Resisting Trump
Trump is President, the Republicans are in control of Congress. There is a vacant seat on SCOTUS. Long live the Constitution! What should progressives, liberals, leftists do now?
1. Confess before God and each other that we are not the Chosen Party; other parties can win.
2. Confess before God and each other that our views are not the word of god.
3. Humble ourselves and once again pay heed to working people.
4. Organize, organize, organize
The vast majority of Americans are working class, and the working class is in trouble. Uppermost on their minds is very basic stuff: a job, an income, a secure home, a community of like kind, decent schools, an acceptable cultural and economic future for their children--stuff that most people want.
Whether the local school has a separate toilet for the 1 transsexual the ACLU is helping, whether gays get married or not, whether upper-middle class and women break the higher glass ceilings, whether adult students in college are warned about trigger words, whether or not legal or illegal immigrants are "welcomed and celebrated", and so on are not their concerns.
Many in the working class voted for Trump because the liberals were speaking words which did not come close to addressing their concerns. Indeed, this "basket of deplorables" recognized the not-well-disguised hostility of many liberals and progressives towards them.
Wall Street and the academic elites isn't the natural home of Democratic liberal, progressivism. It might not even "Main Street" of the upper middle class. It's really the thousands and thousands of boring city and suburban blocks of working people's undistinguished housing slowly sinking in an economic swamp of diminished opportunity amid soaring upper class income.
IF progressives what to recover, recoup the losses which the current conservative regime promised and is delivering on, it's back to the states where Congressional Power comes from. The Republicans have been written off in the past. They recovered by organizing at the state level, capturing state legislatures small district by district, and getting control of census-based redistricting. Liberals, Progressives, and Democrats now have to do the same thing. This will take several election cycles -- the earliest this can be accomplished would be 2020 to 2022 (bearing in mind, the next census is in 2020).
Abandoning Wall Street, though, won't take that long. IF we are fast learners, we can win back working people by actually aligning our policies with working people's interests and concerns by 2018 and 2020.
1. Confess before God and each other that we are not the Chosen Party; other parties can win.
2. Confess before God and each other that our views are not the word of god.
3. Humble ourselves and once again pay heed to working people.
4. Organize, organize, organize
The vast majority of Americans are working class, and the working class is in trouble. Uppermost on their minds is very basic stuff: a job, an income, a secure home, a community of like kind, decent schools, an acceptable cultural and economic future for their children--stuff that most people want.
Whether the local school has a separate toilet for the 1 transsexual the ACLU is helping, whether gays get married or not, whether upper-middle class and women break the higher glass ceilings, whether adult students in college are warned about trigger words, whether or not legal or illegal immigrants are "welcomed and celebrated", and so on are not their concerns.
Many in the working class voted for Trump because the liberals were speaking words which did not come close to addressing their concerns. Indeed, this "basket of deplorables" recognized the not-well-disguised hostility of many liberals and progressives towards them.
Wall Street and the academic elites isn't the natural home of Democratic liberal, progressivism. It might not even "Main Street" of the upper middle class. It's really the thousands and thousands of boring city and suburban blocks of working people's undistinguished housing slowly sinking in an economic swamp of diminished opportunity amid soaring upper class income.
IF progressives what to recover, recoup the losses which the current conservative regime promised and is delivering on, it's back to the states where Congressional Power comes from. The Republicans have been written off in the past. They recovered by organizing at the state level, capturing state legislatures small district by district, and getting control of census-based redistricting. Liberals, Progressives, and Democrats now have to do the same thing. This will take several election cycles -- the earliest this can be accomplished would be 2020 to 2022 (bearing in mind, the next census is in 2020).
Abandoning Wall Street, though, won't take that long. IF we are fast learners, we can win back working people by actually aligning our policies with working people's interests and concerns by 2018 and 2020.
Comments (104)
Conservatives have for years been branding themselves as the "real Americans," exalting the virtue of "small town values" (whatever those might be) over "big city values," (or "New York values," as Ted Cruz put it, in what one might reasonably suspect was an anti-Semitic dog whistle). Mike Huckabee drew a distinction between "Bubbas" (i.e. proud Southerners and Midwesterners) and those in the "bubble" (i.e. the coastal elites).
So, why is only one side of the culture war allowed to have contempt for the other?
There are strongly conservative Catholic legislature districts in Minnesota, for instance, that are solidly Republican because they address the intensely pro-family concerns of conservative Catholics far better than Democrats do. I would NOT suggest that progressives try to form up around this kind of conservative agenda. We should not, can not. Not because we are anti-family, but we just don't share most of the other planks in the conservative Catholic agenda.
Conservatives have natural constituencies too, and their core members aren't the obvious place to begin re-building progressive parties.
You can put this star in my chart:
So, why do you find Hillary Clinton so detestable?
