I’ve been following the current round of US primaries with some interest. Not ever having visited the US, I have no business criticizing the system or the candidates but I must admit to being fascinated by the progress of Donald Trump and the seemingly growing possibility that he may become the Republican presidential candidate. Presumably, there is also the possibility that he could become the next President of the United States.
I see that Vladimir Putin encouraged the Russian media to talk up his candidacy whereas the leaders and media of the Chinese Republic have taken to mocking him. Donald Trump does seem to be able to divide and polarize opinion. We are living in interesting times.
It seems widely accepted that a presidential candidate who openly espoused atheism would stand no chance of being elected. But what about a candidate with a comb-over? Can Donald Trump’s hair get elected? Inquiring minds need to know. I see arguments from political commentators that Trump is only popular with a small majority of republican voters and unpopular with most democrat voters, so Trump has no chance of becoming president. What do our US TSZ members think? Should the World be worried?
PS I’m committed to a project this summer and will have to relinquish admin duties as soon as Lizzie finds a replacement and won’t have time for more than the odd comment from now on. Lizzie welcomes contributions from anyone sharing her aims on free, open discussion. So please anyone who would like to publish an OP who doesn’t already have author status, just ask.
Let’s make this an open thread!
Trump can’t do any worse than the last two Presidents and I would bet he could do better. I would rather have him than Hillary- she would ruin the US.
So no change in the temper of your comments, then? 😉
This is one of the most interesting election cycles since 1968 when there were riots at the Democratic National Convention. My personal view is that we’re seeing the divisions in the electorate that have been there all along. The U.S. is simply too big to agree on a single leader and direction.
Both Sanders and Trump have tapped into disenfranchised groups that realize the two incumbent parties don’t represent them. Sanders is learning the hard way that the Democratic National Committee is supporting Clinton, regardless of what the voters may want. It’s amazing that he’s still mathematically in the race given that he’s running not just against Clinton but against the entire DNC and the media.
Trump’s policies fit better with the Democrats than the Republicans, but like Sanders he found his niche group of voters. Unlike Sanders, Trump is a consummate businessman and reality TV star. He’s also running against not just Cruz and Kasich but the Republican National Committee and the mainstream media — and he’s winning.
I find it fascinating that CNN, for example, can blame Trump for the violence at his rallies when those initiating the violence are on camera wearing Bernie Sanders logo.
Cruz, by the way, is very likely a Dominionist, just like Howard Ahmanson Jr., the main supporter of the Discovery Institute. This is a man who should never be allowed any power. I find it frightening that the RNC is seriously considering supporting Cruz over Trump.
In my ideal scenario, Trump gets a plurality of the votes but not enough to win the nomination outright on the first ballot. That results in a brokered convention and lays the manipulations bare. It will be clear who wields the power in the RNC, and it’s not the voters. This may come about anyway because the insiders are already discussing how to manipulate the Rules Committee to deny Trump some of his delegates.
Further to my ideal scenario, I’d like to see Bernie somehow beat Hillary on pledged delegates, then watch her get the nomination based on the super delegates, demonstrating the same disenfranchisement of voters as the RNC is trying to pull off. The cherry on the sundae would be to see her indicted for her violations of national security before the general election.
We could see both incumbent parties in disarray, with large percentages of each voter base refusing to support the nominated candidate. I’ll eat popcorn and happily watch them both burn.
I can only hope that Trump cannot become president. I am aware of some Sanders supporters who say that they will vote for Trump if HRC is the Democratic nominee.
For myself, I’m not a fan of any of the candidates. Among the Republicans, the only one I could consider voting for would be Kasich, but his chances are somewhere between slim and none. I actually think that Cruz would be a more dangerous president than Trump.
Among the Democrats, my preference is for HRC. I’m not a big fan. I wish we had better candidates. I voted for Sanders in the primary, mainly hoping this might persuade HRC to move a bit further left. I don’t have a problem with the policy ideas of Sanders, except that he would never get them passed by congress. I expect that he would be an extremely ineffective president.
Which policies of Trump are those?
Off the top of my head and based only on what I’ve read:
No more nation building in the middle east (Clinton is much more hawkish than Trump)
Student loan forgiveness
Some form of universal health care
Elimination of super PAC and special interest group funding (definitely not something Clinton supports)
Affirmative action
Reproductive rights
Gay rights
I don’t support the guy, but he’s far better than either Cruz or Clinton. That’s a sad statement about the current state of both incumbent parties.
