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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Mon May 22, 2017 1:01 am 
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The Democrats nominated a white person for president this time. Problem is she was a) female and b) Hillary Clinton. So, presidents will all have to all be white and male for the foreseeable future in order to avoid civil war?

drachefly wrote:
btw, I was joking about the Statue of Liberty.

I was hoping you would continue joking.

And uh, what the hell just happened in Saudi? They're obviously trying to butter up Trump with the huge parades and parties and military salutes in his honour (they must've read up on his psychological profile). And Trump just sold them $100 billion in weapons?

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Mon May 22, 2017 5:57 am 
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Kea wrote:
Meanwhile, there were too many other conventional Republican candidates running against him (I think there were 16 total). They split the votes of all the sane Republicans and nobody managed to gain a lead over Trump.


...okay, that... that explains a lot.

Thanks. Now I can see how it's possible for a Trump to become president. (What are the chances that the republican candidates next time will be selected by some sort of knockout voting system? Do the initial vote as before, but then do a re-election between just, say, the top for candidates, and then perhaps a third round with just the top two? That seems a small change that would prevent this particular issue cropping up again.)

Weremensh wrote:
In such very limited fairness as might be due to the cheap seats part of the Republican base, they've long since figured out that they're getting played by the party establishment. By and large, they can't stand Ryan or McConnell. They're just too malign and/or stupid to do anything about it but look for a bigger phony selling the same lies in new more glitzy packaging. Enter Trump.


So, they're assuming everyone's out to mess with them, and they're at least going with the one who knows how to put on a show?

...okay, I can see that working, too.

Kea wrote:
And uh, what the hell just happened in Saudi? They're obviously trying to butter up Trump with the huge parades and parties and military salutes in his honour (they must've read up on his psychological profile). And Trump just sold them $100 billion in weapons?


Does that mean the buttering-up worked?

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Mon May 22, 2017 6:36 am 
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CCC wrote:
Thanks. Now I can see how it's possible for a Trump to become president. (What are the chances that the republican candidates next time will be selected by some sort of knockout voting system? Do the initial vote as before, but then do a re-election between just, say, the top for candidates, and then perhaps a third round with just the top two? That seems a small change that would prevent this particular issue cropping up again.)

I think somebody else is going to have to explain this because I don't fully understand it myself, but the US primary system is an illogical mess. Every state holds a primary elections in seemingly arbitrarily chosen (?) sequence over what feels like an eon, but is probably around 6 months. The less serious presidential candidates may not even be on the ballot of every state. Technically the voters don't choose the candidate directly, but vote for delegates who will vote for their chosen candidate on behalf of their state at the party convention. Each state has its own idiosyncratic rules for allocating its delegates to the winning candidate - some do it proportionally, some do winner-takes-all, some do stranger things. Over the course of the primary season, the less popular candidates drop out one by one when it becomes obvious that they're not going to win enough delegates and there's no point in blowing more money on campaigning. The last remaining candidates against Trump were Ted Cruz (Tea Party extremist) and John Kasich (moderate) but neither was able to outdo him. And then each party holds a convention at which the nominee is confirmed (and more to the point, celebrated). In decades gone by, it was possible for the convention delegates to go against their voters' wishes to reject the winning candidate if they felt he was dangerous or useless and install their own through backroom negotiations. But such dealings came to be seen as anti-democratic and are no longer considered acceptable. A few delegates at the Republican convention tried a last-ditch attempt to get rid of Trump, but failed.

So, to cut a long story short, transforming this convoluted cluster@!#$ into anything sensible would be very difficult.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Mon May 22, 2017 11:42 am 
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Kea wrote:
The Democrats nominated a white person for president this time. Problem is she was a) female and b) Hillary Clinton.


I specifically phrased it as 'now that Obama is out of office' - and the last election season was before then. Absent the remaining racial hysteria over that, Trump wouldn't have had the traction.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Mon May 22, 2017 9:22 pm 
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CCC wrote:
...allow me to rephrase my question. I'm not asking how he beat Clinton. I can actually see how the American system is set up to allow that to happen. I'm asking how he got to be in that position in the first place. How did he become a serious candidate for one of America's two major parties in the first place?


Well, the Republican party, which used to be a legitimate political party, has for a long time been pandering to the racist vote, stoking class resentment and peddling fake populism. The more moderate core lost out big to the Tea Party extremists in the 2010 elections, the party remade itself explicitly as the "party of no," and there weren't a lot of people left with real values and the courage of their convictions to withstand a hostile takeover by someone who was willing to go all out in pandering to the racist vote, stoking class resentment, and peddling fake populism.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Mon May 22, 2017 11:01 pm 
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The moderate core of the GOP was purged by 1985 (largely by the Club for Growth), but the writing was on the wall when they decided to pander to the racist rabble back in 1968. When Nixon got elected doing it, that was that.