She clearly is a psychopath like most of the peole who work and worked for this government, you probably are a smart guy since you are on this forum, so i really don't understand how you can get fooled by his lies, she look fake, she is fake. Obama is as fake as her and all other politics too, they made war everywhere for their own interest and destructed your coutry as much as they could, look how the world is right now and who is responsible, ofc its not just them, its all politics of rich countries, but for sure clinton is one of the worst, she is directly or not involved in absolutely every recent war , and what about the social and economic side of his politic ( i mean her and his political party ) .
Never mind.
Here in Oz, there's a minor party that admires Trump, and stands on a platform basically comprising conservative politics PLUS avowed hatred of Islam - similar to his (one of their people got invited to the Inauguration but was too busy to attend, like a lot of folks, apparently.)
A lot of people are shocked that a party whose platform is seen as racist is doing so well, but my view is simple: this politician (an earnest, cunning and unintelligent redhead called Hanson) represents The Past - the good old days, when everyone owned a home, had a job, a dog, and a clothesline. Australia wasn't multicultural - well, except for the Western Suburbs of Sydney, where all the dagos (Italians and Greeks) lived. So, Vote for Pauline Hanson's One Nation, and go back to how things were! Return to the Past, where everything was safe, certain and secure! It's easy! All you have to do is believe!
People are scared of the future, they're scared of 'innovation', they're scared of Islamic terrorism, they're scared by the fact that everything around them is changing so quickly, their bed won't be in the same place when they go to lie down on it.
In the Old Stone Age, it took more than a hundred thousand years to slightly improve a stone ax. Now the amount of recorded knowledge is tripling every month (or something) and there are more people alive at once, than have ever lived. So those who promise 'the good old days' are on an easy winner. (Never mind that they too are going to be sucked into the vortex.)
Clotheslines... natural, ecological, inexpensive, organic, hygienic, convenient, energy efficient, laborious...
Quoting Wayfarer
But, as William Faulkner said, ""The past is never dead. ... Actually, it's not even past." We think, "Oh, that was back in the 1950s, or the 1920s, or the 11th century. It's passed and past. It's gone, we don't live there, we don't go there to visit.
But, not true.
And as Otto Bettmann described the past -- compare today's auto exhaust to the 100,000 horses in 1900 New York that dropped 1.3 billion pounds of solid manure a year on the streets and dressed it with 88 million gallons of urine, while all the wagon and cart wheels turned it to a rich brown slurry. In the winter, of course, it froze, and in the spring... it thawed.
All I'm saying is, despite all the rationalisations, I'm sure a large part of the appeal of the Australian party I mentioned (One Nation, often parodied as One Notion), is basically nostalgia and fear of the future (including globalisation, muticulturalism, and the erosion of traditional values.) There was a strong element of that in Trump's campaign also, not that anyone can make any sense out of Trump, really.
What!
Have you heard of George Soros? The top donors to the Democrats at the election were:
University of California $1,945,782
Alphabet Inc $1,576,067
EMILY's List $1,362,696
JPMorgan Chase & Co $1,172,825
Citigroup Inc $1,052,604
Goldman Sachs $1,050,821
Microsoft Corp $1,043,660
DLA Piper $1,027,670
Morgan Stanley $1,014,906
Time Warner $974,069
Harvard University $951,049
US Government $850,539
Skadden, Arps et al $842,393
Stanford University $775,885
US Dept of State $769,921
Columbia University $749,070
New York University $714,374
Kirkland & Ellis $705,744
Apple Inc $700,682 $700,682
Comcast Corp $690,510 $680,510
Hedge Funds donated $123,000,000 to Clinton.
Hedge Funds donated $19,000 to Trump.
I'm sorry, but Wall St and the academic elites ARE the Democratic Liberal establishment!
http://observer.com/2016/02/why-wall-street-gives-hillary-clinton-millions-of-dollars/
You mask yourself as a social conservative, but the truth is you are a liberal and progressive through and through. You don't want to talk about social conservatism using the excuse they are "hot button topics" because you're not a social conservative at all - you're a liberal. At least have the shame and decency to admit that.
Yeah guys, you are making a difference, but it's not a good one. When the left loses even more seats in the mid-terms, are you going to protest some more in the hopes that you can shed yourself of every liberal in Congress other than a few districts in Massachusetts, New York, and California?
The Dems didn't lose the election, they won the popular vote by a margin wider than most historical presidential elections. The argument that they did not listen to their grass roots is mistaken. They lost in the states where the Electoral votes counted the most. They were out played, out strategized, by the Republican political machine.
The Dems need to elect a party leader that can unify their party not a political crony like Debbie W Shultz. Right now the Dems are trying to decide who will lead the party. The two main contenders are championed by different sides of the party, Senator Keith Ellison by Bernie and Labor Secretary Tom Perez by Hillary. The party's decision will be made in Atlanta in a couple of weeks, 2/23-2/25.
