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Re: Trump to win?
Oh, barf. The only reason that creature hasn't died already is because Heaven won't have him and even Hell finds him disgusting.Originally posted by Thailandnotes View Post
Be kinder than necessary because everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle.Comment
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Re: Trump to win?
Even Satan has standards to uphold. And who needs the competition?Originally posted by shiny! View Post
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Be kinder than necessary because everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle.Comment
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Re: Trump to win?
this interesting election has elements of realignment in BOTH the republican and democratic parties.
for the republicans you have trump's populist/nationalist-isolationist/anti-free trade/big gov't stances in opposition to what have been the dominant positions of the republican party in recent decades.
otoh, i noticed this headline in the nytimes this morning:
Rift Between Key Democratic Factions Could Hurt Turnout
this focuses on conflict between climate change oriented liberals and old-line manufacturing and building trades unions within the democratic party.
it looks like those unions, or at least their members, will drift towards trump, splitting the labor wing of the democrats from the liberal-elite wing. to appeal to the union member types, clinton, in typical fashion, has proposed a 5-year $275billion infrastructure plan. trump, in typical fashion, has vaguely suggested spending $1Trillion on infrastructure. [much cheaper than another middle east war, and more beneficial to the u.s. economy, btw.]
if union members go for trump, the democrats will be left with the liberals and the minorities. otoh, there is talk of neo-conservative hawks moving toward clinton because of her more interventionist foreign policy bent, but i don't think those people bring votes along with their support. it's more a case of them looking for jobs in a clinton administration or its satellite private think tanks, consultants, etc.
on the right, recent articles have pointed to social conservatives reconciling themselves to trump. otoh, the party elite is still focused on serving its donors, not its voters, with its free-trade, small gov't, anti-entitlement and tax cuts for the rich policies.
the "traditional" republican party elites have no candidate for president. they will focus on maintaining and strengthening their hold on gov't at the state level. it appears that they are losing the tea-party voters to trump at the national level, but won't lose them at the state level.
what will be particularly interesting if trump wins [which i think is the most likely outcome] is whether there will emerge trumpista candidates for state office. i don't think so because trump's policy differences with the traditional elites are all around national, not local, policies.
republican elite controlled state houses and state legislatures will determine any redistricting after the 2020 census. if i'm very wrong and there's a clinton landslide, what i'm about to write won't happen. but i think a trump win for president, coupled the the current status of republicans at state level gov't [let alone increases of republican control of state gov'ts] will mean ongoing traditional republican control of congress.
a trumpista national party can sit atop a system of state parties dominated by traditional elites. at the state level, and at the national level for that matter, there will be little or no support for entitlements FOR THE POOR. note carefully that trump's support for entitlements has been focused on social security and medicare - i.e. middle class entitlements.
there will be tensions between the national trump policies and the policies that congressmen and senators will bring to washington. the trump-ryan summit will in retrospect look like the first in what will be a long series of negotiations between 2 wings of the republican party- the populists and the reaganites.
i think these tensions will be adequately resolved. otherwise you'll get a transformed replay of recent dynamics for republican congressmen. they have been in fear of being primaried by tea party types from the right. in the future they might be in fear of being primaried by tea party types from another dimension.
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edit:
ps some redeeming features:
the infrastructure part could be beneficial both directly in stimulating the economy, and indirectly [if done properly] by eventually increasing productivity.
reaffirming social security and medicare [and taking privatization off the table] would be a good thing imo.
less intervention/fewer wars [for us] in the middle east would also be nice.
just an observation, not a redeeming feature: congressional democrats will often be voting with populist republicans against reaganite republicans. long term there might be a modus vivendi between the democrats and populist republicans. the center for the anti-reaganites will lie somewhere within the policy space of this coalition. the social liberals and social conservatives will struggle around those issues, but join together on economic and to some degree international policies. i think there is tension within the democrats between interventionists and a growing isolationist group.
the old 2 party system is breaking apart, i think. i don’t know how that will play out given our gov’t system which is not conducive to a multi-party system. given that reality, it seems that the factions of the democrats and republicans will reassemble into 2 groupings, just not the groupings we’ve had for some time. the labels won't change, but what they stand for will.Last edited by jk; May 17, 2016, 01:15 PM.
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Re: Trump to win?
The first two lines say it all:
http://www.richmond.com/obituaries/a...cfd32eb57.htmlComment
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Re: Trump to win?
oh, i dunno - funny, sorta, yes - but methinks this one - stockman's latest, today - REALLY sez it all
and thensome
Trumped! Washington's Fiscal Hypocrisy Is Too Rich For Words
is it EVER!Comment
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Re: Trump to win?
