Trump Thread

[Montmorency]

I DO believe that too many extant treaties are too lopsided against the USA and do not consider it our duty to subsidize Chinese development etc. when they don't respect intellectual property].

More precisely, lopsided in favor of US corporations and against labor (everywhere). But if you used those terms with Sanders or Warren they would vehemently agree. Would you be able to vote for one of them next year?

With those caveats, Boot's on shift in political thinking is very much in line with my own. Like Reagan once said about his break with the Democrats, "they left me."

sigh

When the liberals were telling you what the Republican Party was, y'all should have listened.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Even into the summer of 2016, I was convinced that Trump was an aberration of the moment. Not so, his Trumpeteers had taken over the party from the inside using the TEA party as a framework. It is now Trump's creature.

[Montmorency]

Even into the summer of 2016, I was convinced that Trump was an aberration of the moment. Not so, his Trumpeteers had taken over the party from the inside using the TEA party as a framework. It is now Trump's creature.

I know this will feel like I'm picking on you, but from the world-historical perspective it is necessary to understand that Trump was the party's creature, not the other way around. The party made its bed with Barry Goldwater and the John Birch Society and Jerry Falwell and the Southern Strategy. Degeneracy was overdetermined without even taking into account the party's already-hideous hundred-year history as the "Free labor" aristocracy (transitionally transmuted through Milton Friedman).

Here's a clip of Ronald Reagan campaigning for Truman in 1948. "In other words, higher prices have not been caused by higher wages, but by bigger and bigger profits." Sounds like Sanders. 'My party left me' because it became more conservative economically (than the historically unique New Deal heyday) and more socially liberal so there was no choice but to join the Republicans - is... a very telling transformation.

A Lovecraftian tale of dreadful genealogy.

[Montmorency]

Hilarious that the inciting event has been reported since ~April, but perhaps, it is finally beginning to begin in earnest.

Even Prof. Bowman comes out.

[InsaneApache]

My first post in this thread, so forgive me I havn't read it all (TLDR)

I like Trump. He's upsetting all the right people.

Oh and as a businessman he know how it goes. It shows in the economy.

Another thing he's stitched on for a 2020 win.

That is all.

[CrossLOPER]

My first post in this thread, so forgive me I havn't read it all (TLDR)

Perhaps you would have something useful to add to the discussion if you took the time to do so.

[InsaneApache]

Perhaps you would have something useful to add to the discussion if you took the time to do so.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

My first post in this thread, so forgive me I havn't read it all (TLDR)

I like Trump. He's upsetting all the right people.

Oh and as a businessman he know how it goes. It shows in the economy.

Another thing he's stitched on for a 2020 win.

That is all.

Bravvah, marvellous trolling.

[CrossLOPER]

Brazzah, marvellous trolling.

LOOK, MAH, I POSTED!

[Seamus Fermanagh]

My first post in this thread, so forgive me I havn't read it all (TLDR)

I like Trump. He's upsetting all the right people.

Oh and as a businessman he know how it goes. It shows in the economy.

Another thing he's stitched on for a 2020 win.

That is all.

He is upsetting many of the right people, as well as a lot of the wrong people, as well as a lot of people who used to be staunch GOP.

He has had some positive influence on the economy (though some would assert this is short term economic gain at the expense of safety and global climate), though it is also true that the first half of a first term President's economy is at least half the product of the predecessor. Improved, yes. All Trump's doing....not so much.

He and McConnell are ratcheting the percentage of originalist judges way up in the federal judiciary. The traditional values crowd loves this a lot -- it is probably the number one reason so many evangelicals stick with him.

The Dems are pushing, so far, staunchly left of center where the hearts of their younger and most active and their ardent leftist core groups are happiest. But they will need to take back the white working class voter or Trump may well repeat his minority vote win in 2020.

[Greyblades]

The four front runners are either senile, infirm, corrupt bordering on supervillian or, well, Warren. The only two candidates who have a chance of matching trump are relegated to the single digits or actively shunned by the DNC.

You might as well call it here; The dems are destined for the grave they dug themselves.

[Montmorency]

He is upsetting many of the right people, as well as a lot of the wrong people, as well as a lot of people who used to be staunch GOP.

He has had some positive influence on the economy (though some would assert this is short term economic gain at the expense of safety and global climate), though it is also true that the first half of a first term President's economy is at least half the product of the predecessor. Improved, yes. All Trump's doing....not so much.

In spite of the typically limited and diffuse impact of policy on the economy in the short-term, Trump has done more than almost any President since the antebellum era to singlehandedly and directly damage the economy, which is hard to do when administrations like Jefferson's, Jackson's, Polk's, etc. (hmmm, I'm beginning to detect a pattern) adopted basically suicidal economics. There's even an argument that, to the extent that this president's economic actions are largely executive as opposed to worked out with Congress (other than the 2017 tax law), he bears the responsibility and thereby becomes the very worst President on the economy. Though it does him no favors that the legislative action, the 2017 law, was so marginal a stimulus in its upward wealth transfer. Republican depredations are well-enough known to be an archetype, but the jokes about Trump running the country like a business by driving it into bankruptcy while enriching himself through embezzlement and fraud were obviously especially prescient.

The Dems are pushing, so far, staunchly left of center where the hearts of their younger and most active and their ardent leftist core groups are happiest. But they will need to take back the white working class voter or Trump may well repeat his minority vote win in 2020.

Without having to challenge your premises, it should cheer you that Trump is indeed bleeding among the white working class, especially white women, whose votes he cannot afford to lose.

Remember that (you can check this against the certified results) the Trump 2016 electorate was something like 45% white men and 40% white women, compared to <50% whites among the Clinton electorate. He can neither lose any of that nor afford any increase in turnout among the opposition, and he's consistently down on both counts so far. Meanwhile, seemingly the only demographic among whom he has enlarged his vote share are Never-Trump Republicans (lol). More pertinent is to relate this to the Electoral College, where I reiterate he must win all the states he won in 2016 and has no prospect of capturing any new ones. But his clinches in the decisive states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania are in danger of evaporation if they haven't already, Florida remains in play with a heavy blue shift among the electorate (perhaps too heavy to disenfranchise), and now even Texas is becoming a battleground state.

On the other side, Warren is a fairly skilled and persuasive politician.

Warren has won multiple teaching awards, and when I first profiled her in 2011, early in her Senate run and during what would be her last semester of teaching at Harvard, I spoke to students who were so over the moon about her that my editors decided I could not use many of their quotes because they were simply too laudatory. Many former students I interviewed for this story spoke in similarly soaring terms. One, Jonas Blank, described her as “patient and plainspoken, like an elementary-school teacher is expected to be, but also intense and sharp the way a law professor is supposed to be.” Several former students who are now (and were then) Republicans declined to talk to me on the record precisely because they liked her so much and did not want to contribute to furthering her political prospects by speaking warmly of her.