There isn't much of a difference in policy between these two contenders, but the party's decision, I think will help determine whether they have a shot at overturning Trump in 2020. Hillary's choice will keep the status quo, and it will continue to lose major elections, in my opinion. If Bernie's choice wins then I think the party will have at least a chance at avoiding cronyism and may have the possibility of developing a strong challenger to Trump.
I don't think the Dems ought to oppose Trump's choice for Supreme Court Justice on the basis of their own impotence as a party, that's ludicrous. Scalia was a conservative and Trump's nominee is a conservative. If the Dems want to oppose him, let them oppose him and justify it on the grounds that he is the wrong person for the job and not some sort of tit for tat inanity.
The Dems need to move past their failures, not wallow in them. The only way to deal with Trump is to keep him (personally) and his policies in court continually over the next 4 years. So far that does not seem to be a problem and it appears as thought millions upon millions of dollars are being funneled into legal challenges. The ACLU raised more than 24 million dollars over the first weekend of Trump's Presidency.
There's a deep irony here. Of all those millions of votes cast, there's only a few, "strategic" votes which make the difference between who wins and loses. Many people vote religiously for their party, believing every vote counts. I must vote, I must do my part to keep my democracy strong. These are not the strategic votes. The strategic votes are the people out there who believe that it doesn't really matter whether I vote or not, or who I vote for, I'm just one vote, and one vote really makes no difference. Isn't it ironic, that the people who truly believe that their vote really makes no difference to the outcome, are the ones who actually make a difference.
Right, and the Falcons didn't lose the championship because they cumulatively outscored their opponents throughout the playoffs. And we should probably go back behind every Congressional decision to be sure that the representative majorities were equivalent to the population majorities. And while we're at it, let's throw out every Prime Minister because they were appointed by a hodgepodge of representatives and they didn't even get a single popular vote.
Or, we could say, guess what, the Democrats lost the election, fair and square. I know, I know, they would have won if this were the case and that were the case, but it wasn't, so they didn't. If you really want to know how to lose any support from those who might be inclined to come over to your side, keep being a poor loser. How about getting up, dusting yourself off, admitting you were bested, and standing up to fight the next fight. That's what people do who weren't raised on participation trophies and have actually had to lose at some point in their lives prior to reaching voting age.
And, no, it was not the Republican machine that secured Trump anything. The Republican machine hated Trump, did everything it could to block Trump, and is now trying to figure out how to deal with Trump. What won the election was Trump in all his absurd blazing glory. It was his money, his celebrity, and his saying things like what I'm saying that won him the election. The liberals cannot seem to appreciate that when they have these life changing, emotionally charged moments where they march, make really clever speeches, and condemn whatever it is they condemn, the rest of the nation is rolling their eyes at them.
I'm surprised about your first item -- not that they supported a Democrat, but that they made a nearly 2 million dollar donation to anyone. I wouldn't think it would be in their charter to make political contributions to anyone.
The top 1% on Wall Street and wherever else they hang out financially support both political parties. Why is that? Because the two political parties are not highly dissimilar and the 1% has influence over whoever is in office.
The Democrats may regulate more than Republicans, but neither political party has the slightest interest in changing, challenging, or corralling the oligarchy.
The electoral college has been in the Constitution since the getgo, and if you lose there, you lose the election, period. Whatever problems the electoral college solved, it creates the anomaly of popular vote winners who are not elected.
There are pieces of the Constitution which should be removed and parts that are missing, but the worst thing we could do (just guessing) is have a constitutional convention and rewrite it. Who knows what sort of horror show we would end up with.
Absolutely. But... can the leadership at the national level do that? It is as important for the Democrats (or any other party) to be active and vital at the state level too -- that's critical for staying in power. Ultimately, the states are where the political talent comes from (or first, in legislature districts, then congressional districts).
Quoting Cavacava
Court or jail, which ever comes first.
Don't agree with this at all. The Republican rank and file who comprise their political machine got behind Trump after the convention. The Republican Party gets out the vote, as far as I can figure out it has always been able to get out the vote because Republicans are more orderly, more top down than the Democrats.
I remember being in Rotary a long time ago listening to the Republicans talk about their meetings and how remarkably differential they were to their leaders. The Republican's ability to marshal their members is, to my mind, their key to winning.
But of course the topic is how to resist Trump, he is clearly the President. And, I think Dems need to change party leadership if they want to stand a chance of defeating him in 4 years.
They need to mimic what the Republicans did, which started with gerrymandering their way to optimal Congressional districts. The Dems need to legally challenge the lopsided nature of many of these districts.
