Markos Moulitsas: Where Trump is weak

[applegrove]

Markos Moulitsas: Where Trump is weak

By Markos Moulitsas at the Hill

http://thehill.com/opinion/markos-moulitsas/264871-markos-moulitsas-where-trump-is-weak

"SNIP...........

This haphazard, scattershot effort at taking down the Republican front-runner is particularly bizarre given the GOP’s historic messaging strengths: the party almost always acts in laser-focused fashion, incessantly on message, and it always attacks its targets’ greatest strengths. There’s a reason Republicans disgracefully attacked John Kerry’s war service in 2004 or, for that matter, that of former Sen. Max Cleland (D-Ga.). It’s a smart play: negate your opponent’s biggest selling point, and what’s left over is nothing more than mop-up.

So why won’t Republicans zero in on Donald Trump’s woeful business record?

.............


According to an analysis in the National Journal, had he invested his share of his father’s real estate company into a boring index fund (and taken nothing out) in 1974, his value today would be $3.4 billion. Take the $200 million he was worth in 1982 and stick it into that same boring fund, he’d be worth $13 billion today.

In other words, all his business decisions since then — his underperforming golf courses and Manhattan real estate, bankrupt casinos, premium vodka, Trump Tea, Trump Steaks, Trump University, Trump ties and apparel, Trump cologne, Trump chandeliers, Trump sofas, etc, etc. — have underperformed the wealth that would’ve been created by a non-managed index fund.


............SNIP"