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U.S. Politics 2016: It Can't Happen Here


Mr. Chatywin et al.

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1 hour ago, Fez said:

Perhaps. We'll see soon enough. But I believe that not all norms are created equal, and just because Trump was able to break a lot of election-related ones doesn't mean he'll be able to break all of them. The key difference being that most election-related norms were just traditions, whereas governance norms are legal requirements. And even if Congress passes laws that Trump signs to change those requirements, the lawsuits challenging those requirements will take years to resolve. And even if they are ultimately upheld, will take years more to fully implement.

There are certainly very conservative polices Trump could implement very quickly if he is on the same page as Congress, but changes in policy aren't the same as changes in norms of governance.

Like you said, we'll just have to wait and see.

13 hours ago, TerraPrime said:

But you know what? It really doesn't matter. Call the developing fetuses "adults" if you want. I would still support legal abortions with minimum regulation. If there's an adult human being whose life depends on his/her feeding tube attached to my stomach, I get to decide when or if I pull the feeding tube out.

TP, you're being such a strident libertarian. :P

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ME,

Is that norm gone or was Trump combined with a pathetic GOP primary field an extreme outlier? He's a cautionary tale, not the new norm.





Trump, barring something truly bizarre happening (not an impossibility this year), is going to be President of the US.  As such his win is going to impact the way things happen in the future.  Discounting his impact, at this point, is unwise in my opinion. 

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2 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

ME,
Trump, barring something truly bizarre happening (not an impossibility this year), is going to be President of the US.  As such his win is going to impact the way things happen in the future.  Discounting his impact, at this point, is unwise in my opinion. 

Oh yeah, I'm not intending to discount his impact. This is going to be a really rough 4-8 years, no doubt. That said, there's no way in hell you can convince me that this petulant child is the new norm for political candidacy in this country. The GOP field this election was laughably pathetic. His success early in the process did surprise me, but when you look at how the party was split, it became clear pretty early that he was going to win the nomination. I think he might have been able to have pulled this off (won the GOP nomination) last cycle, but he would've been buried in the General. This election was basically a perfect shitstorm of circumstance for this Turd to pull a victory out of his ass, despite himself.

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3 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

Oh yeah, I'm not intending to discount his impact. This is going to be a really rough 4-8 years, no doubt. That said, there's no way in hell you can convince me that this petulant child is the new norm for political candidacy in this country. The GOP field this election was laughably pathetic. His success early in the process did surprise me, but when you look at how the party was split, it became clear pretty early that he was going to win the nomination. I think he might have been able to have pulled this off (won the GOP nomination) last cycle, but he would've been buried in the General. This election was basically a perfect shitstorm of circumstance for this Turd to pull a victory out of his ass, despite himself.

I hope you're right, but I fear you're wrong.

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2 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I hope you're right, but I fear you're wrong.

Will there be candidates that model their campaigns and delivery around his style? Sure, I can buy that. That said, I think he's pretty singular in terms of personality, fame, and social stature. How many charismatic billionaire reality TV stars are there? 

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10 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

Oh yeah, I'm not intending to discount his impact. This is going to be a really rough 4-8 years, no doubt. That said, there's no way in hell you can convince me that this petulant child is the new norm for political candidacy in this country. The GOP field this election was laughably pathetic. His success early in the process did surprise me, but when you look at how the party was split, it became clear pretty early that he was going to win the nomination. I think he might have been able to have pulled this off (won the GOP nomination) last cycle, but he would've been buried in the General. This election was basically a perfect shitstorm of circumstance for this Turd to pull a victory out of his ass, despite himself.

The Republican field was actually pretty strong this year, especially compared to prior years. We had Jeb Bush, a successful and somewhat popular Governor with a lot of financial backing. We had Rubio, a young, attractive up and comer with good demographics from a good state. We had the tea partyer Cruz. Any of those would have been a strong candidate in another year. 

Trump not only beat them, he beat them handily and fairly quickly. Now, part of that is because of how the republican primaries are built - winner take all systems when there are a LOT of candidates basically fall apart when someone is more popular than anyone else but less popular than the field. But that doesn't discount how strong Trump was. 

I don't know that he's the new normal in personality - but I think he's absolutely closer to the new normal for Republicans. I think you're going to see a lot more overt racism, a lot more nationalist fervor, a lot more overt speaking to white people, a lot more overt sexism, and far more combative systems between politicians. You already saw this quite a bit with the tea party politics; what this normalizes is no compromises, no matter what, because each side sees the other as basically evil. 

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10 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

Will there be candidates that model their campaigns and delivery around his style? Sure, I can buy that. That said, I think he's pretty singular in terms of personality, fame, and social stature. How many charismatic billionaire reality TV stars are there? 

And that should scare you more, honestly. 

Trump isn't a politician, has very little concept of what he legally can and cannot do, and has absolutely no idea what he should and should not say - but he pushed the norms significantly and broke most others. He showed what can be gotten away with now. His boast that he could shoot some one isn't a joke, it's a boast. 

To whit, he has shown that he can be corrupt, he can be sued over 3000 times, he can be on tape threatening sexual assault with vulgar terms, he can directly appoint donors to his campaign to his cabinet without even hiding it, he can openly advocate foreign governments paying his businesses to give him benefits in exchange for favors, he can appoint literal white supremacists, he can make Romney kiss his ass publicly to try and get a job - and no one in his party complains worth a damn. If you don't think that Ryan and McConnell and Rubio and Cruz aren't paying attention to that sort of thing, well, heh. Before this they've been restrained by the thought that they couldn't possibly get away with this kind of thing, but not only can they get away with it no one gives a fucking shit as long as you threaten some muslims and undocumented immigrants. 