It's going to be an uphill march since Republicans now dominate state government, with 32 legislatures and 33 governors.
But, the Dems need a leader who will bring them together and I think they may have a hard time finding one regardless of whom they choose in Atlanta. Either choice will divide the party.
This IS important. The earlier Daley Democratic organization in Chicago ["Vote early and vote often"] was very good at delivering votes. This is done at the bottom, precinct level. A lot of places have no precinct level organization capable of doing any such thing.
Right, well that fixing district boundaries only happens every 10 years, so it's a long-term strategy--and one the Democrats have not paid enough attention to. You have to be IN POWER when the census reports are available for redistricting. Then you can do things like slice off pieces of your opponents electorate and put them with your own overwhelming majority. The Republicans can also challenge boundaries in courts, and sometimes the courts end up drawing the boundaries.
I generally vote Labour, which is centre-left, but sometimes Liberal, which is centre-right. I believe in public education, public health, social equity, free trade, scientific progress and action on climate change. I don't believe in open borders, I oppose gun ownership, and I support traditional marriage. That last point marks me forever as a hard-right conservative, I'm told.
What won the election was a demagogue:
(But of course, he was pushed over the line by folks who don't understand big words like 'demagogue', and who are distrustful of those who do.)
Find one thing in that encyclopedia definition which is not descriptive of Donald Trump. The attacks against media ('the media are all liars') and the judiciary ('so-called judges') are typical of the pattern. However, I think the indications are that the safeguards that the founders built into the constitution to protect the nation against demagogues will ultimately hold, albeit not before Trump has done enormous damage to the social fabric, the economy, and the environment.
Economic Policy- What will they do? They need to argue for more demand-side economic policies. Without that, any policy the Dems put out is for nothing.
Security- What are the plans to deal with the drug trade? What the plans to deal with terrorism? This later one is especially important. There is no way to assess the effectiveness of any anti-terrorist policy because we would need to be able to look at the total rate of actual attacks versus attacks prevented. Short of the Muslim terrorist equivalent of Red Dawn, we are not going to know how effective Trump's terrorist policies are going to be. Obviously, that was hyperbole, but there would need to be enough terrorist attacks that greatly surpassed those under Obama in scope and number to even have an angle with this one.
Demographics- What group or demographic can the Dems appeal to, like Donald Trump appealed to the general working class?
Media- This is the big problem. The Dems need direct media coverage of specific hot-button topics on their platform. I do not recall any of that during the general election. I recall a few ads, but nothing that seriously combated the very direct and simple policies of Trump: secure borders, stricter immigration enforcement to combat terrorism, protectionist trade policies to support manufacturing. The Dems need very specific policies like this.
“We have a judiciary that has taken far too much power and become in many cases a supreme branch of government. Our opponents, the media and the whole world will soon see as we begin to take further actions, that the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned.”
To which Trump responded :
“Congratulations Stephen Miller - on representing me this morning on the various Sunday morning shows. Great job!”
Recall that 'protecting security' and 'ensuring national stability' is generally the first step that autocracies take in suspending constitutional protections.
See the writing on the wall while you still have the chance.
I'm curious about how your Buddhism bears on the issue. It just seems that it would allow you to be a little more philosophical about the whole thing.
Trump has distinct tendencies toward demagoguery either as a matter of style or substance, or both. But... He didn't arrived at an 'unprepared' White House, however.
Executive power has been growing for decades at the expense of the legislative branch. The US has spent trillions of dollars and lost maybe 60-70,000 soldiers and killed millions of people, since 1960 on wars for which their was no congressional authorization (save financing). The executive branch has behaved either imperiously, deviously, or both under Johnson (Gulf of Tonkin incident) through Bush (Iraq's WMDs), to Trump.
The Via Demagogia was built before Trump decided to run for President. Had Hillary Clinton won, she also would have used the expansive presidential powers available to her. Would she have used them demagogically? Her style and substance do not seem to be so constituted.
What should cause more concern than a hothead screaming about the courts is a court that able to divine every contemporary moral principle from an 18th century document and impose that morality on a supposedly democratic body.
What is Stalinesque about this?
He was very forceful, doing a full-court press on behalf of his policies. Bear in mind, though, that he had the "oil trust" (like Standard Oil") as a principle opponent, and they didn't play nice either.
What should cause more concern is a particular hothead appointing members to the court to divine contemporary moral principle from an 18th century document in the way preferred by said hotheaded devil and his running dog lackeys (or managers).
He took over the Louisiana legislature. There's a lot to admire about him, but he became a dictator through ruthless attacks on anyone who opposed him. I don't know who nicknamed him The American Stalin, but it fits.
So, he fired relatives of people who disagreed with him. Were they political appointees serving at the "pleasure" of the executive? Or were they civil service?
