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Thursday, September 20, 2018

A Worthwhile Reminder

I just watched a bit of the speech President Trump is giving to a rally in Las Vegas.  The rally is to support the re-election effort for Republican senator Dean Heller of Nevada.  The things that the President had to say in the portion of the rally that I saw were not much different from the speeches he has given at previous rallies.  Even so, it was important to see the speech.  There were a number of things that make it so.

1.  The crowd was immense.  I don't know the exact venue, but it was in one of those giant Vegas arenas.  The people were crammed in wall to wall.  We'll get an official estimate later, but on TV it looked like there were at least 15,000 people there.

2.  The crowd was incredibly enthusiastic.  It was clear that these were true Trump supporters.  This was not like the dull speech that Obama gave in California a few weeks back.  The small crowd that Obama drew applauded politely.  The huge crowd that Trump drew was going crazy.

3.  These were not people who were only excited because Trump is the President of the United States.  They were a large group of people who were completely in tune with what the President was saying.  They clearly want the border wall built.  They clearly are ecstatic over the economy.  Whatever Trump mentioned, the crowd often started chanting phrases of support.

So why is this important?  The answer is that this was a reminder of reality.  For too long we Americans get our news from the mainstream media.  That coverage is focused on Washington and it lets politicians say things without there being any hint of the popular reaction to the positions being taken.  Instead, we get the thoughtful musings of the pundits or the screaming talking points from one of those panels that populate the cable news programs.  In other words, we get the media allies of the Democrats who tell us over and over what we are supposed to believe about the news of the day.  The Trump rally, like the many others this year, show that there is a warm reception out there in the real America for the President and his policies.  Despite the viewpoint of the pundit/panel members, the vast bulk of America is NOT made up of far left, socialists who hate Trump.  There is, as shown by these rallies, a huge base of support for the President and the GOP.

It reminded me of 2016.  In the presidential election, Trump drew enormous crowds to rally after rally.  Hillary ran a much more sedate campaign, drew much smaller crowds but relied on the polls and how they showed that her victory was inevitable.  Except the polls were wrong!  All those crowds came out to vote and Trump carried all sorts of states that the pundits and the panel members told us he could never win.

I wonder whether the enthusiasm shown in Las Vegas tonight is going to last through election day.  If Trump can bring out the same crowds for the GOP in November that he did in 2016, the election won't even be close; it will be a Republican runaway victory. 

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