droid

Well-known member
Still haven't gotten to my election roundup, but it looks as if Mueller is about to kick into high gear. More indictments expected shortly. This Trump family RICO thing looking bad for them as well.
 

Leo

Well-known member
Lots of conspiracy theories swirling: drudge/wikileaks/Fox News gone dark on twitter, Rupert Murdoch meeting over the weekend with Mitch McConnell, Lachlan Murdoch apparently fed up with Hannity (who got on a campaign stage with Trump last week) and wants to fire him, general uproar over the Sessions replacement, etc.

Trump in Paris looked scared and cornered, too grumpy to attend events and only smiled when Putin arrived.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I wonder if people (and I mean even the people who like him) will get bored of Trump eventually, and if that will be the end of him, as it would be if he was just a reality TV star?

There's a degree of this in party politics, isn't there? A sort of 'change the channel' attitude towards electing the opposition.
 

Leo

Well-known member
One can hope!

To his base, Trump is more than just a politician: he's the long-awaited poke in the eye of establishment Washington, coastal elites, etc. His aggrieved base will always hate those groups, so that hatred will probably prolong their support of Trump, even as he passes his sell-by date for most people.
 

Leo

Well-known member
from the LA Times:

For weeks this fall, an ebullient President Trump traveled relentlessly to hold raise-the-rafters campaign rallies — sometimes three a day — in states where his presence was likely to help Republicans on the ballot.

But his mood apparently has changed as he has taken measure of the electoral backlash that voters delivered Nov. 6. With the certainty that the incoming Democratic House majority will go after his tax returns and investigate his actions, and the likelihood of additional indictments by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, Trump has retreated into a cocoon of bitterness and resentment, according to multiple administration sources.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Well that's great news - his absence on the stump whipping up violence and emboldening fascism can only be a good thing.
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Might be irrelevant but Fox News, Rudy Giuliani and Wikileaks all went silent on Twitter approx last Thursday and have been ever since. Mark Drudge and Jared Kushner have deleted all their tweets.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Irony of ironies: Scott Walker signed a law preventing second place finishers from requesting a recount if they lost by more than 1%. Walker lost by 1.2%
He shoulda Made it Easy on Himself....
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I wonder if people (and I mean even the people who like him) will get bored of Trump eventually, and if that will be the end of him, as it would be if he was just a reality TV star?
There's a degree of this in party politics, isn't there? A sort of 'change the channel' attitude towards electing the opposition.
I don't think that this happens in the US any more though does it? More and more I see a country almost totally divided in two with each side believing that it will be death for them and their way of life if the opposition gets in. Doesn't matter how bored they get of Trump his base is never gonna think "maybe we'll give the godless commie socialist immigrant-rapist supporting libtards a go" - they'd rather stick pins in their eyes and then drink a pint of diarrhoea.
Also, there are loads of them who literally don't see that he's a lying fool with no principles who is only out for himself - they truly think he's a hero who loves America and is the only thing preventing them from falling to the muslims. I understand this less than I understand economic right-wingers who cynically put up with his racism cos they know he'll lower their taxes.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
I don't think that this happens in the US any more though does it?
no, it very much does - the party in opposition almost always makes gains in the midterms, and that's exactly what just happened

there's always a large portion of the electorate open to voter fatigue. it's just how representative democracy works. governing is always harder than being in opposition.

you all have the same - Labour 97, Tories 2010

Trump's hardcore base is rock-solid, but it's not enough - even with our stupid Electoral College system - to win him an election on its own

countering that is the Democratic Party's astounding capacity to pick bad candidates, run lackluster campaigns, fail to capitalize on opportunities, etc

tho - they lost all the sexier, longer shot races (Beto, GA + FL gov, etc) but it's for a v good sign for Dems that they did well in the big Midwestern states Hilary lost

if they can win OH, MI, WI - and the rest of the electoral map is basically normal - they win easily, even without the eternal pick 'em of Florida

ofc much can happen in 2 years, but early returns on trends for the next election cycle look tentatively good

the greater problem will likely be of retaking (and holding) the Senate - you saw how a GOP senate crippled the end of O's run
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
governing is always much harder than being in opposition, and Trump being extremely, visibly bad at governing just exacerbates that
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
definitely the trends to polarization and ideological/practical base hardening, tho predating Trump, have accelerated sharply