The old two party system was originally not a party system at all. The winner take all structure of our government created the two party system. It drove some of the founding fathers nuts that they'd designed a system that required factions but from the earliest years it was obvious. This is not the 'old 2 party system', this is our system. Either we will change our government or the two party system will prevail.Originally posted by jk View PostComment
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Re: Trump to win?
Change the govt. to what though? Are we asking Democracy to pay the price for capitalism/corporatism? As intertwined as those are - can one live without the other? Is true democracy really possible or sustainable? All socio economic modes fail because of the same reasons - greed, corruption, mistrust, fear, manipulation and consolidation of power.Originally posted by santafe2 View PostIt's the Debt, stupid!!Comment
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Re: Trump to win?
I was thinking of a proportional system. Much of the world works that way. Our system is designed ideally to not have parties but the founders realized early on it was a mistake. They got a lot right so it's hard to fault them.Originally posted by loweyecue View Post
If our system fails it won't be greed, corruption, etc. that makes it fail, it will be laziness on the part of the electorate. We deserve the system we have. To think otherwise is to take up the mantle of victimhood.Originally posted by loweyecue View Post
All politics is local. Get involved, run for office or actively support someone locally who's doing a great job. Or just sit back and blame the system and watch your democracy go away.Comment
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Re: Trump to win?
Yeah, I wouldn't put the blame for decline and fall squarely on the voters, SF2. Most of these folks were operating under the mistaken beliefs and self-delusions made possible by decades of sophisticated and psychologically tuned propaganda. They thought they were citizens of a democratic republic. I can't blame them but understand your POV.
Matt in rare form:
"There was a time in this country – and many voters in places like Indiana and Michigan and Pennsylvania are old enough to remember it – when business leaders felt a patriotic responsibility to protect American jobs and communities. Mitt Romney's father, George, was such a leader, deeply concerned about the city of Detroit, where he built AMC cars.
But his son Mitt wasn't. That sense of noblesse oblige disappeared somewhere during the past generation, when the newly global employer class cut regular working stiffs loose, forcing them to compete with billions of foreigners without rights or political power who would eat toxic waste for five cents a day.
Then they hired politicians and intellectuals to sell the peasants in places like America on why this was the natural order of things. Unfortunately, the only people fit for this kind of work were mean, traitorous scum, the kind of people who in the military are always eventually bayoneted by their own troops. This is what happened to the Republicans, and even though the cost was a potential Trump presidency, man, was it something to watch.
If this isn't the end for the Republican Party, it'll be a shame. They dominated American political life for 50 years and were never anything but monsters. They bred in their voters the incredible attitude that Republicans were the only people within our borders who raised children, loved their country, died in battle or paid taxes. They even sullied the word "American" by insisting they were the only real ones. They preferred Lubbock to Paris, and their idea of an intellectual was Newt Gingrich. Their leaders, from Ralph Reed to Bill Frist to Tom DeLay to Rick Santorum to Romney and Ryan, were an interminable assembly line of shrieking, witch-hunting celibates, all with the same haircut – the kind of people who thought Iran-Contra was nothing, but would grind the affairs of state to a halt over a blow job or Terri Schiavo's feeding tube."
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...party-20160518Comment
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Re: Trump to win?
This is the beginning of the end of both the Republican and Democrat parties.
Both have been captured by extreme wings and have no idea how good government should function.
The 42% (and growing) that call themselves independents will take over, and the other two may not die but will have minimal support.Comment
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Re: Trump to win?
Originally posted by vt View Post
altho i think your POV is somewhat irrationally exhuberant, vt -
'good gov' does in fact still exist - and STILL manages to keep things going, after near 400 years
and STILL WITH A VOLUNTEER LEGISLATURE
and STILL WITH NO SALES TAX AND NO INCOME TAX
(read: no slushfunds available to curry favor with the crony+welfare class)
and why - despite the best efforts of the lib-demorat-bastards to change it,
STILL has 'LIVE FREE OR DIE' on their license plates
and STILL allows adults to DECIDE FOR THEMSELVES if they want to wear a GD seatbelt or not!Comment
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Re: Trump to win?
Harsh words but they have quite bit of truth in them. You are coming from the position that people can stand up for what they believe in participate in politics and take our democracy back. I am coming from a more cynical position that such people will be trampled by the political machinery and they will either recede into oblivion or they'll become just as greedy and corrupt. It's easy to underestimate how quickly a sense of power can corrupt people. Do yo really think it's fair to accuse Sanders of taking up the mantle of victimhood? Didn't he just do everything possible to beat the establishment without debasing himself? And was he able to beat out the combination of wealth (superpacs), greed and corruption (establishment democrats) and pro-establishment media(CNN)?Originally posted by santafe2 View PostIt's the Debt, stupid!!Comment
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