US elections: The Trumpening

[Paladin of Ice]

28 minutes ago, Shryke said:

This was pretty interesting too and I think puts to bed any theories people might have that what we are seeing isn't authentic Trump:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/ilanbenmeir/that-time-trump-spent-nearly-100000-on-an-ad-criticizing-us#.awnMDm2b9

30 odd years ago, Trump spent $100k to get what is basically his political screed published in the NYT. The politics are very familiar here. Posturing and strongman rhetoric.

This stuff he says is pretty much what Trump actually believes.

How about that time when he took out full page ads in various newspapers calling for the execution of the guys accused in the assault of the Central Park Jogger? The same guys who were cleared by DNA evidence and a confession from the actual perp years later?

But hey, potentially executing innocents would just be part of making America great, I suppose. As long as you say it with enough conviction and strength, it doesn't matter what you say, people will line up to get behind it.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

26 minutes ago, Dr. Pepper said:

In an effort to take on Trump, Marco Rubio has become a knock off version of the orange faced man.

ffs

Why did it take these morons so long to figure out how to attack him effectively? This is the perfect tact. Treat him like the clown he is. I think it might have gained traction had it started a few months ago. Probably too late now, but that is a solid crack. 

 

/ETA: This and both the Trump University crap, and the release of tax info. Turn the screws on this chump.

[Kalbear]

Quote

I think you greatly overestimate the impact that a single individual can have, even if this individual is the President. The US government is a colossal  bureaucracy and as such has a tremendous amount of bureaucratic inertia. In fact, even a subdivision of the government (every Department or Office or whatever) is massive and rather difficult to change (some much more so than others). Furthermore, You-Know-Who is himself a member of the ruling class and he has no interest in destroying the system as a whole. It's not at all clear what he can do without the support of Congress (which he's not likely to get). At best, he might shut down the TPP and similar treaties, enforce the law regarding illegal immigration and block further attempts to ship jobs offshore and attempts to ship people from abroad to depress wages here. At worst, he will completely turn his back on the economic problems and do something silly.

You didn't answer the question. I'll try it again.

What shock to the system will Trump provide that will cause people to do something differently than what they're doing right now?

What is 'something silly' and why do you believe that something silly will not cause massive harm? 

Here are the broad powers of the executive branch, in case you didn't quite get what they could do.

1. Negotiate - or not - treaties with other countries. He can also sign them, though this will likely be fought by the Senate if they are problematic.
2. Issue any number of executive orders as he sees fit. These can be about immigration, law enforcement, etc. We'll get to those in a sec.
3. Pardon criminals. Good thing Trump doesn't know any of those.
4. Pass the budget bill. He can choose to veto any and all budgets if he so chooses. 
5. Appoint federal positions. Such as head of EPA, head of the CIA, etc. And those heads are free to completely dismantle those organizations.

So what about those executive orders? Here are some examples of them that didn't need congressional help.

1. Create entire new groups of bureacracy or dissolve them as he sees fit. The WPA system, the welfare system, medicare, social security - can be completely removed by the President via executive order. Or added. Department of Homeland Security didn't need congressional approval to exist. 
2. Internment of all the Japanese Americans. There is nothing specifically stopping the President from doing something like this. 
3. Remove all Native Americans from their homes and place them on reservations. There is nothing stopping the President from doing this, either. Want to kick out 11 million people because they're latino, deny them habeus corpus and take all their stuff? The President can legally do that without an agreement from congress, provided that they're not asking for extra funding for it. 
4. Affirmative action? That can be completely removed too; it was added via executive order.
5. FEMA? You can get rid of that. Another executive order.
6. Bomb Libya? Yep, President can order that too. Any short-term military intervention that does not require specific funding the President can authorize. This also means that he can authorize drone strikes, special forces attacks, missile attacks, and even potentially use of nuclear weaponry.
7. Torture people? Yep, the President can authorize that too. 

Which of these do you consider 'silly'? And which will be a shock to the system which will end up being a positive for the US? 

[Kalbear]

38 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

Why did it take these morons so long to figure out how to attack him effectively? This is the perfect tact. Treat him like the clown he is. I think it might have gained traction had it started a few months ago. Probably too late now, but that is a solid crack. 

