It's today then ... (Trump thread)

[BigJag]

Is there any evidence that he has made moves to take over Fox? He has a habit of praising them. I wasn't aware that News Media was part of his portfolio or that that was something he hoped to acquire. Surely he could have just had a chat with Rupert Murdoch and done a deal. Why has he allowed himself to be exposed in this way? he's either very dumb and a complete anomaly. Or he's the smartest man alive.

[BomberPat]

"Trump News Network" was being thrown around a lot during the election campaign. I'm in two minds about whether he expected to win or not - on one hand, I got the impression it was largely an exercise in presenting himself (backed by the shady political manoeuvring of Bannon) as the popular face of the right wing in America, and using that as a launching pad for something else, but at the same time, my overriding impression of Donald Trump is of a man who has never ever been told he can't have what he wants, or that he's wrong - whether that be money, property, women, or political influence, so I honestly think there's a part of him that felt like he was owed the presidency. I don't think he ever wanted to govern, as it's clear he has absolutely no time for the actual mechanics of politics, and little interest in the American people, he just wants people cheering his name and waving flags at him - I think he wanted to be President because it was a shiny toy he hadn't got his hands on yet and, to the shame of the American people, the fuckers actually voted for him.

[Guest]

Whatever he wanted during the campaign, I reckon he'd give anything now to be the one who lost the electoral college but won the popular vote. He'd be having so much more fun.

[BomberPat]

16 minutes ago, Uncle Zeb said:

Whatever he wanted during the campaign, I reckon he'd give anything now to be the one who lost the electoral college but won the popular vote. He'd be having so much more fun.

I honestly think that would have been the ideal result for him - particularly if the idea of him wanting to launch a media network is true - as he'd be able to present himself as the popular candidate cheated by The System and The Establishment, and rally his supporters without ever being expected to actually deliver anything.

Long-term, I think that might have ended up being an even more disastrous result than Trump winning - I said before the election that I was worried about Trump winning the popular vote and losing the election, because a sizeable percentage of Trump's supporters are right wing gun nuts, and the one thing that riles up the far right is the idea that something has been taken from them. After months of believing that Trump had to win the election, if he didn't - and particularly if he got the popular vote - those supporters would feel that everything he had promised them had been taken from them, so you'd have a lot of very angry right wingers, many of them armed, thinking that the establishment took something from them and thinking they had nothing left to lose. Short-term, that could have been an ugly situation. I honestly think that a huge number of Trump's supporters would have seen a Clinton win as nothing more than evidence of conspiracy and vote-fixing, given how much Trump played the "rigged election" card during the campaign.

Long-term, if Trump had lost and transitioned into that far-right media network - you'd basically be looking at Fox News squared, at Breitbart TV and InfoWars News. If you think the Fox News-watching right wing in America are delusional, that would be nothing on what could be created through this - and then you wouldn't have to worry about Donald Trump, you'd have to worry about who comes next, buoyed by an even more biased, even more deranged, right wing media.

I still worry about that to an extent - discourse is so much about how Donald Trump Is The Problem, rather than what went so badly wrong with American society and the American political system to allow someone like Donald Trump to become president, and to make people vote for someone like Donald Trump. Unless the underlying issues are addressed, there'll only be another one along in a few years time - by which point the right wing of the Republican party will be normalised, and the centre of politics shifted further to the right, because "well, it's not as bad as Donald Trump" - and what if the "next Donald Trump" is smarter, a savvier political player, less confrontational?

[BigJag]

Can these "underlying issues" be addressed? There's plenty of savvy, intelligent, hard working people within America who are addressing those issues at community level. Can that sort of endeavour be translated to a governmental level?

[David]

One thing he didn't take into account was how poor an opponent Clinton was going to be. If he were running against virtually any other Presidential candidate of the past few elections he'd likely have lost quite comfortably.

[David]

52 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

I still worry about that to an extent - discourse is so much about how Donald Trump Is The Problem, rather than what went so badly wrong with American society and the American political system to allow someone like Donald Trump to become president, and to make people vote for someone like Donald Trump. Unless the underlying issues are addressed, there'll only be another one along in a few years time - by which point the right wing of the Republican party will be normalised, and the centre of politics shifted further to the right, because "well, it's not as bad as Donald Trump" - and what if the "next Donald Trump" is smarter, a savvier political player, less confrontational?

The American political system is rotten to the core, and a lot of people have had enough. I think it's really that simple.

Over the past 28 years we've seen 2 families in the White House for 20 of them. It just so happened that Trump found himself going up against yet another member of one of those families at a time when a large chunk of the population had simply had enough.

I honestly think that things could have been so different had Sanders been the candidate to go against him. But, Clinton did what people like Clinton do, and it never happened.

[Carbomb]

19 minutes ago, David said:

The American political system is rotten to the core, and a lot of people have had enough. I think it's really that simple.

