What he [Donald Trump] is doing and this is his entire political strategy is to divide the American people... So you have a president who gives tax breaks to billionaires and wants to cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. That's not what he's going to run on. You've got a president who tried to throw 32 million people off health care. He ain't gonna run on that one. You got a president who gave 83% of the tax benefits to the top 1%, not going to run on that one. So how do you win an election? What do you say — "You see those undocumented people, they all your enemy. Stand with me. Hate them. Let's divide this country up." I think that is an incredibly ugly and dangerous thing to be done. And I will do everything I can to stop that.

In truth, modern life requires many people of talent and intelligence to run big institutions, including governments. Others resent their quality wherever they find it. They see it as oppressive. Then Donald Trump came before them and sneered at government leadership, in a style that had nothing to do with talent or intelligence.... To accomplish this, his followers needed only to mark a ballot. Soon he looked like the man they always needed. In the future, this strategy may well be called Trumpism. For now, American journalists call it populism.

Trump took positions that appealed to many thinking Americans who wanted, for instance, stronger border enforcement, an “America First” foreign policy and trade agreements, “constitutionalist” judges, and deregulation and tax cuts. Trump campaigned on these policies, while Hillary’s campaign focused on the evil of the Orange Man Bad (and his supporters).

Trump's campaign rhetoric so often flirts with incitements to violence that most of those comments scarcely even make the news. We are long accustomed to him denouncing his opponents or his judges or members of the news media as traitors. He must come up with something truly striking and original—for example, calling for the chairman of the joint chiefs to be executed for treason—to make us take notice.

Donald Trump, the man who defied every political rule and prevailed to win his party’s nomination, last week took on perhaps the most sacred political rule of all: Never attack a Gold Star family. Not just because it alienates a vital constituency but because it reveals a shocking absence of elementary decency and of natural empathy for the most profound of human sorrows — parental grief. Why did Trump do it? It wasn’t a mistake. It was a revelation. It’s that he can’t help himself. His governing rule in life is to strike back when attacked, disrespected or even slighted. To understand Trump, you have to grasp the General Theory: He judges every action, every pronouncement, every person by a single criterion — whether or not it/he is “nice” to Trump.

Trump is an ignorant demagogue who traffics in racist and misogynistic slurs and crazy conspiracy theories. He champions protectionism and isolationism — the policies that brought us the Great Depression and World War II. He wants to undertake a police-state roundup of undocumented immigrants and to bar Muslims from coming to this country. He encourages his followers to assault protesters and threatens to sue or smear critics. He would abandon Japan and South Korea and break up the most successful alliance in history — . But he has kind words for tyrants such as Vladimir Putin. There has never been a major party nominee in U.S. history as unqualified for the presidency. The risk of Trump winning, however remote, represents the biggest national security threat that the United States faces today.

I know some of you may disagree with me. The answer to Donald Trump, you may say, is to do just the opposite of Donald Trump. Being noble, being kind, being classy. And I am all for each of those things, but tonight, with our country under an unprecedented assault by a con man who fights only for himself and degrades the vulnerable and the powerless and regular hardworking people day in and day out, I believe that we must honestly ask ourselves ... [in the Democratic] party whether those we fight for can afford our gentleness.

As a general matter, the left's favorite three lines of attack are (1) you're stupid; (2) you're mean; (3) you're corrupt. Sarah Palin is supposedly stupid; Mitt Romney is supposedly mean; Dick Cheney is supposedly corrupt. Take away those lines of attack and watch the discomfort set in.

Trump took the elements of an independent candidacy — the lack of clear ideology, the name recognition of a national celebrity and the personal fortune needed to fund a presidential campaign — and then did what no one seemed to have thought of before. He staged a hostile takeover of an existing major party. He had the best of both worlds, an outsider candidacy with crosscutting ideological appeal and the platform of a major party to wage the general election. By the time he had finished, he had taken down two political dynasties: the Bush dynasty in the primaries and the Clinton dynasty in the general election.

The masses demand a fighting President, and that means you’ve got to offend somebody, because the way I see it, a strong offense is the best attack. So what can you offend? That’s an easy one. Offend the other candidates, because they’ll be too busy talking to hear you, and besides, they might not vote for you anyway.

President Donald Trump's remarks which described the U.S. option through straightforward expression of his will have convinced me, rather than frightening or stopping me, that the path I chose is correct and that it is the one I have to follow to the last. [...] Action is the best option in treating the dotard who, hard of hearing, is uttering only what he wants to say. [...] I am now thinking hard about what response he could have expected when he allowed such eccentric words to trip off his tongue. Whatever Trump might have expected, he will face results beyond his expectation. I will surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged U.S. dotard with fire.

Trump may be vulgar, Trump may be abrasive, but in terms of racism, corruption, and destruction, he is Mr Reagan's true heir. Trump's Republican Party is what it has been at least since the 1980s, only more so.

If we go by verbal measures, Donald Trump is certainly the more divisive of the two if only because of his tongue-lashing of Latinos, Muslims and even Republican Party grandees. But if action is the measure, Hillary Clinton might be the more divisive. The reason is that, rightly or wrongly, she is seen as the continuator of Obama’s tenure; many Americans see her presidency as a third term for the incumbent. Another President Clinton might mean another four years of internecine feuds in the United States. And that would be bad for America and bad for the world, including the Middle East.

Our record hasn’t been perfect. When we have pushed the agenda of the Christian right, we have seemed to exclude people who don’t share our religious beliefs. We have seemed unfriendly to gay Americans. But our long history has been to uphold the dignity of all of God’s people and to build a country welcoming to all. Now comes Trump, who is exactly what Republicans are not, who is exactly what we have opposed in our 160-year history. We are the party of the Union, and he is the most divisive president in our history. There hasn’t been a more divisive person in national politics since George Wallace.