 

/ETA: This and both the You-Know-Who University crap, and the release of tax info. Turn the screws on this chump.

Eh. Neither of these will stick particularly well, or if they will it won't matter because Rubio is the one delivering them. Rubio just isn't that strong of a candidate, and unless he radically shapes up in debate performance won't be seen as such. And the issue is that while Rubio can go on the attack, the money isn't. Koch is still not committing to attacking Trump. Adelson isn't either. He's getting backing from moderate republicans, which will make it more likely that others will come down that way too because it'll be seen as safe. 

[Ormond]

38 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

Why did it take these morons so long to figure out how to attack him effectively? This is the perfect tact. Treat him like the clown he is. I think it might have gained traction had it started a few months ago. Probably too late now, but that is a solid crack. 

 

Sorry, but sometimes I feel compelled to correct vocabulary when the mistake seems humorous to me. You mean, "tack", not "tact" -- and the correct word rhymes better with "crack".

http://grammarist.com/usage/tack-tack/

[A Horse Named Stranger]

24 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

Why did it take these morons so long to figure out how to attack him effectively? This is the perfect tact. Treat him like the clown he is. I think it might have gained traction had it started a few months ago. Probably too late now, but that is a solid crack. 

 

/ETA: This and both the Trump University crap, and the release of tax info. Turn the screws on this chump.

Probably because he was hammering down Jeb! for them. As long as the tame elephant was in the room Rubio had to come across the evenly balanced and sane person to get the establishment lined up behind him. After that's done, he now has the freedom to try to meet the Donald in a bare knuckle fight. 

As for Cruz. I guess it was mixture of motives, why he did not attack the Donald. First he hoped that the other ones would take down the Donald and he could pick up some of the Donald's votes. But the Donald is apparently not leaving the party. Now with Jeb! out of the picture he decided to be the saviour of the Republican party to get the estasblishment votes from Rubio. "The only campaign to defeat Trump." "The first to attack Trump." etc. 

So I don't think, they all of a sudden realized how to attack the Donald, but they decided to hold back for tactical reasons. Whether it will work out, or if it's too little, too late, that is a better question imo.

[Kalbear]

The other issue about Rubio - and this is a pretty big one - is that the rest of the Republican candidates refuse to leave the race. Kasich has stated that he's in it until at least the Ohio primary - which is in 3 weeks. Cruz isn't getting out, and while Cruz doesn't get out Carson will continue to stay in too. This means that while everyone acts in their own self-interests and says fuck you to the leadership that their best hope is actually a brokered convention, though that likely would mean Trump would run as an independent given he'd consider that a betrayal. 

Thought this NYTimes article did a really good job of laying out how bad things really are for the leadership. Thanks, Wert.

[Martell Spy]

It's a perfect fit. He hates reporters and loves to sue. Maybe this is why he wants the job.

 

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/02/27/donald_trump_vows_to_curb_press_freedom_through_libel_laws.html

 

Donald Trump Vows to Curb Press Freedom Through Harsher Libel Laws

[Shryke]

1 hour ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

Why did it take these morons so long to figure out how to attack him effectively? This is the perfect tact. Treat him like the clown he is. I think it might have gained traction had it started a few months ago. Probably too late now, but that is a solid crack. 

 /ETA: This and both the Trump University crap, and the release of tax info. Turn the screws on this chump.

Will these actually be effective though?

I would suggest his supporters won't give a shit.

[Horza]

It's the sort of stuff they should have been doing back in August, now is much too late.

[Altherion]

15 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

You didn't answer the question. I'll try it again.

What shock to the system will Trump provide that will cause people to do something differently than what they're doing right now?

What is 'something silly' and why do you believe that something silly will not cause massive harm? 

I told you, the main shock is that the old levers of influencing the election are no longer effective. As to something silly, it would almost certainly be along the lines of actually building a wall along our southern border -- expensive and pointless, but both less so and less harmful than what his predecessors have done.

Quote

 

Here are the broad powers of the executive branch, in case you didn't quite get what they could do.