it's probably not an exaggeration to say this country is as or more polarized than it has been at any point since the leadup to the Civil War

and tho the 1850s was - if you're familiar with the history - much, much worse, the polarization did have a single organizing issue that could be resolved, if at great cost

which you can't really say about now
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
it's also true that "our way life will be over" desperation, which always exists, is more widespread than normal

partly unavoidable historical (cultural, demographic) growing pains, partly more of the neverending fallout from the center-left's disastrous, short-sighted, cynical decision in the 1990s to basically abandon economic issues. the latter is at least finally seeing a response in the Ocasio-Cortezes and general leftward shift of Dem mainstream, which is good insofar as it goes.

the former - America changing - has no answer. it's one of those things (like referring to capitalism as "late") where you think how much longer can this - the gerrymandering rearguard against inevitable demographic change - go on and yet it does, year after year, election cycle after cycle. supposedly there's a tipping point where the GOP is forced into the trap of either changing it's message to expand its base, alienating its traditional base, or sticking with its message and watching that traditional base shrink into irrelevancy - but that point, if it does exist, clearly hasn't been reached. I'm kinda skeptical that it will ever be reached in the sense of truly shifting the country's Overton window to the left, but that's just me.
 

Leo

Well-known member
polarization is worse than I ever remember it being. that said, the media have no incentive to cover people/politicians/organizations with moderate positions, aggression and conflict are what sell ("if it bleeds, it leads"). my hope is there might be a "silent" majority out there who get tired of bullshit and extreme partisanship every two or four years and vote the way they want, as opposed to the base of either side who will automatically vote for their party. I mean, we went from two terms of Neo-con Bush to two terms of liberal Obama to MAGA-mania!

BTW, a real-life story: a friend in construction said his firm had a delay moving forward on a big job. why? because the cost of steel has gone through the roof due to the tariffs on imported steel, and the domestic producers also took advantage of the import tariff to raise their own domestic prices by 15%.

MAGA!
 

version

Well-known member
Out of interest, is there anyone on here who agrees with Trump or thinks he's doing well on anything? Any silver lining at all?
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Any silver lining at all?
backlash has forced the Democratic power structure to the left

huge uptick in midterm voter turnout/political engagement in general, depending how much of that you attribute to him specifically

ultimately too soon to call - in a few decades this could look like a wakeup call leading to a course correction or a floodgate to further disaster

(that's assuming there are still historians around to consider such things in a few decades)

as far as being right - a lot of his populist talk, the swamp etc, wasn't wrong - just totally empty, as everyone but his base knew

as President, no, complete and unmitigated disaster, limited only by his/his people's incompetence - no Cheney figure to actually get all the terrible things done

@Leo - yeah the worst in recent memory - just like tbc that's it been worse at points in American history - the 1850s for sure, arguably the late 1960s

don't agree at all with a plague on both their houses equating of sides either - Dem pols/base have many issues but cannot compare O (or even Bush) to Trump's base
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
no, it very much does - the party in opposition almost always makes gains in the midterms, and that's exactly what just happened
To me the gains were relatively small when you consider that they were against someone who has repeatedly proved and continues to prove on a daily basis that he is incapable of doing his job. I mean, maybe I didn't pay as much attention to US politics in the past as I do now, but to me it seems a new (and incredible) thing that Trump does all this stuff that (from where I'm sitting) insults his office or betrays his country in ways that theoretically should piss off most republicans and yet it has no effect on a large number of his voters cos really despite their professed patriotism they care more about keeping the Dems out than they do about whether the President sides with a foreign power rather than his own intelligence services. That's what I'm on about when I say there is no "change the channel" thing going on in the way that there used to be. Of course there are still floating voters but I get the impression that there are fewer of them than before and that it is less and less likely that others move into that group, or even that those on one or the other side of that group change their vote.
I don't think that we're disagreeing fundamentally, you say that his base is rock solid and that's really what I'm saying. I'm certainly not claiming that he will win next time, he may well lose, it's just that for someone who isn't part of that super-polarised base it seems bizarre that it's not a foregone conclusion, in fact that he can win even one vote.
 
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