Campaign 2016 Part XII: What Have We Done To Deserve This?

[rufus]

Re: Campaign 2016 Part XII: What Have We Done To Deserve This?

2) Ayn Randian budget policies are a disaster. Post Trump I'd be surprised to see anybody openly run on a "lets cut social security so we can give more tax cuts to the rich" platform. Paul Ryan is going to be on an island with only a few think tank dead-enders on this one.

It's really even dumber than that. "We have to cut Social Security now, because at some point, maybe, 25 or 30 years from now, it won't be able to pay out full benefits. Maybe".

 

[Kepler]

Re: Campaign 2016 Part XII: What Have We Done To Deserve This?

God forbid but if any positives can be drawn from Trump's insane candidacy and capture of the GOP nomination, its these:

1) Iraq war was a bad idea and Bush's fault. Few things are more dangerous than the neo-conartist interpretation of Iraq, which is the war was all but won had we not, you know, asked the Iraqis to defend their own country for a change once Obama got into office. Even Mittens was pimping the war as a swell idea almost a decade after it was exposed as a failure during his 2012 campaign. Let this one die once and for all.

2) Ayn Randian budget policies are a disaster. Post Trump I'd be surprised to see anybody openly run on a "lets cut social security so we can give more tax cuts to the rich" platform. Paul Ryan is going to be on an island with only a few think tank dead-enders on this one.

3) All free trade pacts are great! now discredited. Trump has to share this one with Bernie, but a greater emphasis on whether losing American manufacturing jobs is worth 10 cents cheaper products at Mao Mart is now part of the discussion.

1) I hope you're right, but while Neoconservatism was the intellectual fig leaf used to justify the Iraq war, the real villains of that piece will have a seat at the table as long as we need dinosaur compost for our SUVs.

2) The Koch brothers are on that island, too, which means it will get 50% of air time for the next century. It doesn't not work, remember -- it works, all right. It works for them.

3) We're still manufacturing the same amount of stuff, just with far fewer workers. It's Player Piano. The 1% don't need armies of labor any more than armies of soldiers. They just need armies of consumers.

 

[walrus]

Re: Campaign 2016 Part XII: What Have We Done To Deserve This?

Soooo....they're going to vote against a perceived corporate sell out shill by voting for.....a corporate sell out shill who uses bankruptcy laws to erase all his debts? Huh.

Thats how much Hilary is despised by everyone not in the financial game.

 

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: Campaign 2016 Part XII: What Have We Done To Deserve This?

Thats how much Hilary is despised by everyone not in the financial game.

Yep. And besides, Celebrity Apprentice is FUN and I get a vote!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[The Sicatoka]

Re: Campaign 2016 Part XII: What Have We Done To Deserve This?

Soooo....they're going to vote against a perceived corporate sell out shill by voting for.....a corporate sell out shill who uses bankruptcy laws to erase all his debts? Huh.

You're forgetting what happened to ... Jeb! ... in the R preliminary rounds.

And you're misreading the situation.

Bernie is an anti-establishment vote (forgetting he's been in Congress how-ever long).
Trump is an anti-establishment vote.
There's the overlap.

Hillary? She is the establishment. Hillary is the general election's "Jeb!"

 

[walrus]

Re: Campaign 2016 Part XII: What Have We Done To Deserve This?

You're forgetting what happened to ... Jeb! ... in the R preliminary rounds.
"

You must admit Trump was good for something

 

[Kepler]

Re: Campaign 2016 Part XII: What Have We Done To Deserve This?

You're forgetting what happened to ... Jeb! ... in the R preliminary rounds.

And you're misreading the situation.

Bernie is an anti-establishment vote (forgetting he's been in Congress how-ever long).
Trump is an anti-establishment vote.
There's the overlap.

Hillary? She is the establishment. Hillary is the general election's "Jeb!"

This election has taught us amazing new lessons that nobody saw coming.

Lesson 1 was that the establishment is now actually toxic. Trump won and Sanders almost won, and that difference may just reflect that the sitting president is a Democrat so the Democrats are slightly less unhappy with their establishment.