Stalin is on par with Hitler, Mao, et al. Are you really grouping Huey The Kingfisher Long with that crowd? He was, after all, the governor of a hick state which was about as backwards as any in the south.
He was a populist who (correctly) thought that Roosevelt didn't intend to distribute much wealth. Should he have been something else? Populism has a bad name, of late.
Hitler, Mao, and Stalin are names we stamp on the worst things (in terms of scale) the human species has ever done to itself. Contrary to what many in the world seem to think, the USA has never produced anyone to compare with them.
Well, I don't think I've been particularly hyperbolic about it. What I said was the Trump fits the definition of 'demagogue', and nobody has taken issue with that. Consequently, I think his presidency is a threat to civic freedoms, the economy, and the environment; it puzzles me that there are people who can't see that threat. (But I'm no model of philosophic detachment, as I am frequently reminded by my wife.)
I hadn't heard of Huey Long, but he seems on the basis of his Wikipedia entry to have been a far more substantial politician than the Donald. And it's a matter of debate whether he was a demagogue.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Do you think any of the other candidates in the 2016 campaign fit the description of 'demagogue'?
Quoting Hanover
I don't agree; the constant refrain that 'the courts have been politicised' is another way to undermine the legitimacy of the President's opponents. By 'opponents', I don't mean the political opposition, i.e. the Democratic party, but the institutions, namely, the media, and the courts, which are supposed to act counterweights to the Executive. As I said, the pattern is to undermine faith in the courts and the press, and I think the motivation is basically dictatorial; Trump can't abide the idea that he might actually be wrong about something, so the notion of 'principled opposition' is beyond him.
Quoting Hanover
The fact that 'the hothead' is also the President, is quite a cause for concern, I would have thought.
Andrew Jackson, telling the Chief Justice to enforce his order.
Demagogues don't generally threaten anything. They gain support by making promises, discover that they don't actually have the power to change anything, resort to race-baiting to explain their failures, and retire to obscurity. That's how American demagogues usually do it.
Civic freedoms, the economy, and the environment were afflicted prior to Trump's recent expedition. It wasn't clear what actions we should be taking about any of those things.
Well how do you put a little detachment into your life?
They're not usually given the chance - up till now. We'll see how this one goes.
Quoting Mongrel
By not taking myself too seriously, and by knowing we're all in the same boat. ;-)
I don't know. Sanders? No. Most of the Republican candidates? No, probably not. Cruz?
I got it for cheap (hard bound) from AbeBooks.com. AbeBooks is an ordering service for used book stores all over. Thanks for the recommendation. I saw a PBS American history program devoted to Long, but that was many years ago.
Justin Trudeau's handshake with Donald Trump the 'biggest display of dominance in the history of Canada'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/13/justin-trudeau-becomes-latest-world-leader-brave-trumps-awkward/?WT.mc_id=tmg_share_tw
Obama demonstrated his menace by saving the auto industry, introducing affordable health care, attempting to disentangle America from the consequences of his predecessor's reckless war-mongering, and presiding over a modest but real recovery from the most dire economic emergency since the Great Depression.
Whereas the incumbent demonstrates his clear mastery of public policy by making mendacious public statements via Twitter, engaging in conspiracy theories, obsessing about his public image and the business affairs of his immediate family, having one of his first Executive Orders suspended by the Courts, and having his Security Adviser resign after 3 weeks in the job for acts tantamount to treason.
Same.
Quoting Wayfarer
Same.
Quoting Wayfarer
Same.
Quoting Wayfarer
Nope! X-)
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes!
Quoting Wayfarer
Nope! Guns are good, how else are folks gonna defend themselves?
Quoting Wayfarer
Same. Only that you're not very vocal about it...
Quoting Wayfarer
Yep.
Is that really puzzling? We are talking about a group of people with a very limited and ignorant view of the world.
Only its not shit, but plutonium. The problem with this type of thinking is that while we dribble about the political show taking place, we fail to take into account the policies implemented by the real powers of the conservative party. George Bush Jr. was a colossal moron, but his foreign policies, military engagements and other major failures during his presidency had and continue to have catastrophic consequences at global level. Trump is another conservative puppet but the fact remains that in the space of four years a lot can happen. The situation in the Middle East is no joke the clown can make.
As Blackadder would say, twenty-four hours is a long time in politics.
(Y) (Y) (Y)
I am sorry, which party are you slamming here?
Yours or mine? Pot or Kettle?
Quoting Agustino
Me too (from page 20).
Your "traditions" are actually progressive. How dare you redefine marriage as being between a man and a woman only?!
Are you purposefully playing dumb? :P
I went to page 20 and saw talk about the practices, rituals and traditions of savages there.