The weakness Trump exploited is basically one of Fox and hypocrisy; the party establishment let Fox do their overt pandering to said rabble while pretending to be above all that in order to keep 'higher' class selfish and greedy voters (with delicate sensibilities) down on the farm. All the rabble ever got from the establishment was a few deniable dog whistles and a lot of obvious betrayals. That was fine so long as the Republican establishment was the only game in town; but then along came Trump. He openly sold the same message Fox does that being racist rabble is something to be proud of; indeed, as a racist rabble billionaire he is what they all want to be if they grow up. That gave him the loyalty of the chunk of the Republican base most likely to actually turn out and vote in the primaries, which is what got him nominated.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Tue May 23, 2017 2:45 am 
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Kea wrote:
So, presidents will all have to all be white and male for the foreseeable future in order to avoid civil war?

After seeing Rubio come so close on the Republican side I think a light skinned Hispanic male with zero foreign accent would be minimally controversial to either side now.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Tue May 23, 2017 3:18 am 
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The Republican rank-and-file were willing to go along with their leaders' pro-business anti-welfare policies as long as they thought it would stop undeserving minorities from claiming benefits. Trump short-circuited that plan by skipping straight to bashing minorities directly.

----
Anyway, I see Flynn just pleaded the Fifth Amendment and is refusing to cooperate with the Senate investigation. So what happens when they hold him in contempt? DOJ can just refuse to press charges against him. Then what?
----

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After seeing Rubio come so close on the Republican side I think a light skinned Hispanic male with zero foreign accent would be minimally controversial to either side now.

That's pretty sad.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Tue May 23, 2017 6:33 am 
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The Senate can lock up Flynn themselves. They don't need the White House to uphold their own contempt charges. I'm not sure when that was last done, though; and it's not likely to happen over a fifth amendment plea. The usual response to that is make a deal.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Wed May 24, 2017 7:09 am 
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This could explain a lot. Looking at his speech patterns over the decades, brain function types think Trump may be demented. It's strongly hinted at when someone goes from speaking off the cuff like a college graduate to speaking like a second grader over the course of 30 years. Now it's noted that he could be putting it on in order to appeal to his base, but that would require endless careful focus on this particular task; something notably missing from everything else he's doing.

Still, it does explain his appeal to his particular base. How many Republican candidates will pretend to be brain damaged on the campaign trail after this? More of them than previously, one suspects. And with that in mind, it looks like Pence is out campaigning for his own run for president; visiting battleground states absent any work related reason and setting up his own PAC.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Thu May 25, 2017 11:43 am 
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If you're an establishment conservative, putting Trump up for election, winning an anti-establishment race against a flawed Dem candidate and then having him step aside...

If they waited until 2019 to do it, just over two years into Trump's term then President Pence (who is definitely establishment!) could serve 10 years straight and 12 years of GOP in the White House.

It would be terribly dishonest and more than a bit corrupt but not actually illegal so it's right up the Establishment Republican (TM) alley. Problem might be getting him past the two year mark without being impeached or just hounded out of office.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Fri May 26, 2017 12:28 am 
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If they want to keep Trump in for 2 years, that should be easy because you need half the House to agree to impeach him, so Trump's safe.

But removing Trump when convenient for Republicans and moving straight on to a low-drama Pence administration will be very tricky. I can't picture Trump resigning of his own accord even if he was caught setting cats on fire on live television. If he gets impeached after 2018, the Republicans will have to work pretty hard for it not to hurt them in the 2020 election because they'll be tarnished by association. And can you picture Trump going away quietly? He'll explode loudly and often. The Breitbarters will probably declare war with the Republican establishment.

___

I haven't done the actual math but I wonder how many purplish seats are even left in Congress to flip. Isn't it a dwindling number? If the Democrats miraculously managed to capture every single competitive district in 2018, would that be enough to give them control of the House?

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Fri May 26, 2017 12:41 pm 
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If they find a medical reason (like dementia) to remove him, they might have a shot at having the cake and eat it. Like " We feel obligated to preserve his legacy, and hope the right kind of people think, we say that only out of politeness"

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Sat May 27, 2017 12:24 am 
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Kea wrote:
I haven't done the actual math but I wonder how many purplish seats are even left in Congress to flip. Isn't it a dwindling number? If the Democrats miraculously managed to capture every single competitive district in 2018, would that be enough to give them control of the House?

Last I saw, the Democrats are targeting 75 seats (which may go up) and need less than half of that.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Sat May 27, 2017 10:12 pm 
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arcosh wrote:
If they find a medical reason (like dementia) to remove him, they might have a shot at having the cake and eat it. Like " We feel obligated to preserve his legacy, and hope the right kind of people think, we say that only out of politeness"

That could happen if Pence and a majority of cabinet officials try to declare him incapable of fulfilling his duties under the 25th Amendment. (That amendment is an "in case of comatose president, press this button" escape hatch.) Trump would first have to get bad enough that a majority of his own cabinet deserts him - and the man specifically chooses people for their loyalty, so it has to be really really bad. Because Trump would himself oppose any attempt to declare him incompetent, they'd have to make him submit to a medical examination. It'd probably take Trump wearing his underpants on his head in public before his family would acquiesce with dragging him to a doctor.

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