Lesson 2 was that within the parties, ideas do not matter any more. Faced with a choice between 16 conservatives, GOP voters picked the one non-conservative. Meanwhile Democratic voters lined up with Bernie on every issue but picked his opponent. Within parties, ideas don't mean anything any more. Affect Is All.

What happens now is we find out whether we're all done learning or if there is a Lesson 3: party affiliation no longer matters.

I can't believe that's true. I just can't -- I'm too old. But I also didn't see Lesson 1 and Lesson 2 coming, and nobody else did either.

 

[Handyman]

Re: Campaign 2016 Part XII: What Have We Done To Deserve This?

Nobody your age saw it coming cause you were too biased against seeing it. Too many years of watching the party bosses putting the screws to the people with no recourse. Nowadays every nimrod with a phone has a voice and anyone with some discretionary funds has the ability to shift the narrative.

 

[Kepler]

Re: Campaign 2016 Part XII: What Have We Done To Deserve This?

Nobody your age saw it coming cause you were too biased against seeing it. Too many years of watching the party bosses putting the screws to the people with no recourse. Nowadays every nimrod with a phone has a voice and anyone with some discretionary funds has the ability to shift the narrative.

That is probable. Like I said, I am way too old to believe The System can be changed, leaving aside whether that change be for good or ill. I am the equivalent of an FDR-era operative at Chicago in 1968. I can't process what's going on.

 

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: Campaign 2016 Part XII: What Have We Done To Deserve This?

Nobody your age saw it coming cause you were too biased against seeing it. Too many years of watching the party bosses putting the screws to the people with no recourse. Nowadays every nimrod with a phone has a voice and anyone with some discretionary funds has the ability to shift the narrative.

I'm old and let me be the first to say that I see a Trump Presidency coming. It's not likely but there's enough of a chance that I won't be shocked in the slightest.

 

[Rover]

Re: Campaign 2016 Part XII: What Have We Done To Deserve This?

You're forgetting what happened to ... Jeb! ... in the R preliminary rounds.

And you're misreading the situation.

Bernie is an anti-establishment vote (forgetting he's been in Congress how-ever long).
Trump is an anti-establishment vote.
There's the overlap.

Hillary? She is the establishment. Hillary is the general election's "Jeb!"

I had this discussion with Kep awhile back where he was thinking Sanders could walk away with like 2/3rds of Trump supporters because they view income inequality and trade deals the same way. My response to Kep was that's great, but when you get to the solutions to income equality, the two bases of voters are incompatible. Bernie wants to tax Wall St and give those proceeds to lower income people. Trump's solution is to kick out all immigrants and their family members even if they are here legally. I may have my differences with Sanders supporters, but I'd never insult them by saying they'd vote for Trump. Establishment or not, Hillary isn't running on a white privilege, lets make racism cool again, platform. Trump is.

 

[Kepler]

Re: Campaign 2016 Part XII: What Have We Done To Deserve This?

My response to Kep was that's great, but when you get to the solutions to income equality, the two bases of voters are incompatible. Bernie wants to tax Wall St and give those proceeds to lower income people. Trump's solution is to kick out all immigrants and their family members even if they are here legally.

Thing is, those two approaches are not logically disjoint. If you wanted to you could run on both together with no contradiction. Build the wall and nationalize Wall Street to pay for it.

You might even win.

 

[Rover]

Re: Campaign 2016 Part XII: What Have We Done To Deserve This?

Thing is, those two approaches are not logically disjoint. If you wanted to you could run on both together with no contradiction. Build the wall and nationalize Wall Street to pay for it.

You might even win.

Maybe, but I don't see Sanders supporters going for the "kick 'em all out" approach. You're closer to these people than I am, but I think if them more as idealists than xenophobes.

 

[Kepler]

Re: Campaign 2016 Part XII: What Have We Done To Deserve This?

Maybe, but I don't see Sanders supporters going for the "kick 'em all out" approach. You're closer to these people than I am, but I think if them more as idealists than xenophobes.

