Voters on 'Ideological Edges' to Set the Tone for 2016

I don't think the millions of white working-class voters providing (most of) the enormous surge of support for Donald Trump's campaign are on the "ideological edge."

On the other hand, 43 percent of Democrats self-identify in recent polling as "socialists," an ideological stance that's by definition to the far-left of the ideological spectrum.

But if you're a leftist, being in favor of secure borders and free markets makes you on "the fringe," or so we're told at the New York Times.

And it's not "may set the tone." Fringe leftists are definitely setting the tone, and the Trump campaign is frankly a push back against that monstrous ideological tendency.

See, "In Iowa, Voters on the Edges May Set Tone for Primaries":

DES MOINES — Iowa, widely derided for being unlike the rest of the United States, was supposed to be irrelevant this year as the presidential race became nationalized — thanks to widely viewed televised debates and the rise of social media.

But as the Iowa caucuses loom on Monday — the first votes after 1,500 candidate rallies, 60,000 TV ads and a nail-biting tightening of the polls here — the state’s voters are poised to play perhaps their most significant role ever in both parties’ nominating contests. And their embrace of candidates on the ideological fringes has amplified a national grass-roots rebellion against establishment politicians.

Both Democrats and Republicans have seen their presumptive nominees of a year ago — deeply experienced, proven political leaders — brushed aside by Iowans in favor of idol-smashing outsiders.

“There’s a tremendous amount of anti-establishment, anti-Washington sentiment here, and I would not be surprised if an outsider on both sides wins,” said Gov. Terry E. Branstad, a Republican, who has exerted himself in an unheard-of effort to derail one of his own party’s front-runners, Senator Ted Cruz.

Voters on the ideological edges, who dominate both parties in Iowa, have made Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, and Donald J. Trump and Mr. Cruz, whose views are anathema to Republican leadership, the standard-bearers of the left and the right.

The embrace of Mr. Sanders and Mr. Trump, visible nationally in huge rallies, has stirred Iowa’s latent Midwest populism, with voters angry about the hollowing out of the middle class, Wall Street greed and the corrupting influence of money in politics. It has created two insurgents who in some ways are opposite sides of the same coin.

The policies of President Obama have added accelerant to the fire, with the far left unhappy he did not go far enough, and the right convinced he radically changed the United States.

“There’s a very disaffected segment of Republican voters and Democratic voters who just want to throw ’em all out,” said David Redlawsk, a political scientist at Rutgers University who wrote a book about the Iowa caucuses. “These particular voters have been told for several cycles, ‘All you have to do is vote for me, and it will be 100 percent different.’ It never is. Sanders and Trump are both benefiting.”

The results of Monday’s caucuses, which will take place in 1,681 precincts across Iowa, ride on such concrete factors as candidates’ get-out-the-vote efforts — but also on intangibles like voters’ perception of who is catching fire at the last minute, and even on the weather. Campaigns were anxiously checking forecasts amid reports of a snowstorm arriving late Monday, but expected that the weather would hold enough to encourage turnout, which could give an edge to the two candidates with large support from first-time voters, Mr. Trump and Mr. Sanders. A victory for Mr. Trump, who has drawn thousands to his rallies here, would devastate Mr. Cruz. The senator has deployed waves of volunteers and sought to visit all 99 counties in Iowa to mobilize evangelical Christians, the core of a conservative coalition that he has built along with Tea Partiers and libertarians...

Even Ted Cruz is not on the "ideological fringe." One of the most interesting things at that GOP debate on Thursday was Megyn Kelly hammering Cruz for his past prodigious support for immigration amnesty. But, again, if you're to the right of center, you're on the "ideological fringe," according to the idiot mandarins of our collectivist press.

Still more, FWIW.