Yeah, she only won by two (and I got her percentage on the nose, incidentally). Donald got about 2 more than I bargained for (a gift from the FBI), which made the difference. So, I was out by a cumulative two points, which was always going to be either nothing or everything in the end. At least I stuck my neck out and made a specific prediction. Anyway, this is happening before your eyes. If you're incapable of being embarrassed by it, so much the worse for you. Judging by Trump's favourability ratings, most Americans aren't.
Is there much more you can do with a chimpanzee that's rampaging through your house than throw him some bananas and hope he eventually gets bored? I don't know. What kind of resistance do you suggest?
The word "savage" doesn't appear in there at all.
Well before the first primary, the pundits were laughing at the Trump clown show, certain it would fade away and die, and now he's the President. Nope, he's not going away, and all the gaffes that everyone loves to point out have no impact on him. He's the energizer bunny and the liberal ridicule fuels him even more.
Yes, the most powerful country in the world is now being run by a frantic rodent, and there's no point trying to stop him - which was kind of my point.
Bush gave Chrysler and GM 17.6 billion in TARP money. I'd say that saved them as much an anything, nothwithstanding the fact that Ford received no assistance. So why you offer all this Obama I'm not sure, but anyway, Trump is very strongly pro-American manufacturing, so you should be able to get aboard that.
Obamacare is not at all affordable. I'm not sure where you've been living, but the middle class has seen their costs for healthcare skyrocket. Even Hillary admitted Obamacare needed to be repaired. It's not at all doing what it intended to do: make healthcare affordable. What it did was make it theoretically available for those previously excluded for pre-existing conditions, but it hardly matters if someone qualifies but still can't afford it.
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Obama invaded 3 new countries under his regime: Yemen, Libya, and Syria.
Obama can be given no more credit than Bush (who initiated TARP) and the Fed and I'm sure all sorts of other entities for the recovery.
In terms of what Trump has done, well, it's not been a month yet, so it's hard to know.
And yes, people were saying Obama was the Antichrist. Here's the difference: at the time, I would have assumed that a rational person would realize that Obama isn't really the Antichrist. And now I would assume that a rational person would understand why, for instance, women object to Trump.
Throw me a bone, here, Hanover. You're a fairly rational person.
Don't forget Pakistan. At least, I don't think Bush had already extended military action into Pakistan.
There are those who argued that Obamacare was passed under the expectation of failure so that when it did fail, it would force a more comprehensive public healthcare plan to then pass. The failure part did come to pass, but the problem is that a Republican won the presidency and he's more interested in scrapping it than in fixing it (as Clinton wanted)
Quoting MongrelI really don't know there's any consistency with the liberal women's vote other than that they consistently vote liberally. There are plenty of misogynists and sexists on the left who were given a pass (Bill Clinton, the Kennedys, Weiner). Quoting Mongrel
I really do agree with you that Trump is a buffoon. I don't see him as any more or less dangerous than any other candidate for President though. From my perspective, it's all entertaining theater. At the end of 4 years, I'll stand up, brush the popcorn off my lap, and go watch the next show.
Right. Obama actually dropped SEALS into a sovereign nation to arrest a criminal. I'm not sure how the US would have reacted if Pakistan dropped soldiers in an American city in the name of Pakistan national security.
I agree with that. The fact that he named his inauguration day a national day of patriotism kind of makes me feel like I slipped into an alternate reality, but I don't think the US is about to turn into Nazi Germany. Not that I don't think it could.. of course it could.
Recall the hysteria at the Republican National Convention over 'lying Hillary's' email server and the masses screaming 'Lock Her Up!' Recall Trump saying that when he gained power he would see to it she was jailed on account of it.
I don't know whether it's the hypocrisy, the mendacity, or the negligence that smells worst, but overall, there's a stench.
Is it the right who felt this way, or is it the white supremacists who felt this way?
Who do you think will stand against Trump, it can't be too early to speculate since they will start running in earnest in 2 more years (sooner if we get lucky) and the Dems will sure to need as much lead time as possible.
I cannot see Elizabeth Warren, she is too polarizing. Biden, but I doubt it. Michelle Obama would be a great choice but the same thing that happened to Hillary would happen to her, and I think she is too smart to run. Kaine? no. Nancy Pelosi is perhaps the most effective vocal critic of Trump right now, but she is like 75 years old. Chuck Schumer nah, too NY. (Kanye of course a long shot, but long shots come in :-d , which tends to upset everyone. He's got too much Chi-town flow)
I think someone who is or was a governor would be a good contender for the Dems. Jerry Brown, unfortunately is too old. Kaine? no, I was not impressed by his VP run. So how about Gov John Hickenlooper of Colorado...he would get my vote, but he maybe perceived as too liberal, unless Trumpster really fucks up, in which case my guess, the conservatives will hibernate in 2020.
I think it is too early to worry about that, because...