Patrick @ 3. Very nice post.
I don’t particularly care for Donald Trump but I despise the establishment. And yes I remember Ross Perot.
What isn’t hawkish about building a wall and having Mexico pay for it?
The whole “build a wall and make Mexico pay for it” schtick is just theatrics (I hope). Clinton actually supports continued military involvement around the world. Trump doesn’t.
That doesn’t mean I’d vote for him, but if people are going to criticize the man it should be for the right reasons and not based on the narrative that the mainstream press is spinning.
Well, I guess the World is littered with politicians’ broken promises.
FWIW, I find this an extremely dispiriting thread.
I’m looking at the 2016 election year as entertainment. It’s the best public entertainment we have seen for a long time. There are clown, galore. And, best of all, the clowns get angry if we laugh at them.
Not that it matters,Trump claims to have a super,secret plan to defeat ISIS which one assumes would entail more calling them losers. Trump is selling Trump, not position papers filled with details. Trump is selling the idea that a vote for him is sticking to the man. Any man which makes you angry.
Oh brother, the mainstream media loves Trump,for the simplest of reasons, ratings.
I don’t know what Patrick thinks are the “right reasons” but how about that the man is an imbecile with no understanding of a single public policy issues? How about that he will say anything whether it’s consistent with anything else he’s ever said or not? How about that his entire candidacy is based on hatred and a cult of personality? If one is actually a libertarian, how about that he’s opposed to free trade and is talking about building walls? How about the fact that he has no experience in any aspect of governance? How about that he apparently seeks support from the David Dukes gang?
For Christ sake, how awful does a candidate have to be?
You praise him too highly 🙁
And yet he has millions of supporters. What does this say about the Republican party?
But at least Obama gave toaster repairmen health coverage.
I think this explains a lot of Trump’s support. Cruz is actually doing better in “closed” primaries where voters register for a party, and registered Democrats can’t vote in Republican primaries. Where crossover is allowed (or voters aren’t registered with a party), it seems a LOT of people are voting Trump as an anti-Cruz vote.
I think unpredictability frightens the establishment more than known evil. Lindsay Graham said if someone murdered Cruz and the Senate was the jury, they’d never get a conviction. It’s hard to understate the degree to which the other senators despise Cruz, who has accused them all of being on the take, of having no principles, of selling out, of being liars. And he’s made them show up on evenings and weekends to vote for hopeless bills. BUT Graham will support Cruz over Trump. Golly, Trump MIGHT support Planned Parenthood!
Given that Cruz is adamantly and unambiguously anti-women, anti-immigrant, anti-gay, anti-all other faiths, and wants to scrap Social Security, it’s hard to imagine him winning votes among anyone who pays attention — and some folks do. Trump isn’t really anti-anything, he’s purely pro-Trump.
http://www.vox.com/2016/3/1/11127424/trump-authoritarianism
Interesting article (IMHO) analyzing some of the likely causes of Trump’s appeal thus far. While I agree more with John Oliver than with @Patrick in that Trump is a consummate BS-artist rather than a consummate businessman, he does have a great instinct for reading people. His willingness to drop all civilized decorum has inspired angry people to give voice to all of their resentments. There is a reason that reality TV is such a ratings-grabber in the US.
The really depressing part for me is that, if the article I referenced is correct (and I personally feel that it is), The Don is just the prototype of the new model of political candidate. After the amount of publicity his candidacy has generated, someone else (or possibly several others) will almost certainly utilize a similar approach of un-tempered angry rhetoric in the 2020 election and beyond.
RoyLT:
Fortunately, strong authoritarians are still a minority in the US (about half of Republicans and a quarter of Democrats). What scares me is the prospect of some grave threat or economic hardship pushing the numbers higher.
The correlations are certainly interesting. Table 3.2 from the book Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics, by Hetherington and Weiler:
I think this election cycle shows that making representative democracy more democratic isn’t always such a good idea. The leaders of both parties likely wish to dump their leading candidates for people who are more palatable to the populace as a whole, but workers of the primary system don’t allow “smoke-filled room” determinations of candidates anymore. So–although the Repubs still have a several winner-take-all states–it’s generally true that “the people” will determine the candidates, for good or ill.