The ideal candidate to tap into all that unreleased populist energy would be able to stress anti-financier rhetoric to the Bernie supporters and xenophobic rhetoric to the Trump supporters, while giving each the impression that support for and by the others was just a pragmatic way of gaining power. Think of how Reagan appealed both to fanatically greedy, irreligious Boomers and fanatically religious, charitable Thumpers, all the while assuring each he was just playing the other. He (or she) would be a Tartuffe Trump, with ostentatious wealth combined with ostentatious faith. Somebody like this dipsh-t.

 

[Rover]

Re: Campaign 2016 Part XII: What Have We Done To Deserve This?

The ideal candidate to tap into all that unreleased populist energy would be able to stress anti-financier rhetoric to the Bernie supporters and xenophobic rhetoric to the Trump supporters, while giving each the impression that support for and by the others was just a pragmatic way of gaining power. Think of how Reagan appealed both to fanatically greedy, irreligious Boomers and fanatically religious, charitable Thumpers, all the while assuring each he was just playing the other. He (or she) would be a Tartuffe Trump, with ostentatious wealth combined with ostentatious faith. Somebody like this dipsh-t.

Few if any people have that skill. Recall about Reagan since you were around through that era is that it was a lot easier to tell one group one thing and another group something different. We're more informed now and a lot less trusting. However we're getting away from my original point which is Donald Trump is not the man to bridge those gaps.

Reagan's Presidency belongs to history. So does the politics of his era. The Cold War was the great unifier of the country back then. People actually believed electing Reagan would improve the morality of the populace (lower drug use, abortions, etc) by the sheer force of his goodness. I'm not making that up for people who weren't there. George W Bush pretty much destroyed the image of the wealthy patrician WASPy Republican who we need to turn to in order to steady the economy and foreign affairs. His time in office is what people think of when considering a GOP President.

 

[Kepler]

Re: Campaign 2016 Part XII: What Have We Done To Deserve This?

Fasten your seat belt, it's going to be a bumpy night.

 

[Handyman]

Re: Campaign 2016 Part XII: What Have We Done To Deserve This?

I'm old and let me be the first to say that I see a Trump Presidency coming. It's not likely but there's enough of a chance that I won't be shocked in the slightest.

I can see how it can happen, and since he is the nominee now I have to think about the ramifications. I will enjoy watching Rome burn from Vancouver or Toronto The girlfriend would want to move to France but no way in hell I am touching Europe the next decade or so. They are one attack away from Hitler Part Deux!

 

[Kepler]

Re: Campaign 2016 Part XII: What Have We Done To Deserve This?

Few if any people have that skill. Recall about Reagan since you were around through that era is that it was a lot easier to tell one group one thing and another group something different. We're more informed now and a lot less trusting. However we're getting away from my original point which is Donald Trump is not the man to bridge those gaps.

Every good politician has the ability to some extent. Hence the description by so many people of Bill Clinton that "he would address a room full of people and each felt like Clinton was speaking specifically to him."

Trump seems to have the obverse ability: the power to melt a crowd of individuals into a mass that reacts to him individually. The Greeks called that "charisma" and they didn't mean it in a nice way. It is a mystery gift from the gods that allows a man to turn a crowd into an extension of himself, as if their brains and nervous systems are all wired into him via a PBX. I've felt this exactly once, listening to Jesse Jackson -- it is a real thing and scary as hell.

 

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: Campaign 2016 Part XII: What Have We Done To Deserve This?

I can see how it can happen, and since he is the nominee now I have to think about the ramifications. I will enjoy watching Rome burn from Vancouver or Toronto The girlfriend would want to move to France but no way in hell I am touching Europe the next decade or so. They are one attack away from Hitler Part Deux!

I'll have to watch it burn from Rome. Should be very interesting.

 

[Kepler]

Re: Campaign 2016 Part XII: What Have We Done To Deserve This?

I will enjoy watching Rome burn from Vancouver or Toronto

Good luck with that.