Trump

Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
In the event of a disastrous result for Trump, what will become of the Republican party? You can't help but wonder if (and hope that) they've shot themselves in the foot/head by pandering to the FOX News demographic for so many years. By so doggedly courting and cultivating stupidity, they've created a Frankenstein's monster (no bolts, one toupee) who is far too stupid to be elected. Trump crushed his competitors in the primaries, so why wouldn't he (or some other similarly unelectable wingnut) do so again in four years' time? After all, it's not as if his competitors for the race were particularly sane even in comparison to the Donald.
 
Leo

Leo

Well-known member
Corpsey said:
In the event of a disastrous result for Trump, what will become of the Republican party? You can't help but wonder if (and hope that) they've shot themselves in the foot/head by pandering to the FOX News demographic for so many years. By so doggedly courting and cultivating stupidity, they've created a Frankenstein's monster (no bolts, one toupee) who is far too stupid to be elected. Trump crushed his competitors in the primaries, so why wouldn't he (or some other similarly unelectable wingnut) do so again in four years' time? After all, it's not as if his competitors for the race were particularly sane even in comparison to the Donald.
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the GOP situation is a bit deceiving. while they've sucked at presidential campaigns of late, they have held majorities in both the senate and house (although looks like the senate may fall back to the dems this year). but their real strength is in state legislatures, where lots of laws are made. 31 of 50 states have GOP governors and a good number of those states have legislatures (state rep/state senate) that are also both controlled to the GOP. that's where the koch brothers put their contributions, enabling their favored candidate to hugly outspend and crush a local democratic opponent.

obviously the presidency is the big deal but the GOP has to this day been pretty successful in pushing the conservative agenda on a state level.

also, i think trump is a one-in-a-lifetime character, not likely the next wingnut will have the reality tv show huckster character and popularity that's driven trump's campaign forward.
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
That's interesting. So from an American perspective, what power does the President have that trumps all that state legislature? Foreign policy?

(Forgive my sophomoric questions, I've only very belatedly taken an interest in politics and it's a half-baked enterprise on my part.)

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-...e-story?utm_source=nextdraft&utm_medium=email

“Putin is convinced that absolutely everything in this world is done for money. He is a religious fanatic, and money is his god. With money, it is possible to solve any problem, buy any interlocutor. He bought the Olympic Games, he bought the World Cup. It will be easy to deal with Trump. He won’t need to use words in negotiations, only figures. When they don’t agree, it will only be necessary to find the right price.”

Vladimir Putin is a cunning and cynical reader of his adversaries. He notices that Trump does not know the difference between the Quds Force and the Kurds, or what the “nuclear triad” is; that his analysis of Brexit was based in part on what might be good for his golf courses in Britain; that his knowledge of world affairs is roughly that of someone who subscribes to a daily newspaper but doesn’t always have time to get to it. Overwhelmed with his own problems at home, Putin sees the ready benefit in having the United States led by an unlettered narcissist who believes that geostrategic questions are as easy to resolve as a real-estate closing. Putin knows a chump when he sees one.
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Leo

Leo

Well-known member
that new yorker quote is frightening, and probably entire true.

RE: presidential power...yes, certainly foreign affairs and military actions. there's also the president's ability to appoint people to cabinet positions who have certain views and thus influence an administration's direction and policy. george bush had lifers from the big oil companies in his department of energy and even department of environmental affair, so you can imagine how those special interests guided our energy and environmental policies during those years.

more indirectly, it's also the authority of the president to nominate supreme court justices (although our checks and balances system require congressional approval of the selection). the supreme court has the power to uphold or strike down state laws.

for instance, a GOP governor and state legislature might pass a law banning gay marriage, but if the law is challenged and makes it to the supreme court, the court can (and has) overturn(ed) the state law. it can't tell states what to do, but it can overrule state rulings when the law violate the constitution.

hence the ongoing battle of presidents trying to stock the supreme court bench with justices who will tend to interrupt the constitution from either a conservative or liberal viewpoint.
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-widespread-theory-for-donald-trumps-success/

conomic distress and anxiety across working-class white America have become a widely discussed explanation for the success of Donald Trump. It seems to make sense. Trump's most fervent supporters tend to be white men without college degrees. This same group has suffered economically in our increasingly globalized world, as machines have replaced workers in factories and labor has shifted overseas. Trump has promised to curtail trade and other perceived threats to American workers, including immigrants.

Yet a major new analysis from Gallup, based on 87,000 interviews the polling company conducted over the past year, suggests this narrative is not complete. While there does seem to be a relationship between economic anxiety and Trump's appeal, the straightforward connection that many observers have assumed does not appear in the data.

According to this new analysis, those who view Trump favorably have not been disproportionately affected by foreign trade or immigration, compared with people with unfavorable views of the Republican presidential nominee. The results suggest that his supporters, on average, do not have lower incomes than other Americans, nor are they more likely to be unemployed.

Yet while Trump's supporters might be comparatively well off themselves, they come from places where their neighbors endure other forms of hardship. In their communities, white residents are dying younger, and it is harder for young people who grow up poor to get ahead.
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Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
From that piece:

Economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton recently documented startling increases in the middle-aged white death rate in the past decade, but Rothwell finds that people's support for Trump didn't seem to be affected by changes in the white death rate where they lived.
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Bit of an about-face, careerwise?
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
An aside: I was curious as to what Obama's approval rating currently is (it's 54%, according to Gallup), and in finding that out I found out G,W, Bush's historical approval ratings:

HIGHEST APPROVAL: 92 (9/21/01)

HIGHEST DISAPPROVAL: 77 (10/10–12/08)

He's the record holder in both.

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A truly singular man.
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Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I hope so too, but is it a disease you 'bounce back quickly from' in later middle age?
 
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