The moral of all this to me is that representative democracy has some built-in contradictions that simply can’t be fixed. We ought to be moving more and more to direct democratic processes, but, sadly, that doesn’t seem to be happening at all.
The only good things about this election, IMO are the NYer pieces on Trump (including the most recent cover), and some of the debate parodies. Otherwise, the whole thing is just awful. Patrick’s whitewashing of Trump is one more example.
I’m not as concerned with that particular scenario at present. What I am more concerned about is the sneaky alarmist faction of today’s press propaganda machine which ( particularly Roger Ailes) is extremely adept at creating apparent crises out of otherwise insignificant events. This speaks to the ‘triggers’ in the Vox article which will lead generally rational voters to support off-the-plantation politicians out of naked fear. Whether due to latent bigotry or religious convictions (which is often a redundant statement), it motivates the fringe to mobilize and exert its will.
I hope that someone will correct my citation, but I think Voltaire said that we “should not expect to have better institutions until we have better men”. I think that the flaws of the democratic process as it stands now in the US reflect the flaws of our culture fairly accurately. SuperPAC’s and their massive influence are not terribly different from the elitism and monopoly of opportunities of the extremely wealthy. The popularity of a circus act like Trump is a reflection of the darker sides of our population which are now thrilled to have the platform to publicly shout the hateful things they would have previously only dared say in private.
Yes, but not ONLY those flaws. There are also Citizen’s United, the lack of proportional representation or (better) direct democracy , legislative micro-management in conjunction with bureaucratic usurpation, too many checks and not enough balances, the filibuster, etc.
Make everybody a wise saint here and things still might suck, although I completely agree with you that they’d be better.
From here:
I presented a summary of his actual positions rather than the distortions being made by many in the mainstream media. There is plenty in those to provide reason not to support him.
What is your evidence for your accusation of whitewashing?
Patrick, I have no idea why you think Trump has “positions.” That suggestion alone is evidence of your whitewashing.
So no evidence then. Got it.
Now evidence is suddenly important. Got it.
Oh, Patrick, what’s your ‘evidence’ that trump has ‘positions’? That he’s said this r that to this or that audience? He’s generally said the oposite to some other audience or at some other tiime. I think your ‘evidence’ that this multiply bankrupt tv personality huckster has whatever the hell you’re calling ‘positions’ will be required before anybody can attempt to rebut them.
So we’re waiting. Just like we’re still waiting for the answers to the questions you were asked on the libertarianism thread. Answers aren’t actually your thing, apparently. Sanctimony is what you’re best at.
walto,
You accused Patrick of “whitewashing” Trump:
Patrick asked you for your evidence:
You haven’t provided any. Instead you are dodging the question.
So we’re waiting. Just as we’re waiting for the evidence in support of your other claim:
You’re not very good at evidence, are you, walto?
Keith, people who meet a relatively low bar of intelligence and following the news, really shouldn’t need any “evidence” other than the ability to understand patrick’s whitewash post. However, as you obviously don’t I give you these:
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/will-the-real-donald-trump-please-stand-up-120607
It really shouldn’t have been necessary though.
@keiths
Fairly chilling video at the bottom of that article as well.
The graph you posted puts me in mind of the Anthropocentrism thread that @petrushka and I were commenting on a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, the uneducated majority that favor authoritarian leaders unfettered by Congress and/or the Geneva Convention are reproducing at a much higher rate than the educated minority. It bodes poorly for the future of our society.
Interesting. Reminds me of a high (grammar) school debate I was involved in in ’63 or ’64. Being the little snob I was at the time and having recently become aware of hormonal contraceptives, my solution was to develop a contraceptive drug with which we could dose the water supply so that the population became infertile and required an antidote to allow conception. Make the application form complicated and Voilà!
In fact I think this idea has already been tried with voter registration but I wouldn’t have known that then. We only did British History where we graciously allowed the poor colonists to have their liberty.
In case anyone misses the irony, my views on allowing the poor to breed have changed. In fact they changed quite rapidly after the rest of the class seemed genuinely shocked at my suggestion.