Over the past 28 years we've seen 2 families in the White House for 20 of them. It just so happened that Trump found himself going up against yet another member of one of those families at a time when a large chunk of the population had simply had enough.

I honestly think that things could have been so different had Sanders been the candidate to go against him. But, Clinton did what people like Clinton do, and it never happened.

Hear, hear. 

Basically, it seems that the electorate wanted actual, real change, an overhaul of the existing system, rather than emotional appeals for change within the system as Obama did. Clinton's campaign consisted mostly of "more of the same, but at least we'll have our first female president" and "at least she's not Trump". Sanders was offering to the American "left" what Trump was offering America's right; I think he would have done a lot better against Trump than Clinton did.

[Keith Houchen]

24 minutes ago, David said:

Over the past 28 years we've seen 2 families in the White House for 20 of them.

There had been a Bush or a Clinton in one of the top three jobs since Reagan, you're right about the people wanting to shake it up from the political elite, Saunders and Trump were the people to do just that. 

[Carbomb]

Thing is, Trump isn't really shaking things up, because he's not the outsider that he or his supporters make him out to be. He's not a politician, sure, but the US political establishment is a complex of the political, business, and military spheres. He's a Big Businessman, one of the people used to running things from the shadows with their lobbying, their "fund-raisers" and "honoraria" for senators and congressmen, etc. The governments of the US and the UK aren't just the politicians, they're business and politics working together for mutual interest, and very often (though not always, I'll admit) that isn't in the interest of the ordinary citizen.

This becomes even more evident when you see the sheer number of corporate business people Trump has filled his administration with. Sure, it's different in that they're not people used to running a state entity, but it's just a different part of the same gang being moved to outside their usual sphere. Trump and his lot are, quite literally, business as usual.

Edited September 28, 2017 by Carbomb

[PunkStep]

1 hour ago, David said:

I honestly think that things could have been so different had Sanders been the candidate to go against him. But, Clinton did what people like Clinton do, and it never happened.

I can't help but think the same. I think you would've had a Corbyn-like backing from a large part of the public, and plenty enough to sway those undecided. Similar to our general election this year, except Sanders would have started in front and not trying to cover ground of a large deficit of voters unlike Corbyn. Hilary, whilst not really being particularly popular or warming to the public to begin with, arguably lost this election due to the e-mail scandal. With no dirt like that on him, I think Sanders would have won.

[BomberPat]

I'm not convinced Sanders would have beaten Trump. The Fox News watching flag-waving Trump supporter stereotype isn't going to vote for Bernie Sanders, big business is going to vote for or endorse Bernie Sanders, you're pretty much left with the same "liberal" vote that went to Clinton, but hoping that, in key states, those who feel "left behind" or just prepared to vote for a change will vote en masse for Sanders, not Trump. What Sanders would have had over Trump was a sense of honesty and integrity - which nobody saw in Clinton - and a lack of scandal compared to either Clinton or Trump, but the fact that Trump is president suggests that neither of those factors are dealbreakers for the American voter. Trump's share of the vote was effectively equivalent to the Republican base, and I don't think Sanders was going to top that.

Put simply, I struggle to look at an election that gave us a right-wing, bigoted billionaire as president, and think the solution could be, "if only we'd had a Socialist Jew".

 

1 hour ago, Carbomb said:

Hear, hear. 

Basically, it seems that the electorate wanted actual, real change, an overhaul of the existing system, rather than emotional appeals for change within the system as Obama did. Clinton's campaign consisted mostly of "more of the same, but at least we'll have our first female president" and "at least she's not Trump". Sanders was offering to the American "left" what Trump was offering America's right; I think he would have done a lot better against Trump than Clinton did.

Very true. And, to be honest, "not Trump" and "the status quo", without the benefit of hindsight weren't terrible policy platforms. When you see Donald Trump - this chaotic, bizarre human being who has no business being in politics, saying outlandish and dangerous things - the best thing to run against that is "the steady hand". The problem is that the Democrats are out of touch enough to have missed the point that, for an awful lot of American people, the status quo isn't good enough - when you feel like you've lost everything, or that politicians don't care about you, you don't want the status quo, and pushed hard enough, you'll vote for the Devil you don't know. But I don't necessarily blame the Democrats for running a "steady hand" candidate.

But maybe the whole "vote for a change" thing is overstated, just like the idea that Trump's support comes largely from the working class (it doesn't, the majority of Americans earning less than $50k voted Clinton, those voting over $50k voted Trump). Maybe the ugly truth is that millions of Americans share Donald Trump's views. The "vote for a change" argument is predicated on the idea that people feel left behind, cheated by politics, and would desperately vote for anybody that they feel could change - the same argument levied against the working class in the UK around Brexit - and I hate that, aside from painting working people as an easily swayed homogenous mass only ever one grievance away from voting for fascism, it's not borne out by the statistics, which show that the majority of wealthy and educated voters voted Trump.