1. Negotiate - or not - treaties with other countries. He can also sign them, though this will likely be fought by the Senate if they are problematic.
2. Issue any number of executive orders as he sees fit. These can be about immigration, law enforcement, etc. We'll get to those in a sec.
3. Pardon criminals. Good thing Trump doesn't know any of those.
4. Pass the budget bill. He can choose to veto any and all budgets if he so chooses. 
5. Appoint federal positions. Such as head of EPA, head of the CIA, etc. And those heads are free to completely dismantle those organizations.

As you say, treaties are subject to Senate approval so he cannot do much unilaterally. Furthermore, the most important treaties negotiated and implemented by Obama, G. W. Bush and B. Clinton have served to enrich large corporations (both domestic and foreign) at the expense of American consumers and workers. It is certainly possible to do even worse, but from Trump's rhetoric, he would actually do better than anyone but Sanders here.

Pardoning criminals is not likely to have an effect on the general population as he's not likely to do it for vast numbers of them. The budget is the domain of Congress -- he can refuse to sign it, but they can override him. The important federal positions (e.g. Directory of the CIA) are subject to Senate approval. Also, people trying to unilaterally dismantle such organizations without widespread support from the rest of government and the population as a whole are likely to discover that an individual human being is mortal.

Quote

 

So what about those executive orders? Here are some examples of them that didn't need congressional help.

1. Create entire new groups of bureacracy or dissolve them as he sees fit. The WPA system, the welfare system, medicare, social security - can be completely removed by the President via executive order. Or added. Department of Homeland Security didn't need congressional approval to exist. 
2. Internment of all the Japanese Americans. There is nothing specifically stopping the President from doing something like this. 
3. Remove all Native Americans from their homes and place them on reservations. There is nothing stopping the President from doing this, either. Want to kick out 11 million people because they're latino, deny them habeus corpus and take all their stuff? The President can legally do that without an agreement from congress, provided that they're not asking for extra funding for it. 
4. Affirmative action? That can be completely removed too; it was added via executive order.
5. FEMA? You can get rid of that. Another executive order.
6. Bomb Libya? Yep, President can order that too. Any short-term military intervention that does not require specific funding the President can authorize. This also means that he can authorize drone strikes, special forces attacks, missile attacks, and even potentially use of nuclear weaponry.
7. Torture people? Yep, the President can authorize that too.

 

Many of the programs you mention are actually created by laws passed by Congress (e.g. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid). The executive branch can of course refuse to execute a specific law... but these programs are really popular and anyone who tried it would get smacked down by the courts and quite likely impeached in short order. Those explicitly created by executive order can be recreated by Congress should the President decide to remove them while they're still popular.

Internment was only possible because of WWII and even then the courts declared it illegal afterwards and the government paid those interned. If somebody was mad enough to try it, it would go to the Supreme Court in record time and get declared unconstitutional 8-0. Same idea with Native Americans: somebody got away with it once, but there's no way the courts will allow anything of the sort today. The only thing he might actually do along these lines is increase the number of deportations of illegal immigrants, but it's difficult to do even that without extra funding.

Affirmative action has long outlived its usefulness -- if Trump gets rid of it, good riddance. FEMA is another example of an agency that has survived multiple administrations. Again, yes, Trump can in principle try to get rid of it, but he has no reason to do so and Congress can reinstate it.

Short-term military interventions are indeed a big deal, but again, Trump and Sanders look better than any of the other candidates on this issue. Torture is against international conventions that we've ratified -- the President can order it, but the duty of the armed forces is to refuse such orders.

[Kalbear]

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I told you, the main shock is that the old levers of influencing the election are no longer effective. As to something silly, it would almost certainly be along the lines of actually building a wall along our southern border -- expensive and pointless, but both less so and less harmful than what his predecessors have done.

How is this a shock? Who is this shocking? What is the change that you're expecting as a result? You've still not answered what you expect as a result of a Trump presidency that will be a good overall change in the future. What, precisely, is the positive result? This is the third time I've asked you and gotten nothing.

Quote

 Also, people trying to unilaterally dismantle such organizations without widespread support from the rest of government and the population as a whole are likely to discover that an individual human being is mortal.

Gotcha; you believe that Trump's major power check is going to be the threat of assassination from CIA led forces. That seems rational. 

