Regardless of who you’re for or whether you’re conservative, liberal or independent, this presidential race is getting mighty interesting, isn’t it?
How can your pulse not quicken when a showman and political outsider like Donald Trump is hurtling at supersonic speed toward the Republican nomination? And how can you avoid gasping when you see, as I did today, masses of young people waiting patiently outside Bartle Hall to get inside to see Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders?
If your pulse is not quickening and your breath not taken away by such developments, you’re mired in a quarry where you’re hearing nothing but the echo of your own thoughts.
Daughter Brooks and I went downtown today with the idea of seeing Bernie, but when we drove by, we could see long, long lines of people waiting on the west, south and north sides of the convention center. The concentration of humanity didn’t appear to be moving. After parking a few blocks away, we walked back to the convention center and then walked around the entire perimeter. To our amazement, we found the line also wrapped around the east side of the building — the one side we couldn’t see when we had approached from the west side.
When we looked closely, we could see that within the amorphous mass, two distinct lines appeared to be snaking toward the 13th Street entrance — one from Broadway on the west, the other from Central Avenue on the east. The people farthest away from the entrance, on 14th Street, appeared to be able to choose either the Broadway or Central line and then inch northward. In any event, it was the largest and most confusing line — or lines — I’ve ever seen outside an arena or convention center. So confusing, and so seemingly impossible, that Brooks and I decided to return to the car and give up on attending the event.
A small part of the crowd that waited outside Bartle Hall today
That was shortly before noon. When we reached the northwest corner of 12th and Broadway, where the dock entrance to the convention center is located, we noticed a flurry of activity — police cars arriving and an officer directing traffic — and we sensed that the Bernie Cavalcade was about to arrive.
Sure enough, within five minutes, a few blue KCPD cars approached quickly, followed by at least two tan Chevy SUVs. As the SUVs flashed by, we caught a glimpse of a man with a distinctive shock of white hair and a distinctive sloop of the shoulders looking straight ahead, a cellphone to his right ear. The SUVS raced up the dock driveway and disappeared. Behind it, incongruously, came a full-length Kincaid bus, full of media members.
Had we just glimpsed the next president? Well, a guy who had positioned himself across the street, with camera, certainly thought he had. He began jumping up and down, clapping his hands above his head.
We went back home and watched Sanders’ rousing speech on the Internet. Thousands of people were packed into the room where Sanders spoke, and they gave him numerous ovations and waved “A Future to Believe In” signs.
…This all made me wonder if Sanders just might win the Missouri primary on March 15. And made me wonder if Hillary Clinton would attract such a throng if she came to Kansas City. I certainly doubt that an older crowd that size would have waited outside for hours — as these young people did — on a cold, windy, late-winter day. It was impressive.
**
On the Republican side, with Trump’s victory last night in the Nevada caucuses, the situation is coming into crystal-clear focus. Millions of Republicans are energized by Trump’s anything-goes, turn-it-loose personality and his upend-the-card-table approach to campaigning.
Nicholas Confessore, a New York Times, reporter who specializes in campaign finance, may have hit the nail on the head when he wrote:
“Mr. Trump is undeniably a showman. Unlike virtually all of his competitors, who repeat the same stump speech in the hopes of getting a poll-tested message across, Mr. Trump always surprises.”
The two men trailing him, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, are flailing in water over their heads. Next to Trump’s 3-D persona, they look like cardboard cutouts. And both are getting flagellated in the press.
Consider what NYT columnist Frank Bruni said about Cruz today:
“He directs you to his halo as he surreptitiously grabs a pitchfork…As Matt Flegenheimer reported in The Times this week, Cruz hired a campaign manager, Jeff Roe (a Missourian), who is widely known for destructive gossip, for malicious tactics — and for winning.”
And consider what another outstanding Times columnist, Paul Krugman, said of Rubio:
“So when Mr. Rubio genuflects at the altars of supply-side economics and hard money, he isn’t telling ordinary Republicans what they want to hear — by and large the party’s base couldn’t care less. He is, instead, pandering to the party’s elite, consisting mainly of big donors and the network of apparatchiks at think tanks, media organizations, and so on.”
Those guys, Cruz and Rubio, are doomed. After Super Tuesday on March 1, Cruz can return to the Lone Star State, which is growing increasingly isolated from the rest of these United States, and Rubio can get back to the Florida sun.
And the rest of us? We get to sit back and enjoy the show. It could supplant Ringling Bros. as The Greatest Show on Earth.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Something of a silver lining…Bloomberg has said he would run as an Independent if Trump and Sanders are the nominees.
That independent thing is kind of like the write-in candidate — it sounds good but never works.
Despite himself, Forrest Trump does indeed look unstoppable: run Forrest, run!
However if Rubio stays close enough for the really big money to make a move, he could snatch the nomination away literally at the last second. Of course for that to work rank and file ReThugs are going to have to start actually speaking out against Trump instead of cowering in their offices.
On the Democratic side, the fix is in: the Clinton campaign has so many “super delegates” locked up Bernie’s almost no chance, this despite running neck and neck with Hillary for the ‘normal’ delegates. What matters, one supposes, is the next election, when all the young people you saw yesterday wake up and realize that because of party machinations Bernie was always going to be locked out: who will they support in 2020?
As for the Bloombergs of the nation – do they step into the ring if it’s Hillary & Trump? I don’t think so…
I read about those super delegates in the NYT and it confused me — probably because, like you say, the fix is in. The only solace to me is Hillary, I think, would have a much better chance of beating Trump than Sanders. The only way Trump beats Hillary is if every black and Hispanic registered voter stays home and every registered angry white man goes to the polls.
I have a lot of concern that these repressive voter ID laws that Republican-led state legislatures have passed are going to suppress the minority vote in November, which is what they are truly intended to do. If tens of thousands of people get turned away from the polls in November because of some arcane rule regarding a driver’s license or birth certificate, and a Trump victory ensues, there is going to be a lot of civil unrest.
Great work. Man on the street…! love to read a sidebar on “conversations overheard.”
I used to call that the ‘scuse me story because you’d go up to the “man on the street” and say, “Excuse me, could I talk to you for a second about why you’re here and what you make of all this?” A lot of reporters hated it but I always liked it.
Head shaking, blood pressure rising, nervous laughing, attention dividing, top of mind shifting…didn’t see it coming as a teenager…keep informing, please.