Alan Fox,
Yes, after the British got their asses forcibly kicked out of our country… 😛
Not sure if that was intended as a reprimand to me or not, but for what it’s worth I have come to the same conclusion (albeit much later than grammar school) that it is socially dangerous to approach too near the line where family planning and eugenics meet. I have found that border to be rather fuzzy and somewhat disputed by both the neighbors. The discussion of abortion in cases of a fetal diagnosis of Down’s Syndrome is similarly tricky.
By the French! 😉
That’s not the question, despite your repeated attempts to make it so. You claimed I was “whitewashing” Trump. You have provided no support for that accusation. Nothing I’ve written suggests I have a favorable opinion of the man or his stated views. There is no whitewashing.
I never brought up liberatarianism, either. That’s another of your attempts to control the narrative. I brought up your lack of ethics.
While we’re speaking of vacillating on positions, another person who should never be POTUS has a pretty poor history of that as well: #WhichHillary
Interestingly, there’s some evidence that Twitter censored that hashtag in advance of some important primaries.
This may be the election where more of the electorate learn that the media, both mainstream and new, cannot be trusted. That, along with the implosion of both incumbent parties and (please Eris) the indictment of HRC, would be a great result.
Indeed. I was hinting that your comment was getting into that territory.
I find whether I have a right to intervene in another person’s choice easy to decide. I don’t. I could, if I didn’t respect confidences, discuss how agonisingly difficult such choices can be in my experience.
Shoot! Derailing my own thread! No, it’s an open thread. Phew! As I said, I’m not qualified to comment on the US electoral system except that wealth does seem to purchase influence to an unhealthy extent.
However, I don’t know if US members are aware of the low opinion Trump has abroad. His recently expressed views on immigration didn’t go down well but the broadcasting of this documentary in the UK a while ago really didn’t help.
ETA synonym.
Fair enough. And for the record, I agree 100% that no one has the right to influence the decisions of another person. In attempting to move away from the mine-laden moral regions of this type of discussion, I will simply clarify that my original comment was intended more to speak to the need for better access to education and opportunities. Overpopulation, in this context, is a symptom of inequality rather than a disorder which requires treatment. Not sure how to offer better universal education or reduce gross economic inequality, but it sounds good on paper.
I was living in Europe during a couple of election cycles where certain candidates were less than enthusiastically supported by my colleagues. I had to explain to them that not only are most Americans utterly indifferent to the opinions of people in the rest of the world, for many voters (like those supporting Trump) a negative opinion from the average European is actually desirable.
That didn’t seem to matter too much in 2004, so I doubt that I will make a dent in 2016. It almost elicits a siege-mentality type of response in many Americans to point out the shortcomings of our country and its leaders.
In the US, we sometime say that we have the best politicians that money can buy.
Yes. Isn’t there a Guardian letter that had the opposite effect from that intended? No time for more till the weekend.
Beat me to it. Couple that with the perverse pride that many Americans apparently derive from being overwhelmingly unilingual, and you have the US in a nutshell.
Just as I said. Patrick will always have sufficient sanctimony to comment on the ethics of others, but can never seem to answer a single question anybody asks him. When Erik won’t answer it’s a despicable lack of ethics, when Patrick won’t, it’s his principles at work in preventing others from trying to control the narrative.
We know he’s a good person, because he doesn’t work for a government entity, however. All those who receive funds in any form from a government entity (like me, e.g.,) lack ethics. It’s a nice, simple algorithm. About his limit.
Anyhow, however great that shit might be, it’s not exactly unpredictable. But we all do no more than what we can, and nobody ought to expect anything more.
Re: Hillary Clinton, you won’t find me whitewashing her in any thread on which she is the subject. I think her pride and lust for power and fame are a large part of the disgraceful state of this election. Her time was 2008 and she got beat by a rock star. But she just couldn’t hang it up. Had to be the first woman President of the U.S. Refused to put the good of the country over her own ambition. Reprehensible.
Still, she makes Trump look like a walking dildo with a comb-over. The idea that he has ever been HARMED in his life by media coverage is laughable.
The difference being that Erik made a positive claim and then failed to support or retract it, in direct opposition to the goals of this site. I made no such claim. The burden of proof matters.
Speaking of claims, I note that you still have not supported yours about me “whitewashing” Trump.
Any thoughts on what it might be like to be on a Trump cabinet?