Part of the problem is that people just can't seem to admit any flaws of their own, or of their candidates. And admitting that makes life so much simper, and more honest.

Ace of Spades has a wonderful analysis of the political campaigns today. He starts by bringing us up-to-date on the current polling data. These data show

Sanders ahead of Clinton by 9 in NH.

Furthermore, Sanders has closed on her in Iowa:

In Iowa, Clinton maintains her previous advantage over Sanders -- but her lead has declined from 24 points in July (49 percent to 25 percent) to 11 points (38 percent to 27 percent); Biden sits at 20 percent.

Drudge is headlining this poll from SurveyUSA, not only showing Trump beating Hillary by five (45-40) but also beating Joe Biden (44-42), Bernie Sanders (44-40), and Al Gore (44-41) in potential head-to-head matchups -- a remarkable turnaround from initial polling showing Hillary decisively beating Trump. As Drudge points out, perhaps the most surprising aspect of the poll is that Trump is polling at 25% of the black vote, a number Republicans haven’t seen for generations.

In other Trump news -- there is always Trump news -- Trump said something very very stupid, claiming that he had always "felt" as if he had been in the military because he had attended a pricey military-themed boarding school as a youngster, and so had "dealt with those people."

Ace quotes AllahPundit at Hot Air:

...Trump has clarified how many of the outrages that sweep conservative media from day to day are based on true outrage and how many are purely opportunistic, seized on only because they’re useful in making a disfavored figure squirm.

...The whole "outrage" game is being exposed as a fraud by Trump, a guy who's already committed -- and been absolved of -- more conservative heresies than a much-loathed RINO like Mitt Romney could commit in two lifetimes. That's good for the movement too. American politics, especially as practiced on the Internet, needs a higher tolerance for outrages. Maybe Trump will help generate that.

Ace adds,

I think Allah suggests this but I would make it more explicit: While the Outrageyness of the grassgroots is silly and opportunistic, so too is the Outrageyness of the Establishment class, which every day hits new heights of hysteria in denouncing Trump as a heretic.

Part of the problem is that people just can't seem to admit any flaws of their own, or of their candidates. And admitting that makes life so much simper, and more honest.

...This was in fact a stupid thing for Trump to say, and it is more evidence (if you needed any more) that he considers himself an All-Being, Master of Time, Space, and Dimension (in Steve Martin's words).

One can't really spin this as a positive, and one really shouldn't spin too hard to even make it less of a negative. It's a negative.

On the other hand: Can we all be grown up and admit that we all have flaws, and so do our candidates, and in the final analysis, there are few flaws which are absolutely disqualifying?

...Many on the establishment right are chiefly hostile to Trump on the basis of class-based disgust at him. Not only is he a boastful vulgarian (higher-class people do not proclaim their superiority; they instead suggest it by more subtle means), but he's also an immigration skeptic.

And there is no getting around this: The Establishment right is quite pro-amnesty, for a mix of reasons, including their inability to get past the idea that erecting any real barriers to immigration is "racist."

And to be racist is, of course, the worst sin a member of the Comfortable Class could be accused of; and so this is largely about establishing oneself as "not racist."

...The way to get people to accept your preferred policies and your preferred order of prioritization of issues is to actually talk about policies and prioritization, not engage in this silly, endless He Said a Dirty Word tattle-taling.

Read more here.