start as the spouse of the President – hardly the Millennial’s feminist ideal. Unfair? Perhaps. But in a head-to-head matchup, many Millennials prefer what they see as Sanders’ more genuine, idealistic and uplifting message over Clinton’s establishment persona.

In making his case last night to his followers for why he will stay in the race, Sanders noted his overwhelming support among young voters – a sign, he says, that his message represents the future of the Democratic Party, and of politics more generally. Time will tell if he’s right.  In the years to come, the young daughters who were dragged out of bed last night to stand next to Mom and Grandma, may look back and wonder what all the fuss was about – if they remember at all.  I suppose that would be progress, of a sort.  In that vein, my son Seth never developed much passion for baseball, to say nothing of a rooting allegiance for the Red Sox. “The games are too slow,” he tells me. On the other hand, he just published his first science fiction novel, to rave reviews.

I guess I can live with that.

There has been a flurry of media coverage over still another recent post, this one by Rasmussen, indicating that voters rate Donald Trump as more honest than Hillary, although neither candidate rates very highly among voters on this metric.  In my last post I examined why, despite his documented penchant for making accurate statements, several recent polls indicate that slightly more people view Trump as the more honest of the two.  In the latest Rasmussen poll, a national survey of likely voters (margin of error +/- 3%) asked respondents the following two questions:
1. Is Hillary Clinton more honest or less honest than most other politicians? Or is her level of honesty about the same?
2. Is Donald Trump more honest or less honest than most other politicians? Or is his level of honesty about the same?
According to Rasmussen’s summary of their survey data (I don’t subscribe to their polls and thus don’t have access to the poll’s internals), 30% of survey respondents think Trump is more honest than most other politicians, compared to only 15% who think Clinton is more honest than most politicians. That’s the good news for Trump, and that’s what a lot of conservative media outlets played up. The bad news for Trump, and for Clinton too, is that a plurality of respondents think both Trump (45%) and Clinton (46%) are less honest than most other politicians. Based on Rasmussen’s summary of the poll, 22% of respondents rate Trump about as honest as most others in the political game, compared to 37% who say that about Clinton. According to other media outlets (presumably with access to Rasmussen’s crosstabs), Clinton’s trust gap even extends to Democrats, with only 27% of them believing she’s more honest than other politicians, compared to 50% of Republicans who say that about Trump.

As I noted in my last post, at first glance it might seem rather remarkable that Trump would beat Clinton in any poll on the issue of who is more honest and trustworthy, but in fact this is a pretty consistent finding across several recent polls. But it makes sense if you think that for many voters, being “trustworthy” is speaking your mind without regard for political consequences. This is consistent with what a lot of Trump supporters told me during his rallies when I asked why they were supporting him. At the same time, Clinton has been embroiled in a string of controversial events that have led many to question her credibility.

Naturally, conservative media outlets have picked up on this, arguing that Trump’s relative advantage on the honesty scale might be an important factor in the general election. As Mike Flynn writes at Breitbart News, “In the expected close election in November, such differences can have a huge impact.”  I can understand why pundits would make this claim. But, as I’ve written before, I don’t know of much research that indicates that voters’ perceptions of a candidate’s personal qualities, like trustworthiness, has a significant impact on the presidential vote. In an earlier post at U.S. News, when Hillary’s trust issues were getting significant media coverage, I teased readers by writing this: “Consider the following results from this nationwide survey of voters. When asked, only 41 percent of those polled find Clinton ‘honest and trustworthy,’ while fully 54 percent do not. Among those who do not find Clinton trustworthy, fully 67 percent say they are voting for Clinton’s opponent. The results seem to support the contention of political pundits that a candidate who is so widely mistrusted is unlikely to win the presidency. As one analyst puts it, ‘If you don’t fundamentally trust someone or believe they are, at root, honest then how would you justify putting the controls of the country in their hands for at least four years?’

How indeed? Except that this data comes from 1996 presidential election exit poll – the one taken on the day of the election. That was the election, you will recall, in which the deeply mistrusted candidate Bill Clinton handily defeated his opponent and man of sterling character, World War II veteran Bob Dole, 49.2 percent to 40.7 percent.”

I went on to cite data suggesting that voters’ attitudes toward presidential candidates’ personal qualities are not particularly useful for predicting how they are going to vote in the general election. Nonetheless, I’m confident this won’t stop pundits of all ideological stripes from claiming that Clinton’s trustworthiness issues constitute a “major problem.”  This was probably going to be the case no matter who she ran against, even if the data doesn’t seem to support the assertion. But when facing an opponent who has his own trustworthiness issues, as recent polls indicate Trump clearly does, I’m even less convinced that questions regarding who is the least dishonest of the two are going to be the decisive factor come November.

Nonetheless, it is pretty remarkable that when it comes to issues of trust, the two major party candidates don’t seem to be held in particularly high regard. Most voters seem to accept the fact that, “You Lie” is a pretty apt description of their candidacies.