Adding some more here of general reflections from a week in NH ...
Some general observations from what I've seen and heard up here in #fitn NH primary ...
- general enthusiasm from Trump supporters, though with a dash of fatalism
- anxiety from Haley supporters (old line Rs, independents and some Ds)
- persistent read from veterans of previous campaigns, Rs, Ds, operatives, reporters - that this was basically a non-existent primary GOP primary ...
some causes for that:
- de facto incumbent (Trump)
- wide open field splitting the non-Trump vote thruout (until the very last minute)
- the overwhelming frontrunner for the nomination throughout the race (Trump) refused to participate in many of the traditional trappings of a Republican primary (debates, State Fair soapbox, etc) - while cleverly working the levers of the party behind the scenes thruout ...
“Vermin Supreme?!” Thanks for that; why has his (her?) campaign not been mentioned until now…probably a better choice than Trump, sadly….that is, assuming he wasn’t carrying an assault rifle. (I’m thinking you would have mentioned that, if he were. I WOULD BE a better candidate than Trump!
FOR ONE THING, I can pronounce “Hamas” & I have never confused it with hummus! 🫤
Tom, it’s not that “Americans” or the entire state of New Hampshire is “burnt out”. It’s that Republicans are in “frenetic malaise.” And who can blame them with Trump as their party’s candidate?
Yes, Democrats are “angry.” I’ll give you that one. Angry as all get out over the overturning of Roe. Democrats are energized.
Your story is not a comprehensive picture of what is going on.
Well taken - it's not a complete picture, it's a good look at the shape of the Republican primary here, a primary which seems likely to be over after this
Anger and energy on the dems side clear indeed (and among moderates, independents) ... I'm very much watching for how this translates to the general election battle
Hey Thea: Granted, a free-lance reporter with a working camera cannot comprehensively cover a primary campaign, even in a state as small as New Hampshire, but give Tom LoBianco some credit. He isn’t working with the budget at least once given a national correspondent for The New York Times, perhaps, but he’s actually reporting FROM New Hampshire, talking to voters, not sitting in a cubicle off the open newsroom of a major name newspaper, dashing off punditry.
Thanks Tom, for actually bringing us a bit of the flavor of the primary, as lame as it is—the primary, I mean.
Your randomly chosen reporting from New Hampshire is an enlightening slice-of-life snapshot of what Presidential campaign politics has become, much as visiting Pompeii is reminiscent of life in ancient Roman times.
NORMAL? Nothing about politics—at either the state or national level—is at all what I would consider “normal,” and is becoming less so with each national election cycle, thanks to the gradually increasing influence of Dark Money, starting as early as the 1970’s and the heyday of Newt Gingrich, then Speaker of the House. What we’re seeing now, as a result of Dark Money funding over fifty years, is lopsided Republican dominance in many state capitols, in federal judge appointments, and through gerrymandering, and other tactics, in Congress. The influence of corporate money was not blatantly obvious, at the outset, but has gradually grown more powerful, although even the Koch brothers (now one Koch brother), and other like-minded no-holds-barred capitalists, could not have foreseen the rise of a rogue character like Donald J Trump. And now I’ve read, not even DARK MONEY corporate interests support Trump.
He’s no longer serving their interests, much less that of the majority of American citizens who support him. His only concern is furthering his own grandiose ambitions.
Yet by all accounts, he’s badly mismanaging his own affairs, as well.
Too many American citizens have confused the Trump of “reality TV” with real life. Even as a “reality TV” business mogul, his decisions were based more on whimsy than on contestants’ performance, so that the TV producers often had to scramble, to find some imaginary fault in the performance of contestants Trump decided to fire.
Adding some more here of general reflections from a week in NH ...
Some general observations from what I've seen and heard up here in #fitn NH primary ...
- general enthusiasm from Trump supporters, though with a dash of fatalism
- anxiety from Haley supporters (old line Rs, independents and some Ds)
- persistent read from veterans of previous campaigns, Rs, Ds, operatives, reporters - that this was basically a non-existent primary GOP primary ...
some causes for that:
- de facto incumbent (Trump)
- wide open field splitting the non-Trump vote thruout (until the very last minute)
- the overwhelming frontrunner for the nomination throughout the race (Trump) refused to participate in many of the traditional trappings of a Republican primary (debates, State Fair soapbox, etc) - while cleverly working the levers of the party behind the scenes thruout ...
“Vermin Supreme?!” Thanks for that; why has his (her?) campaign not been mentioned until now…probably a better choice than Trump, sadly….that is, assuming he wasn’t carrying an assault rifle. (I’m thinking you would have mentioned that, if he were. I WOULD BE a better candidate than Trump!
FOR ONE THING, I can pronounce “Hamas” & I have never confused it with hummus! 🫤
Tom, it’s not that “Americans” or the entire state of New Hampshire is “burnt out”. It’s that Republicans are in “frenetic malaise.” And who can blame them with Trump as their party’s candidate?
Yes, Democrats are “angry.” I’ll give you that one. Angry as all get out over the overturning of Roe. Democrats are energized.
Your story is not a comprehensive picture of what is going on.
Well taken - it's not a complete picture, it's a good look at the shape of the Republican primary here, a primary which seems likely to be over after this
Anger and energy on the dems side clear indeed (and among moderates, independents) ... I'm very much watching for how this translates to the general election battle
Hey Thea: Granted, a free-lance reporter with a working camera cannot comprehensively cover a primary campaign, even in a state as small as New Hampshire, but give Tom LoBianco some credit. He isn’t working with the budget at least once given a national correspondent for The New York Times, perhaps, but he’s actually reporting FROM New Hampshire, talking to voters, not sitting in a cubicle off the open newsroom of a major name newspaper, dashing off punditry.
Thanks Tom, for actually bringing us a bit of the flavor of the primary, as lame as it is—the primary, I mean.
Your randomly chosen reporting from New Hampshire is an enlightening slice-of-life snapshot of what Presidential campaign politics has become, much as visiting Pompeii is reminiscent of life in ancient Roman times.
NORMAL? Nothing about politics—at either the state or national level—is at all what I would consider “normal,” and is becoming less so with each national election cycle, thanks to the gradually increasing influence of Dark Money, starting as early as the 1970’s and the heyday of Newt Gingrich, then Speaker of the House. What we’re seeing now, as a result of Dark Money funding over fifty years, is lopsided Republican dominance in many state capitols, in federal judge appointments, and through gerrymandering, and other tactics, in Congress. The influence of corporate money was not blatantly obvious, at the outset, but has gradually grown more powerful, although even the Koch brothers (now one Koch brother), and other like-minded no-holds-barred capitalists, could not have foreseen the rise of a rogue character like Donald J Trump. And now I’ve read, not even DARK MONEY corporate interests support Trump.
He’s no longer serving their interests, much less that of the majority of American citizens who support him. His only concern is furthering his own grandiose ambitions.
Yet by all accounts, he’s badly mismanaging his own affairs, as well.
Too many American citizens have confused the Trump of “reality TV” with real life. Even as a “reality TV” business mogul, his decisions were based more on whimsy than on contestants’ performance, so that the TV producers often had to scramble, to find some imaginary fault in the performance of contestants Trump decided to fire.