The most frightening thing about Trump is..

[Matrosov]

..not his hair

The most frightening thing about Trump is his poll numbers go up every time he says something ignorant.

He is a symptom of ignorance rather than a cause. He simply says things what a worryingly large number of Americans are already thinking. Trump himself will go away again eventually but the underlying sentiment that has made him so popular in the first place will remain

[Xipe Totec]

1. He's gathering up all the submissives in the GOP that are looking for a master.

Mr. Trump will see you now...

[yeoman6987]

2. He's saying things most Americans worry about?

Well then perhaps our democratic candidates better start talking about them too. Your post makes me wonder if trump can win if he is talking about what Americans worry about. I never thought that.

[BlueStreak]

3. This is the GOP's problem. Trump is the result of decades of wedge politics. Sit back and enjoy.

I know it is fashionable to day "Don't underestimate Trump. We must take him seriously."

BA-LO-NEY !!!

Trump cannot win a general election. There are almost no Dems would would vote for him and a big part of the GOP base will not support him. If nominated, Trump sets back the GOP efforts to court the Latino base by 10 years. There are no scenarios where the numbers add up at all. This would be a Goldwater election.

Worse than that (for the GOP), having Trump on the ballot would bring out Dem voters in HUGE numbers -- HUGE!!! And this would help up and down the ballot.

Trump is a GOP nightmare and the GOP knows it. The GOP would love to get rid of the guy, but Trump is enough of an asshole to run a third party campaign, which would guarantee a Dem victory for the White House. However, considering the big picture, that is probably the GOP's best option. They cannot allow him to be their candidate.

If the polls were closer, then the GOP could use their local apparatus to block Trump from winning enough Primary delegates. And in that scenario, they could buy him off to step aside. This is probably why Trump ran in the first place, to blackmail the GOP for favors worth billions to him. But a funny thing happened on the way to the forum. Trump jumped to the top of the polls and is staying there. If Trump really believes he can be President, then there are no deals the GOP can offer him that are as good as the deals he can wrangle as President.

Trump cannot win. But he believes he can, and that's what is driving things right now.

[madamesilverspurs]

4. Trump is Palin

spelled inside-out. Her fan club is his fan club, and none of them are known for intellectual luminescence.

[steve2470]

16. +1 nt

[nichomachus]

5. The most frightening thing is that he could win

He's charging ahead in the polls.

The Democrats have all their eggs in the Hillary basket. The Hillary camp spends a lot of time trashing Sanders, something that will probably cripple him in the end. If Hillary stumbles and falls along the line, there is no plan B, except some retreads -- Gore, Biden, etc. (Hey, let's just throw in Kerry for good measure) -- and a couple of people with almost no name recognition outside of the Democratic political community.

You can laugh at Palin -- I do -- but 59,000,000 Americans voted for her -- and that was against Obama. Imagine Trump with no credible Democratic opponent.

What could happen to Hillary? Well, she is an elderly woman. Things happen. She's had health problems in the past. Suppose she were to trip, fall, and break her hip. A woman is going to have a hard time getting into the White House. A woman in a wheelchair? Forget it.

Also, a lot depends on who was poking around in her supposedly "secure" homebrew servers. If you don't think anyone was, you are horribly naive. Most IT system in the world have been broken into. That's a fact. The saying among IT security experts is that there are two types of organizations -- those that have been hacked and those who don't know they've been hacked.

I'm guessing a variety of groups and people have been tiptoeing through the tulips in her email. Candidates are: KGB, Mossad, Iran, China, a handful of script kiddies, and quite possibly, Anonymous.

If someone releases a treasure trove of embarrassing emails at an inopportune time, Hillary could be done for.

As far as Trump, remember Gandhi's saying : First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

That axe cuts both ways

[RufusTFirefly]

6. ^ ^ THIS ^ ^ +1,00000!

HRC and the DNC's short-sighted leadership have left the Democratic Party incredibly vulnerable. We are skating on extremely thin ice and just hoping that it doesn't get warmer.

[AndreaCG]

8. HRC and The DNC are two different things

I'm in agreement that the DNC needs Debbie Wasserman Schultz booted out. She's awful.

[RufusTFirefly]

10. Are they really?

I'm not convinced.

[AndreaCG]

7. So Hillary is an elderly woman

What is Sanders who is five or more years older than her? Somehow invulnerable? It's laughable to say all Hillary does is trash Bernie. They actually have steered clear of that. Now the supporters - I've seen more of Bernie supporters like I presume you are trashing Hillary than the reverse

[nichomachus]

12. Never said Bernie wasn't old

Never said he was invulnerable. Not even credible straw men. You need to work on that.

My argument would be the same if the Dems put all their eggs in the Bernie basket.

If you've got elderly people running, you have to realize that things happen. Yes, they can happen to younger people too, but as people age, the probability increases dramatically. It's called life.

And yes, some Bernie people trash Hillary, but they do it in the open -- not hiding in the Hillary Room, where no defense is allowed.

[MohRokTah]

9. The Clinton campaign has not trashed Sander.

Not even once.

Sheesh, make shit up about good Democrat? I thought that was the job of the GOP.

[nichomachus]

11. Really?

Not Hillary. Her pollsters know that's not good, but she has surrogates.

Just go to the Hillary fan club group on DU. That's where her supporters run to trash Bernie and then ban anyone who tries to defend him. Quite cowardly.

[MohRokTah]

13. Really? You're going to equate a group on DU to Clinton surrogates?

And the Bernie club on DU is even worse.

[uponit7771]

14. Amen !! I'm starting to think Sander supporters thought HE was a shoe in...

[steve2470]

15. yep he could win

Trump supporters + enough independents + lack of Democratic turnout + very small percentage of Democrats + huge Republican turnout = a win in the GE

We Democrats and left-leaning independents need to freaking VOTE in the GE. No excuses barring horrible illness and overwhelming family tragedy. Absentee ballot, vote by mail, take a day off work, etc.

[greatlaurel]

17. FDR made it into the Whitehouse in a wheelchair.

Why would a woman in a wheelchair not be electable? Seems like a sexist argument.

Has Bernie released his medical history?

Using the old sexist double standards do not help Bernie's cause. He has a lot of important things to say. It would behoove his supporters to discuss his voting record and proposals rather than using sexist tropes attacking HRC.