Quote

The executive branch can of course refuse to execute a specific law... but these programs are really popular and anyone who tried it would get smacked down by the courts and quite likely impeached in short order. Those explicitly created by executive order can be recreated by Congress should the President decide to remove them while they're still popular.

Popularity does not mean illegality. What grounds would they have to impeach him if he removed a popular program? And recreating a program after getting rid of it is pretty difficult too. 

Quote

Internment was only possible because of WWII and even then the courts declared it illegal afterwards and the government paid those interned. If somebody was mad enough to try it, it would go to the Supreme Court in record time and get declared unconstitutional 8-0. Same idea with Native Americans: somebody got away with it once, but there's no way the courts will allow anything of the sort today. The only thing he might actually do along these lines is increase the number of deportations of illegal immigrants, but it's difficult to do even that without extra funding.

Gotcha; all it takes is one terrorist action and bam, instant deportation and internment. Remember that a good chunk of the US supports things like mass deportation or getting rid of all muslims. And it's not particularly hard to, say, tell the Arizona law enforcement and sheriff Arpaio that yep, go ahead and just kick people out and take their stuff, and I got your back. 

And the Supreme Court can rule on something's unconstitutionality, but it doesn't take much for it to be enforced illegally during that time. How much harm can you cause in 6 months time? Quite a bit. 

I mean, Texas already has declared that the national guard should stand ready so that they don't get invaded by the Federal government and Obama. How much funding do you think it's going to take? Arizona already wants to do what Trump's asking to do. Texas does as well. Why do you think it costs a lot of money to take people's stuff without habeus corpus and throw people out? It's pretty cheap. About as cheap as hiring a train car and putting bunches of people in cattle cars. Trump could afford that with his change. 

So basically you're saying that it's totally fine for him to dismantle huge swaths of the  government people  depend on because they can be reinstated eventually, and that's a positive outcome. 

[Kalbear]

And in non 'I don't know what's wrong so I'm going to blow everything up because who cares' news, Clinton is beating Sanders 68-31 in exit polls. Per 538, in order for Sanders to have a good shot he had to lose by about 20 points. 

Also apparently Clinton won the SC black vote (+68) by more than Obama did in 2008 (+59). 

[Kalbear]

More on Clinton beating Sanders.

Quote

 

Sanders needs something to change because frankly he’s losing.

Indeed, South Carolina is even more of a setback for Sanders than it appears at first glance because it reverses the progress he had been making. If you look at my colleague Nate Silver’s estimates of how Sanders would do in each caucus or primary if the race were tied nationally (Sanders needs to beat these targets to have a shot at the nomination), we see that Sanders did 19 percentage points worse than the benchmark in Iowa, 10 percentage points worse in New Hampshire and 5 percentage points worse in Nevada. That is, Sanders did not hit the target in any of those contests, but he got closer to it as time went on. In South Carolina, it looks like Sanders will run at least 10 percentage points worse than we would expect given a tie nationally, suggesting that the race has stabilized or moved in Clinton’s direction since Nevada.

Sanders’s loss of momentum couldn’t have come at a worse time for his campaign. There are six Super Tuesday states (Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia,Tennessee, Texas and Virginia) where black voters made up a larger share of the electorate in 2008 than they did in Iowa, New Hampshire or Nevada this year. That Sanders couldn’t break through with black voters in either Nevada or South Carolina, despite a heavy investment, makes it difficult to believe he will have any more success in these six states, where his campaign hasn’t put in the same effort.

 

 

[Stan the Man Baratheon]

25 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

And in non 'I don't know what's wrong so I'm going to blow everything up because who cares' news, Clinton is beating Sanders 68-31 in exit polls. Per 538, in order for Sanders to have a good shot he had to lose by about 20 points. 

Also apparently Clinton won the SC black vote (+68) by more than Obama did in 2008 (+59). 

Super Tuesday will be a bloodbath for Bernie. 

[Tempra]

It's a bit much listening to Hillary invoke the names of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown after her role in perpetuating fear of black males--the so called "super predators."

[IheartIheartTesla]

23 minutes ago, Stan the Man Baratheon said:

Super Tuesday will be a bloodbath for Bernie. 