1) The mid-term elections are less than 2 years away, and the democrats need to worry about those. This is state level work, mostly, but the next 5 congressional elections will determine more about the future than the next presidential election (or it won't).
2) There are no obvious candidates today. Everybody you listed you thought was too old, too polarizing, or too liberal. I don't think Elizabeth Warren is too polarizing, and Michele Obama should definitely never run. (I'm opposed to multiples of Bushes, Clintons, and Obamas running for president.)
3) ONE person will rise to the top on the basis of their money, their personal charm, their dominance of the party, their ability to organize their multi-million-person constituency, and even a few good ideas, if they happen to have any, which they may not. It will probably be clear by 01-1-2019 who that person is--for both parties.
That said, there are certain things the party and the prospective candidate should and should not be:
They should not be focused on any of the issues belonging "the culture wars"; racial or gender equity in the professions--all the usual stuff Democrats talk about. They can afford to not put this stuff front and center. Instead they should be focused on the economic reality which 50% to 60% (give or take a decile) live with: Stagnant wages, a declining standard of living, insecurity in employment, no likelihood of a remotely satisfactory retirement from work, declining ability to obtain adequate health care, increasing debt, and so on. These economic and work-life issues supersede race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and such, as well as transgender bathrooms, gay marriage, the glass ceiling in the executive suites, welcoming and celebrating immigrants, and so on.
Focus on the economy that the vast majority of people live and die in, not the economy of the upper middle class, lower upper class, and the rich--on up to the handful of persons who control 50% of the world's wealth.
As a Clinton once said, "It's the economy, stupid."
--
Quoting Bitter Crank
With you 100% - same issues here in Oz.
Trump is great...
That is the America the right feels was abandoned by Obama. Your questioning this might have to do with Obama's race was such a non sequitur that I just took it as a standard liberal ad hom diversion.
Isn't it ironic then that Trump is uncomfortable (and more vocally so) with American exceptionalism, too?
Trump is a strong mix between both parties and that is what I think is so confusing. He took pages from both the Republican playbook and pages from the Democrat playbook and THAT is what I think makes the Democrats so uneasy. Because he is such a 'mixer', politicians don't get what makes him up but the common man has seen it, voted for it and are expecting those campaign promises to be fulfilled to the best of his ability.
Politico National Tracking poll 2/15-2/17
http://www.politico.com/f/?id=0000015a-418d-d693-abda-e7cdd76e0000
Note Pocahontas.
What you refer to here, is Obama's ideology. And when we look at ideologies, what we find in general, is that the policies of the left are not liked by the right, and vise versa. So government carries on, and the two sides dislike each other's policies. The fact that we dislike the policies that the other side puts in place, does not generally produce the feeling within us, that these policies are a threat to the country.
In the case of Trump, it is not the person's policies which are seen as a threat, but the person's character, so it is the person himself which appears to be a threat to the country. Look at what AWAT says above, "Trump is a strong mix between both parties and that is what I think is so confusing." So it's not his rightist or leftist ideology which people feel threatened by, it is his lack of ideology, and personal character, moral integrity, which people dislike (and this is evident from the nature of the demonstrations against him) and therefore they feel he is a threat to the country.
So you need to distinguish between a person's ideology, and the person himself, and realize that what is seen in Trump as a threat to the country is the person himself. And if you want to make this comparison with Obama, which you have brought up, what is it about Obama, the person, which people dislike, and thought of as a threat to the country?
Hiya MU, you can call me Tiff if you would like, it is the nickname most know me by and thank you for quoting me. However, I don't for a minute think that President Trump lacks ideology: which is to put fuel into the engine of the USA's working man and no I do not mean handouts but rather less regulations and more investment in our own infrastructure. Continuing onto judgement of his "personal character and moral integrity" that is not something that I dislike, in fact I believe he has a strong moral compass, stronger than most elected officials in our Congress and his personal character? Every leader has both flaws and strengths, President Trump has both as well.
Hi Tiff, as much as I am not one to make hasty judgements about another person's character, especially someone whom I have no personal relationship with, many other people are not nearly so constrained in this way. The point I was making to Hanover, is that what I've seen in relation to the dislike for President Trump, is that it is generally speaking, a dislike for the person, rather than a dislike of the person's ideology. What Hanover has indicated since he's tried to make a comparison with President Obama, is a dislike of the person's ideology. Do you agree with my assessment of this difference?
So I thought I'd indicate to Hanover, that if we are to engage in such a comparison, we should compare apples to apples, instead of apples to oranges. And if we are starting with a dislike for President Trump, this clearly seems to be more of a dislike for the person rather than a dislike of the ideology. Then if we move to look at the dislike for President Obama, in comparison, we should look at the dislike of the person rather than the dislike of the ideology.
