I have been thinking about this. Who can one name, who is not in jail, and who would be eligible to be President, who would actually be worse than this moron, to lead the country through this crisis right now? Someone who is even more self-centered, who knows less about the world, less about proper management, who has had more business failures, who is even more divisive, who has more staffing problems, who is more petty, more insulting to reporters asking tough questions, and who generally would fuck things up even more than him? This is truly not an easy question to answer. Any suggestions? I am seriously finding it hard to name someone.
The republicans sure picked a doozy.
This is a USAmerican problem for US citizens to deal with. Why not vote for someone else?
I’ve been aware since 2016 that the United States has become a kakistocracy: rule by the worst qualified, most incompetent people (not just Trump but whole cabal: Pence, Pompeo, deVos, Carson, etc.). Trump is handling this crisis just as badly as he’s handled everything else that’s happened over the past four years: with maximal stupidity, inconsistency, lack of planning, blaming others for anything that goes wrong, and using every opportunity to make himself the center of attention.
That said, I confess that I do not have an answer to phoodoo’s question: I cannot think of anyone who would be worse.
Needless to say I’m filled with anticipation about Trump’s second term.
I mostly share your view of this.
It is not entirely the fault of Republican politicians. They did not want Trump. It was the conservative Christians who backed Trump. So conservative Christianity deserves a lot of the blame.
However, the Republicans do share plenty of blame. They could have impeached Trump and removed him from office. Instead, they have been busy covering up for him and protecting him. At this point, I consider the Republican party to be a party of criminals and traitors. And at this point, I must consider American conservative Christianity to be a totally anti-Christian religious cult.
I did. And I will.
Let’s hope enough checks and balances remain in place so that voting still counts!
In answer to the OP question, I would start with anyone who, the first week in February, advised people to ignore the CV rumors and go out and celebrate. In large crowds.
Or, being the spokesperson for the UN on health matters, said CV was not transmissible between humans.
I’m sure there are others, but that’s a start.
Oh, and anyone who thought it was a good idea to have lots of airplanes, crowding 400 people together with a common ventilation system for 14 hours, bringing people from China.
Alan Fox’s amazing insightful political understanding.
I honestly can’t think of anyone who’d plausibly be worse. I only ever come up with examples of people who, at worst, would be about on-par with him, and even then I doubt any of the examples I come up with are genuinely as thoroughly incompetent in all relevant areas of qualification, as Trump is.
I wondered about someone like Louie Gohmert, who appears to be about as insightful and lucid as an actual brick, and yet he does not display the same level of narcissism and megalomania as trump.
I can’t do it. Trump is the worst imaginable option that comes to mind among plausible candidates.
But her emails!
Rumraket,
Gohmert, a terrible individual for sure. He would implement horrible policies regarding human rights and he has all kinds of crazy, racist ideas. But he still would probably manage a crisis better than orange.
I am trying to think outside of politics, but pretty much any celebrity, Paris Hilton, The Kardasians, …anyone like that, I would much rather have them in charge. So now you have to look for someone even more crazy. But who, I am still stumped.
Its funny, if you just go through the days news and gossip columns, and see who is in the news, and you just can’t find anyone you wouldn’t rather have than orange. There is Tom Brady, and Bella Hadid, Katy Perry, John Mayer, Elon Musk, Alex Rodriguez, The Wahlbergs, Pink, Sanya Gupta, Andy Cohen, Heidi Klum, Tom Cruise, Megan Markle, Martha Stewart, …You could just run your finger down a list of people in the news, and ANY one of them would be better than infant orange.
I don’t know what has been worse – the extreme reluctance to face unpleasant facts, or the total inability to delegate any authority to anyone who might do something useful. After all, once you delegate you can’t milk much political benefit claiming the virus is a Democrat hoax spread by the fake news media. Nor turn briefings into campaign rallies.
It’d have to be someone truly unhinged, as in straightforwardly insane to the point where they’re having halluscinations and paranoid delusions. You’d have to go look for worse candidates in rubber cells. Find someone who thinks the world is literally going to end in the next few months and will deliberately start nuking Russia. Nothing short of that can beat the moron-in-chief.
Not even people like Alex Jones could do a worse job. Or actually, just maybe Alex Jones would be worse. If for no other reason than he’d start selling anti-gay-frog supermale vitality toothpaste during white-house press conferences as cures for the Corona virus. At least Trump isn’t doing that(yet).
The icing on the cake was when he ordered 3M not to sell any N95 masks to Canada, and highjacked a shipment of masks from China to Germany.
Rumraket,
I don’t think Alex Jones would be worse. Part of what he does is an act. I agree it has to be someone really nuts, but I can’t think of that person. Maybe Casey Anthony? She could perhaps be worse. People say she was a good mother though. I think George Zimmerman could be worse. But would they be as effective at fucking up, I am still not sure.
Roy Moore or Jerry Falwell, jr. would be likely candidates
PeterP,
Those are a couple of good ones. I think probably sheriff David Clarke would be up there Lindsay Graham.
By the way, I am impressed that rummey knows who Louis Gohmert is. You have to really be into to politics to not be from America and know that guy.
I contend that if you just selected a phone book at random, flipped it open, and then just ran your finger down and stopped somewhere then named that person president, you would almost certainly do better than what they have now. You might get some accountant, or a parts store manager, or even just a housewife who schedules her kids lunches and dance practice, and they would listen and make better choices than orange, without falling into one of his twitter baby fits.
Sorry I can’t be more helpful. I just watched a video of POTUS giving health advice. USA appears to be under the control of someone who isn’t in control of himself. Is there no way to get rid of him? There has to be a minimal level of competence, surely.
Another four years? President for life? Appoints his own successor?
?