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1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

The Republican field was actually pretty strong this year, especially compared to prior years. We had Jeb Bush, a successful and somewhat popular Governor with a lot of financial backing. We had Rubio, a young, attractive up and comer with good demographics from a good state. We had the tea partyer Cruz. Any of those would have been a strong candidate in another year. 

Trump not only beat them, he beat them handily and fairly quickly. Now, part of that is because of how the republican primaries are built - winner take all systems when there are a LOT of candidates basically fall apart when someone is more popular than anyone else but less popular than the field. But that doesn't discount how strong Trump was. 

I don't know that he's the new normal in personality - but I think he's absolutely closer to the new normal for Republicans. I think you're going to see a lot more overt racism, a lot more nationalist fervor, a lot more overt speaking to white people, a lot more overt sexism, and far more combative systems between politicians. You already saw this quite a bit with the tea party politics; what this normalizes is no compromises, no matter what, because each side sees the other as basically evil. 

There's no way you can convince me this was a good field. You had a tired Establishment candidate with zero charisma (Bush). The only thing he had going for him was his warchest. You had the supposedly charismatic newcomer, who couldn't live up to his own label (Rubio) and you had a much hated Tea Party schlub (Cruz) who couldn't seem to rally anyone outside the evangelicals. None of these guys was as strong a candidate as Romney, who never struck me as a particularly strong candidate.

 I'll give you the bit regarding GOP language, that may well become the new norm, I wouldn't be surprised if that occurs. No compromise however was normalized long before this primary took place. It's been the Republican mantra for the past 8 years. I don't see how Trump had anything to do with that. 

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2 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

 I'll give you the bit regarding GOP language, that may well become the new norm, I wouldn't be surprised if that occurs. No compromise however was normalized long before this primary took place. It's been the Republican mantra for the past 8 years. I don't see how Trump had anything to do with that. 

That's true. Before this, however, Democratic politicians were at least willing to talk about compromise and meeting halfway. Obama was absolutely about that. I think that Trump has made it pretty clear that that ship has sailed. 

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1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

That is a consistent libertarian position on that issue.

Not for conservative libertarians. On abortion rights, the conservatism usually trumps the libertarianism. Either way it was just a joke.

Now time to brighten everyone's day:

http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/12/08/504737811/russia-seen-moving-new-missiles-to-eastern-europe

Will we at least get a pretty fireworks show before the end of the world? 

 

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3 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

The move by the Presidential Inauguration Committee to ask the National Park Service to bar mass protests after the inauguration (which the NPS has acceded to) is quite disturbing.

Perhaps she is wrong, but this woman here seems to be suggesting this is normal for every presidential inauguration? Is it possible this issue is being overblown?

 

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1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

Before this they've been restrained by the thought that they couldn't possibly get away with this kind of thing, but not only can they get away with it no one gives a fucking shit as long as you threaten some muslims and undocumented immigrants.

Correction: nobody cares as long as they are promised decent jobs and those promises are kept. I think you are drastically underestimating how central the economy (in the sense of the fortunes of ordinary Americans, not the usual averaging which ties the definition to the 1%) is to Trump's success. Most of the issues mentioned in this thread as having brought him to power are at best double-edged: they alienate potentially as many people as they appeal to. He's not going to get anywhere if the jobs don't show up and no amount of Twitter rants and threats are going to help him then.

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16 minutes ago, Altherion said:

Correction: nobody cares as long as they are promised decent jobs and those promises are kept. I think you are drastically underestimating how central the economy (in the sense of the fortunes of ordinary Americans, not the usual averaging which ties the definition to the 1%) is to Trump's success. Most of the issues mentioned in this thread as having brought him to power are at best double-edged: they alienate potentially as many people as they appeal to. He's not going to get anywhere if the jobs don't show up and no amount of Twitter rants and threats are going to help him then.

Bullshit.  Trump's entire draw was the fact that you could blame someone else for your woes.  "Its not my fault I refuse to retrain after my industry has been abandoned to time, its the damn Chinese (that have literally nothing to do with it).  Its not my fault I'm called a racist because I just want black people to go away, its all the black people's fault for pointing out my racist behavior!"  Everything can be blamed on someone else and I think that when the economy craters like the last time we decided that removing all financial regulation was a good idea, you'll find that Trump manages to blame it on literally everyone else and his supporters lap it all up.  He'll get plenty if the jobs don't show up because he'll manage to keep blaming others and since that is his defining characteristic of support, he'll keep getting that support.  His supporters don't want to take any responsibility for their own actions already, they sure as hell won't admit they made a mistake and elected a demagogue with no defined plan.  

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3 minutes ago, MerenthaClone said:

He'll get plenty if the jobs don't show up because he'll manage to keep blaming others and since that is his defining characteristic of support, he'll keep getting that support.

Some people will, but not enough to keep him in power. I don't doubt that there are people who will be swayed by blaming others, but there are many who have seen these games before and just want somebody to improve their lives already. They trusted Obama to do it and he failed so they turned on him in 2010. Now they've turned to Trump and if he fails, they'll turn on him as well. Obama started with a much larger margin than Trump as well as practically guaranteed support from a certain fraction of the electorate for an obvious reason so he managed to last two terms (also, the GOP nominating the Avatar of the One Percent helped him quite a bit). If Trump can't deliver the jobs, he won't last past one.

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