It's all spin, really. The Trump slogan is "Make America Great Again." This is a lament. America was great, ought to be great, has the potential to be great, but fuckers like Obama have reduced our standing in the world. Exceptionalism, at least as I define it, is a moral imperative that those who have been given much are required to give much. That is, the US is exceptional in the sense of its resources, its history being founded on the principle of liberty, and because of its people's drive to make the world a better place. However, it's acting ordinary, neither exceptional nor great. So I really don't see this as a departure at all from the concept of American exceptionalism.
What was it that you wanted me to notice about Elizabeth Warren's items in the survey? It didn't seem all that remarkable. And 16% had not heard of Elizabeth Warren, but only 4% had not heard of William Howard Taft? What kind of group were they surveying?
I mean, really -- Taft, Hoover, Coolidge, and Wilson? Who, these days, has any opinions about these three -- except people who are hard-core American political history aficionados?
'In a speech on the Syria crisis on September 10, 2013, Obama said: "however, when, with modest effort and risk, we can stop children from being gassed to death, and thereby make our kids safer over the long run, I believe we should act... That is what makes America different. That is what makes us exceptional."[105] In a direct response the next day, Russian President Vladimir Putin published an op-ed in The New York Times, articulating that "It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation... We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord's blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal."[106] Putin’s views were soon endorsed by future president Donald Trump who declared the op-ed “a masterpiece” to British television personality Piers Morgan: “You think of the term as being beautiful, but all of sudden you say, what if you’re in Germany or Japan or any one of 100 different countries? You are not going to like that term,” Trump said. “It is very insulting, and Putin put it to him about that.”[107] Some left-wing American commentators agree with Trump’s stance; one example is Sherle Schwenninger, a co-founder of the New America Foundation, who in a 2016 Nation magazine symposium remarked that “Trump would redefine American exceptionalism by bringing an end to the neoliberal/neoconservative globalist project that Hillary Clinton and many Republicans support”.[108]'
No interest in improving it then? If politics is just show then you don't have a democracy. Or is it a cynical "good enough for me" or maybe even "après moi, le déluge"?
I do care what happens after me, and I do buy into the Trump position that America has lost its way a bit and its course needs to be straightened out for future generations. Of course, I don't think Trump is at all an ideologue, nor do I think that there's anything fully consistent with anything he says or does. That is, he's not really much of anything other than a blowhard, but some of what he says sounds right sort of kind of, as opposed to the screeching dishonesty of Hillary. She's a nasty woman. I have that written across my face in solidarity with my sisters in arms because it's a badge of honor to be considered a nasty woman for some reason.
It's a strange thing that Supreme Court nominees are a partisan issue. It should be that judges just determine what the law (and Constitution) is, not what it should be, in which case whether or not you're a Democrat or a Republican or whatever shouldn't matter.
It's almost as if we expect judges to intentionally distort the facts to agree with personal views. E.g. a Democrat will try to make it seem like the Constitution forbids a state-ban on abortion and a Republican will try to make it seem like it doesn't.
Either that or we just expect that the opposition will distort the facts, because obviously our side is free from any bias.
it's human nature to interpret the law in such a way as to maximize its compatibility with one's own intentions. That is the loop hole. Who would have better knowledge of the loop holes than a judge?
But then if we admit to wanting a Democratic or Republican judge, are we admitting that the law/Constitution isn't on our side and that we need someone who will nonetheless "pretend" (or creatively interpret) that it is?
Yes, that is how it should be; but over the last several decades, the Supreme Court has gone in a much more activist direction, in many cases determining what the law should be rather than what it is, resulting in its unfortunate politicization. Even so, Republican vs. Democrat is not the issue, but whether a potential justice is more likely to interpret law vs. make law. Our societal impatience with legislative gridlock has led to the concentration of power in the other two branches - i.e., unelected bureaucrats and judges - contrary to the Founders' wise design that was intended to preclude massive national policy changes in the absence of broad public consensus.
So it is not necessarily the case, that the law either is or is not on our side, it is the case that the intent of the law cannot be determined in any absolutely definitive way. So if individuals such as you and I have certain biases, then we would prefer to have judges which have similar biases, in order that any ambiguity with respect to the intent of the law, would be interpreted in a way which is consistent with the way that we would interpret it.
Liberals pride themselves on being critical of others, so what they should do now turn their critical eye on themselves (especially the media).
From what I've seen, the Left is now imploding into vacuums of increasingly extreme delusions and spin, and the only persons listening are 'the choir' (referring to the old phrase that "they are preaching to the choir" - in this case meaning people who are already predispositioned to embrace such delusions and spin, such as social parasites, con-artists, those with delusions of power (such as running a Socialist State), and those seeking self-glorification and self-aggrandizement (and primal security) by giving away other people's wealth (just to give liberals a critical eye).