Politics is often two choices that are both bad. Trump is a better choice than Hillary.

If Trump weren't taking the same positions on 90% of matters as Hillary Clinton, you'd have a point. But there are several of his policies that tell me he's no different:

1) Eminent domain. Trump ardently supports being able to take money from private individuals on behalf of the government to give to cronies who have friends in high places.
2) Government-run healthcare. On the one hand Trump claims he wants to repeal Obamacare, but on the other he says that everyone should be taken care of.
3) Taxes. On the one side Trump says he wants to do away with some taxes, but he supports higher taxes on the rich.

As for him being a Christian, I might actually consider him one if he had any idea what Christ taught. He doesn't. American-born? That's kind of a requirement, but what I want is an American patriot - someone who has read and reveres the Constitution. Donald clearly has no concept of the reason for separation of powers and I doubt he could name the contents of any Amendment past the First - which he wants to do away with so he can sue or incarcerate people who disagree with him. And I love the fact that he's a businessman, but that doesn't qualify one to be President.

Again, I'll say: You have a Muslim-raised, communist-raised community organizer as president and you are worried about Trump, a titular Christian, American-born, businessman/capitalist? Gary Johnson would be a better choice but he is NOT the choice.

"People are fired up to vote for him" .. someone posted below.

I'd like to reflect on that statement for a moment.

How many D's crossed party lines to vote for him?
How many of those D's do you believe will remain loyal to him in the general election?

In my opinion, the Democrats took full advantage of the open primaries to skew the Republican vote -- and it has paid huge dividends to the Democratic party's chances of winning in November.

While I do not buy the theory that Trump is a Democrat mole, I do not believe for a moment that Trump is a tried and true Republican. His rhetoric far out-stretches his past. (E.g., his donations and contact with the Clintons just weeks before announcing his candidacy - source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politi...

What sort of things would Trump have had to converse with Bill just prior to announcing his run for presidency? Certainly Bill & Hillary would have known that Hillary was already going to be the Democrat nominee, all Trump had to do was garner some favors in the open primaries to secure the Republican nomination. For the millions Trump's donated in the past, this should have been an easy transaction to conclude.

All over the open primaries, you had countless democrats crossing over to vote for Donald. And, they ended up sounding precisely like the two Ted Cruz confronted in Indiana. And, that is precisely how Trump dispatched Ted in Indiana.

Those two were indeed "fired up". But, they could not argue a single principle except to spew out political slur after political slur at Ted. They epitomize(d) the typical Trump supporter.

The Clintons know darn well they can out-do Trump in general election. Just as they've taken care of the Bernie, so too can they dispose of any challenge from the Trumpster in the general election.

As things stand - Hillary Clinton will be our next president. Yes, she has fewer votes - at the moment - because a majority of those votes were going to prop up the Trumpster in the Republican Open Primaries. The Clintons know what they are doing.

His track record on liberty for the rest of us is not promising. He is a Trojan horse, not a liberator.

Well said.

True. He was a vocal advocate for the Brady Bill back in the day, and his "Lifetime Membership" to the NRA was purchased two years ago.

He may have changed his tune, I'll give him that, but he's going to have to do more than simply talk about it.

OK partner, ya' got me by one election cycle. Now that's one upsmanship I can appreciate!

Trump only started supporting the 2nd when he decided to run for emperor. His "support" is a fraud.

Yeah, I voted for Nixon in '72 as well. Do you recall the mantra:

"Why change Dicks in the middle of a screw?
Vote for Nixon in '72!"

Still makes me laugh.

He may well not be open to ideas, I can't say. But for the election cycle he doesn't have to be. He just has to give people the impression he can. You're still thinking about the race in intellectual terms. The things you say he has to do are absolutely true - if he runs that type of campaign. That isn't his campaign and I doubt we will see that campaign. He is playing to emotion, plain and simple. Just like Obama did.

Emotional decisions are the bane of a good debate because there is nothing the intellectual debator can say. If people are being driven by emotion, logic isn't the winning strategy. The Libertarian Party had decades of experience with trying the intellectual campaign - the "with the candidate" style. Whether it is fear, Hope and Change, or a shining city on the hill, emotional campaigns are hard to derail with logic.

By my count of the elections since 1984 only one non-emotional based campaign won. But in that one neither side was running an emotionally driven one. In every emotional vs intellectual campaign contest since 1984 the emotional one has always won. Reagan. Clinton. GWB. Obama. Note that each of them were double term POTUSes.

Of course that doesn't guarantee the candidate running an emotionally bass campaign will win, but it is pretty good indicator that as a basic campaign structure it is a more often successful one - If only because those who run intellectual campaigns don't know how to run successfully against an emotional one.

I liken it to talking to vegans and vegetarians about diet. If they think not eating meat or animal products is healthier, they can be educated in the falseness of that conclusion and a discussion might be productive. But if they say it is more ethical or more human there is no value in discussing it - they got there based on emotional reasons and only emotional ones could dissuade them from their folly.

Hillary knows how to debate someone on intellectual grounds. That doesn't mean she knows how to do the same with an emotionally driven one. Maybe she does, but I've never seen it and have doubts she does. The only time we see her play to emotion is when she talks about being the first woman POTUS. Even then she manages to turn it into being with her rather than actually about women in the Oval Office.

I don't think it's so amazing. Humphrey was LBJ's handpicked successor and would have continued his policies. McGovern was far left, advocating a 37% cut in defense spending at a time when the Soviet Union was a major threat, and proposing a government handout of $1000 (or $5700 in today's money) to every American citizen. Both candidates could have been a lot worse than Nixon; we'll never know for sure. BTW: I voted Libertarian in 1972 and in every election since then.