Alan Fox,
It has a lot to do with the voting system in America. It goes state by state rather than just pure majorities. You either win the state or you don’t. So someone can win one state by three votes, and depending on the state that is much more important than winning a state by ten million votes. Also voting districts have been so manipulated by partisan republicans, so that they divide the vote up to cancel out voters, by these fake voting boundaries. On top of that you see what happens to the democrat primaries. There is no way Joe Biden is the most popular person on the democratic side. Delegates have selected him. It’s not a democracy. I think if they went with Corey Booker or another young democrat it would be easy for them to win in November. Now it’s a mess.
I think in a head to head match up Andrew Yang would beat infant orange handily.
Furthermore, it doesn’t matter who the republican nominee is, there are some states where the win is automatic, like any of the rural states. This states they don’t even need to vote, it’s meaningless. Country folk don’t vote democrat, even though republicans will not do anything for the common folk. It’s relics of racism and social conservatism.
Elizabeth Warren struck me as the adult in the room. But she’s a woman, so unelectable I guess. Job description says creepy old white guy which fits Biden almost as well as Trump
Where’s walto when you need a clear exposition of the US voting system?
Alan Fox,
Warren could not have won. They would paint her as a crazy socialist who is going to take away all your money and enough poor people would believe that. All they needed was someone young and a little progressive and it would be so easy to win.
George Clooney could win with eighty percent of the vote no problem. Tom Hanks probably too.
They would still lose the rural states but it wouldn’t matter. There are no people there.
phoodoo,
It’s more or less the same here, except that we vote for representatives by constituency – many of which would vote Conservative if you stuck a blue rosette on a pig – and then the leader of the largest party becomes PM. Johnson won that leadership with 90,000 member votes, and won a landslide with 43% of the popular vote. And is too thick to observe the social distancing rules he lectures us on, hence an outbreak of cv in Westminster.
Does anyone over there have a view on the role of the for-profit healthcare system in all this? I have a hunch that healthcare accessible to all helps in such a national emergency, due to standardised response and the fact that people can call on services by need. I’d also imagine that having no healthcare plan, or having it tied to your job, will be a massive worry right now.
What if some bunch came along and rewrote the constitution, started a new regime? I have not seen any American consider this.
Throughout this century, maybe starting with the ludicrous and hypocritical Clinton impeachment, USA has been in a constant political crisis where the president, in the opinion of many, should be curtailed or removed, but the supposed checks and balances only have a theatrical effect. And Trump in particular is absolutely fine with theatre.
Why is that constitution thing such a holy grail for Americans? Because it has made your country for what it is? Don’t be ridiculous. I mean, your country is currently the laughing stock of the world. And up until World War One you were not much in the world arena, all the while with the same constitution. So I would suggest there was something else that made your country great.
To change what your country currently is it should not be too tough to scrap the current regime. Other countries do it periodically with mixed success. Some other countries keep their constitutions around longer, also with mixed success. It is not about the constitution really. It is about the quality of the fresh air that gets in.
Now, I am pretty sure that Americans would think that if their constitution gets replaced, no matter who did it he would be considered worse than Trump….
They do not consider their healthcare system to be the for-private-profit ripoff that it is. They honestly think it is Communist Obamacare now and has to be reverted back to for-private-profit ripoff.
Allan Miller,
Actually national health care is a very popular initiative across the board politically. Probably 70 or more support it. But even though republican politicians still fight it in Congress, because big business owns them.
Erik,
Changes to the constitution take 2/3 majority votes. There are very few things both parties agree on.
Of course I was not talking about changes to the constitution. I was talking about scrapping the entire constitution and adopting a new one from scratch. And scrap your parties too.
As I suspected, this is inconceivable for Americans 🙂
Yes, there is. It is called “impeachment”.
We tried this. But the criminally corrupt and traitorous Republicans refused to perform their part of the process.
He is a compromise candidate — acceptable to everyone, but not the favorite of most.
I’m pretty sure that Trump would like to rewrite the constitution, so as to make himself king.
In the worse-than-the-Cheeto contest, I’ve racked my brain and the only candidate I could come up with is Kanye West.
Separately, I think it is an error to assume that, say, Elizabeth Warren could not get elected. Now we’ll never know.
His version of the constitution would be a tweet long.
That is because it would be naive to trust what a constitutional convention might produce. Can you imagine the amount of corporate cash brought to bear on the process?
Trump lost the popular vote by 3 million and still won the electoral college , if the delegates were select likewise, it would be catastrophic.
Actually. that is the process to send the amendment to the States. It takes 3/4 of the States to ratify it.
Electoral college elects the President , and it is weighted to give more influence per person to the smaller states. Two Senators for every state , South Dakota has the same influence in the Senate as California.
She is also a woman.
Smaller states in the south used to vote Democrat before Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Act of 1965. Before that the Republicans were the Party of Lincoln, afterwards thanks to the Southern Strategy first used by by Goldwater, the Republicans became what they are now.
Nope. On the plus side Trump’s approval of how he has handled the virus has dipped below 50%.
This year , the must popular candidate is the one with the best chance to beat Trump, that is Biden. Safe is the primary quality people will look for.
Biden does have an iceberg ahead, several women have accused him of sexual misbehavior. Only Republicans can do that without losing popularity .
He would be, Mitch McConnell would be worse. Trump is lazy, a hard worker who kept his mouth shut could do much more damage.
Democrats like Kennedy and Clinton kept it consensual!
Kennedy was of a different era, having something on the side was the norm.Clinton was right at the cusp, he was lucky that the Republicans of Newt Gingrich were so awful and he was already in office. Never make it today.
I have to say, a more brazenly unprincipled charlatan would be hard to find.
phoodoo: Tom Cruise,
Not sure about him!