According to Harry Enten's analysis he will end up with a ~ 150 delegate deficit, I'm sure if you put that through a Trump translator that ends up being a bloodbath. However, there are 13 states and a fair bit of extrapolation going on with minimal polling (538 doesnt even have predictions for 5 of those), so presumably the hope is that the Clinton lead ends up being a little less than that.

[Ormond]

45 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

t takes is one terrorist action and bam, instant deportation and internment. Remember that a good chunk of the US supports things like mass deportation or getting rid of all muslims. And it's not particularly hard to, say, tell the Arizona law enforcement and sheriff Arpaio that yep, go ahead and just kick people out and take their stuff, and I got your back. 

And the Supreme Court can rule on something's unconstitutionality, but it doesn't take much for it to be enforced illegally during that time. How much harm can you cause in 6 months time? Quite a bit. 

I mean, Texas already has declared that the national guard should stand ready so that they don't get invaded by the Federal government and Obama. How much funding do you think it's going to take? Arizona already wants to do what Trump's asking to do. Texas does as well. Why do you think it costs a lot of money to take people's stuff without habeus corpus and throw people out? It's pretty cheap. About as cheap as hiring a train car and putting bunches of people in cattle cars. Trump could afford that with his change. 

So basically you're saying that it's totally fine for him to dismantle huge swaths of the  government people  depend on because they can be reinstated eventually, and that's a positive outcome. 

Well, one thing, Kalbear, is if a Trump administration would try mass deportation or internment, it would trigger a very large civil disobedience movement akin to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s or the Vietnam was protests. The people who are against this just aren't going to take this lying down -- you would have a lot of religiously motivated liberals out on the front lines, as the major mainline Protestant churches as well as the Pope have already come out against this.

I am a 64 year old man who never joined a Vietnam protest or Civil Rights protest when I was young, still being a bit conservative back then. During all of my years as a GLBT activist in the Presbyterian church I never felt called to do anything that might lead to arrest, though several of my friends did. But I can tell you that if the federal government in the USA starts rounding up Muslims and putting them in detention camps, I will be right there on the front lines with thousands of other people my age getting ready to be arrested to protest such an utterly despicable action. I think there are enough people who have learned from the World War II Japanese internments and feel as I do to know that if the government tried to do this in any sudden and massive way they'd end up having jails full of non-Muslims protesting it all across the country. They'd have to be really slow and sneaky about it and try to do it under the radar not to get massive protests -- and that's harder to do in the Internet age than it would have been before. There may be a "good chunk" that would support such things, but that chunk is way smaller than it was in World War II and you'd have to have more than one new terrorist attack as big as 9/11 not to end up with a huge public outcry from those of us who are opposed to this. 

[A Prince of Dorne]

6 hours ago, sologdin said:

yeah, unlikely that criticisms of male privilege &c will ever adopt a fundamentalist rhetoric--so what purpose in conflating them in the bogus attempt to appear aloof from the issues raised in the thread? I.e., you're manifestly not disinterested in politics, especially when deploying an implicit producerist slur against those without health insurance.

This post is an example of why people are actually voting for Trump. Everyone is sick of your PC social justice warrior crap wrapped in a bunch of words that mean nothing and less. People are SO sick of it that they are gravitating toward an insane person simply because he says the words that are on his mind and doesn't care what your PC fraternity thinks about it. 

 

I don't mean to call you out specifically, because there are a whole hell of a lot of examples on here. It's just the first one I ran into in this thread and I've grown sick of not saying anything.

[Stan the Man Baratheon]

6 minutes ago, A Prince of Dorne said:

This post is an example of why people are actually voting for Trump. Everyone is sick of your PC social justice warrior crap wrapped in a bunch of words that mean nothing and less. People are SO sick of it that they are gravitating toward an insane person simply because he says the words that are on his mind and doesn't care what your PC fraternity thinks about it. 

 

I don't mean to call you out specifically, because there are a whole hell of a lot of examples on here. It's just the first one I ran into in this thread and I've grown sick of not saying anything.

You are going to be called a dumb person if you vote for Trump. Atleast one person in the previous thread explicitly called Trump supporters stupid.  

Remember you are only smart if you vote democrat. 

You get bonus points over here if you call Trump any of those Tumblr salad words.