I am old enough to remember 1964 and admire Sen. Barry Goldwater. "They" said, "Vote for Goldwater and we'll go to war!" I was 17, too young to vote, but I would have voted for Goldwater if I could have. LBJ won and we went to war.
To the Democrats, this is 1964 all over again. "Vote for Trump and the sky will fall in!" To them, November is not a Clinton election but a Clinton coronation.
Both candidates are, of course, supreme egoists (or egotists, if you prefer). However, one is "owned" by others, and the other is "owned" by himself; one is a collectivist and the other an individualist.

It's all going to depend on whether or not he can get people to overcome the negative associations and vote for him. Right now, the Republican base is not enthusiastic at all about the upcoming election, and this despite knowing exactly what Hillary represents. Trump is going to have to mend some of those fences to even have a chance. Time (and lots of money) will tell.

Now there is the argument that he'll be able to attract Democrats and put states like Pennsylvania into play. That same line was used with McCain and Romney and they both failed. I'm not buying it with Trump any more than I did then. I might get proved wrong, but history tells me it's a long shot.

As to Trump being willing to admit he doesn't know anything, he's put his foot into his mouth too many times on policy issues to give much credibility to that statement. Even Trump's own advisers and insiders have admitted that Trump doesn't go looking for ideas from others. Half of the appeal I hear from Trump fans is that "he isn't afraid to speak his mind" - hardly the modus operandi of someone who values the opinions of others. After examining the bankruptcy judgments against Trump, I also find it interesting that the most common thread in all of them was that Trump himself had to be divested of any leadership role in the company for the judge to approve restructuring. That is hardly the mark of someone who is willing to accept ideas from others.

That depends. Usually, the big part of campaigning is to establish name recognition and link that to specific policies that resonate with the people. Trump already has 100% name recognition, so the opportunity to associate his name with specific policies is gone. Further, in a March study, he was disliked by even more people than Hillary Clinton, meaning that his name association was already established - to his detriment. Any student of marketing will tell you this is the worst place to try and start from because it is 10x harder to change someone's preconceived notions about you than to create a notion in the first place. And when you have an opponent who is going to be capitalizing on all those negative stereotypes already associated with your name, the hurdle in six months becomes enormous. Add to that a media which is historically antagonistic to the Republican candidate and it is truly going to be a Herculean effort.

You also have to look at the two major ways Trump has to affect public sentiment: PSA's (public service announcements also known as advertisements) and debates. PSA's typically focus on the negative in one's opponent and contrasting it to one's own stance. His policies on many items there are identical, so his list of potential PSA's leaves little room to work with. And we saw in the debates that Trump fared poorly - and couldn't leave the jibes at the debate. Marco Rubio's jabs hit home hard and Trump was still talking about rebuttals to them for weeks, making him look thin-skinned and self-conscious - not Presidential and confident. Hillary is a seasoned debater and she'll have moderators willing to cover for her, so Trump is really going to have to outperform if he's going to beat her there.

There is a third way to change peoples' opinions, and that is to actually go out and meet them, but Trump so far has shown little willingness to engage in "press-the-flesh" campaigning. Fortunately, neither has Hillary, so while he won't necessarily receive criticism for not doing it, he's not going to win any converts either.

He's got an uphill battle. Time will tell if he's able to climb that hill despite all the boulders that are going to start rolling down on top of him.

I don't put much stock in "negatives". I watched a politician with high negatives absolutely cream her competition because people, by their own admission, preferred knowing what they got even if they didn't like it. I later found it wasn't an isolated incident.

I still hear, nowadays in Texas, a lot of "I may not like him/her, but at least I know what they'll do/be" sentiment expressed. I suspect that is one of the many driving forces behind Trump's success to-date.

It doesn't hurt him either when he says things like "I don't know, we'll have look into that". But you don't see the other candidates saying those types of things - likely ou of far of being viewed as not ready. But, IMO, it is just like interviewing a candidate for a technical job - we actually prefer people who are willing to admit they don't know something.

They'll split their gourds when Cruz accepts it and at least timidly supports Trump. You know it is coming. We the people who are not pundits and politicos have known to for a long time.

People in general don't seem to like either of them. Can't blame them of it either. Why do you think those trying to say Trump will get shellacked by Hillary talk about this negatives being worse than hers? Because her positives aren't that great either.

The data supports the basic premise you posit here - people not willing to admit they support him. It is the most basic and seemingly correct answer to the question of why he does so much better in most primaries than in the polls. By some analyses he only needs to be around 7% better than current polls across the board to win.

Just remember to "ignore the popular vote behind the curtain".

" the federal government is crushing our country with regulations and layer upon layer of bureaucracy" .Also with $19 trillion in debt.

"How could being anti-Hillary qualify in any way as anti woman?"

The same way being anti-Obamacare makes one a "anti-black". That is the mindset of the modern left. They are so stuck on their sense of self-importance and correctness that to even consider the possibility that someone disagrees them for valid reasons would cause their worldview to implode. Thus they drop to cries of racism, sexism, whatever-seem-to-demonize-opponentsism to avoid the cognitive dissonance and require application of brain cells to the discussion.

"the fact that he starts this far down right off the bat is not good for a campaign that really hasn't put hardly any effort into actually campaigning."

I'd say it isn't too bad for a campaign that hasn't really started yet, and has the electoral difference you mentioned which would apply to any non-D candidate. It would be far worse of a position had he spent a lot of time and money actually campaigning.