Edited September 28, 2017 by BomberPat

[Carbomb]

Not just the email stuff, though. Hillary is, in foreign policy terms, an interventionist, and, between Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, the American public has become war-weary (well, about as war-weary as a population can get in a country that hasn't had any real wars fought on its soil since the 19th Century). Trump promised them there would be no more US involvement in wars in the Middle East, which played well with the electorate, and it's also why he's lost a lot of popularity amongst his original electoral base, having gone back on his word. 

[David]

57 minutes ago, Carbomb said:

Hear, hear. 

Basically, it seems that the electorate wanted actual, real change, an overhaul of the existing system, rather than emotional appeals for change within the system as Obama did. Clinton's campaign consisted mostly of "more of the same, but at least we'll have our first female president" and "at least she's not Trump". Sanders was offering to the American "left" what Trump was offering America's right; I think he would have done a lot better against Trump than Clinton did.

in a way the whole "first female President" line is what could have alienated a lot of those traditional, right-wing type voters. 

Personally, I didn't like that angle. Essentially, it was a case of "forget the dodgy goings-on with my husband, vote for me because I don't have a penis"

 

3 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

I'm not convinced Sanders would have beaten Trump. The Fox News watching flag-waving Trump supporter stereotype isn't going to vote for Bernie Sanders, big business is going to vote for or endorse Bernie Sanders, you're pretty much left with the same "liberal" vote that went to Clinton, but hoping that, in key states, those who feel "left behind" or just prepared to vote for a change will vote en masse for Sanders, not Trump. What Sanders would have had other Trump was a sense of honesty and integrity - which nobody saw in Clinton - and a lack of scandal compared to either Clinton or Trump, but the fact that Trump is president suggests that neither of those factors are dealbreakers for the American voter. Trump's share of the vote was effectively equivalent to the Republican base, and I don't think Sanders was going to top that.

The thing is, if Sanders had gotten an opportunity to put his message out there a lot of those disenfranchised, alienated voters who went for Trump would have seen that Sanders actually represented them a whole lot better. 

Sure, there were extreme right-wing bampots who were always going to vote for Trump, or who wouldn't vote for Bernie because he was a Socialist or whatever, but I honestly believe that those types are still a minority. The people who got Trump over the line were the middle-America crowd, who I don't believe are racist bigots at all. They're frightened by what their country has become, and they're duped by the media in a lot of ways, but they aren't morons.

Given the choice between Trump and Clinton they were always going to vote for Trump, because Hillary represented the root of their problems, which they believed was the crooked political establishment in the US.

Sanders wouldn't have had that problem, and I feel he'd have done a whole lot better against Trump once the media had to actually cover him in a proper fashion. 

[BomberPat]

Just now, Carbomb said:

Not just the email stuff, though. Hillary is, in foreign policy terms, an interventionist, and, between Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, the American public has become war-weary (well, about as war-weary as a population can get in a country that hasn't had any real wars fought on its soil since the 19th Century). Trump promised them there would be no more US involvement in wars in the Middle East, which played well with the electorate, and it's also why he's lost a lot of popularity amongst his original electoral base, having gone back on his word. 

I don't know how much war had anything to do with it, to be honest. The notion of America as war-weary doesn't ring true for me - they're a nation that have been either at war with or occupying other nations for all but two or three years of their own history, outside of the Civil War, and much of Trump's base are the flag-waving, "support your troops" types, cheerleading him on to nuke North Korea and bomb anywhere that sounds a bit Arab-y.

I think with Clinton, it was the culmination of decades of mistrust, some earned and some not, of her not being a particularly warm or likeable candidate, of her seeming out of touch (as if Trump doesn't, but there we are), of years of conspiracy theories and allegations, just all of that coming to a head. And every mis-step - the email server, or anything Trump and his allies could jump on, was just validation for the people who have been accusing her and Bill of being child-abusing Illuminati deep State whatever-the-fuck for the last twenty years. I think "first female President" wasn't as big a part of Clinton's campaign as has been widely suggested, though the right wing jumped on it to make it sound like she had no policies, and was only banking on that factor. I think it probably did more harm than good for her.

The "Hillary's a warmonger" thing was something I found exasperating during the election, though, because people were banging that drum even while Donald Trump was saying that he'd deploy the army if someone pissed him off, that he'd "bomb the hell out of ISIS", and coming up with plans for Iraq that would amount to literal war crimes and, when told that the military wouldn't do something illegal, saying "they would because I'd tell them to". But just about everything Trump and his supporters criticised Obama or Hillary for in the election campaign, Trump or his associates have done tenfold since and no one bats an eyelid.