U.S. Elections: Trumpsterfire Unchained

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Just now, Mlle. Zabzie said:

Another amazing quote in there showing his disrespect/misunderstanding of our constitutional system.  He apparently implied that if he wins, Paul Ryan should be removed as speaker.  While it is true that the House could choose a different speaker, the position is certainly NOT a presidential appointment.  Nor should it be.

He has a point though. The house may choose the speaker it likes. But if we assumed for a moment, Trump by some freak accident/Faustian deal (I doubt has soul has sufficient trade value though)/voodoo spell/blood sacrifice of his first born (probably also not enough trade value) to some demonic entity managed to win the presidency, then Ryan's position as speaker would be untenable. I mean he would be directly at odds with the President from his own party. He would be more or less forced to resign, or getting ousted by the Tea party fraction of his own party (which I wouldn't rule out even after a Trump loss).

[Fez]

2 hours ago, Shryke said:

It's incredibly implausible. How is the current Democratic coalition going to absorb white nationalists? Are the blacks and latinos gonna do it? Or the far left? The rest of the GOP simply isn't worth absorbing even if they could. Too small and fundamentally opposed to the general ideas of the Democratic coalition and also the previously most visible part of the party, especially in DC.

The parties looked different before the realignment in the middle of last century but america looked alot different too. Like, a hell of alot whiter being the biggest one.

I don't think the current Democratic coalition is going to absorb the white nationalists, but I could see them absorbing the US Chamber of Commerce and various additional suburban voters. Not a ton of voters, but a lot of money. And that money would have the potential to influence Democratic policy, especially on economic stuff. Quite possibly enough to turn off the Sanders/Warren wing of the party. 

If that happened, the most likely thing they do is trying making a left-wing tea party to keep Democrats more liberal; but if that fails, its not impossible to imagine them eventually creating some populist chimera party with the white nationalists and/or evangelics; who never cared much about economic policy in the first place.

It seems implausible, but so did the idea in 1960 that the South would abandon the Democratic party within a couple years

[SerPaladin]

7 minutes ago, Fez said:

I don't think the current Democratic coalition is going to absorb the white nationalists, but I could see them absorbing the US Chamber of Commerce and various additional suburban voters. Not a ton of voters, but a lot of money. And that money would have the potential to influence Democratic policy, especially on economic stuff. Quite possibly enough to turn off the Sanders/Warren wing of the party.

That would be my people. And not for nothing, but that's where much of the democratic party was in the Clinton years, post Health Care Reform. You all want to fix the costs of some bloated government programs and continue with progress on social issues, I'd be on board. Want to shrink defense spending to do it? I'm still listening.

[Kalbear]

I've been thinking a lot about what a different two-party system would look like, and how the Trump alt right crapsack coalition could be absorbed.

What I've figured is that they'll go entirely for white populism. Go for popular tax cuts that boost the poor across the board and more entitlement programs which are universally pretty liked. Tax the rich, because why not? Go for anti-immigration (across the board, not naming any nationality), go for anti-trade across the board, go for distinct lack of interventionism across the board. Don't care that much about criminal justice reform but do care about decriminalizing some drugs, especially given the opioid addiction. Attack wall street heavily, attack banks heavily. Promise to keep borders secure and safe and staying out of the business of others, and point to decades of interventionist disasters. Split the difference on things like abortion in the party too, if you can - have a lot of pro-lifers and pro-choice folks and point out that you can respect both. Probably go a bit anti-gay, though only a smidgen - denounce explicit laws designed to discriminate, but also denounce court overreach. 

It wouldn't be the republican party as it exists right now, but you could build it from the current ashes without too much of difficulty, I suspect.

The Democrats would lose a lot of their ability to fight on policy (tax cuts and the like), they would lose a lot of their ability to fight on entitlement, and they would have to wage a war on saying why immigration is good, why globalism is good, and why intervention is good. 

[lokisnow]

4 hours ago, Notone said:

Yes. But Pruitt claimed there's far worse out there, he knows that from his time at the Apprentice. Which was Season 1-2 (?).

So that reduces the initial search significantly, if you only look at the first two seasons. If you say it's impossible due to time constraints, then I have to take your word for it. Pruitt may or may not be able to narrow down the "search area" a bit further. But that's rather hypothetical atm. And it kinda spoils the fun to guess, which skeleton is next to jump out of his closet.

Oh the first few season are probably even longer to get in. This is because apprentice was on the air during an era of rapid technological change in acquisition of television content. The first few seasons were likely shot on tape rather than XdCAM disc. Physical tape can only be ingested in realtime and only one tape per computer while xdcam can be ingested at about 8x real time and three discs per computer. If you were able to find 20 tape decks (about five times normal ) and twenty computers each one would only get about 18 hour a day brought in because rewinding speeds are slow to protect tape integrity, that's only 360 hours per day of a 2700 ish likely total

[SerPaladin]

9 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

What I've figured is that they'll go entirely for white populism. Go for popular tax cuts that boost the poor across the board and more entitlement programs which are universally pretty liked. Tax the rich, because why not? Go for anti-immigration (across the board, not naming any nationality), go for anti-trade across the board, go for distinct lack of interventionism across the board. Don't care that much about criminal justice reform but do care about decriminalizing some drugs, especially given the opioid addiction. Attack wall street heavily, attack banks heavily. Promise to keep borders secure and safe and staying out of the business of others, and point to decades of interventionist disasters. Split the difference on things like abortion in the party too, if you can - have a lot of pro-lifers and pro-choice folks and point out that you can respect both. Probably go a bit anti-gay, though only a smidgen - denounce explicit laws designed to discriminate, but also denounce court overreach.

Aside from Trump's tax breaks for the super-rich, this is pretty much what they are doing now. Populism, Anti-Immigration, Anti-Trade, attack wall street, secure borders. All part of the Trump plan.

You lose the evangelicals with this plan though, particularly the drug decriminalization and lack of anti-gay and abortion policies. The abortion thing is still huge with that bloc. They talk about the black children that they would be saving if they had power, and comparing those saved lives with the death penalty, and say they are better for the african american community based on that calculus.

[Kalbear]

Just now, SerPaladin said:

Aside from Trump's tax breaks for the super-rich, this is pretty much what they are doing now. Populism, Anti-Immigration, Anti-Trade, attack wall street, secure borders. All part of the Trump plan.

You lose the evangelicals with this plan though, particularly the drug decriminalization and lack of anti-gay and abortion policies. The abortion thing is still huge with that bloc. They talk about the black children that they would be saving if they had power, and comparing those saved lives with the death penalty, and say they are better for the african american community based on that calculus.

It's close, but not quite. Don't go after immigration quite so openly racist - do it because you need to deal with our country first. Don't plan on cutting policies like Trump has said (like the EPA or DoE) - instead either promise better education and better results. And definitely put out a tax plan that goes all in on taxing the rich, and blames them and the wall street elites and the political elites for the problems - and wants to punish them. 

Trump can't be the kind of person that does this at all. There are a lot of others that could. 

I don't think you lose the evangelicals. The evangelicals have been shown to be entirely pragmatic in their choice of voters. You might lose mormons, but probably not like Trump has. 

[Zorral]

In terms of all these issues being discussed, have any of you seen 13th?  It lays out the consciously crafted strategy that has this nation exactly where we are at this moment, starting with Nixon.  The Clintons were as much a part of it as Reagan, though of course they've apologized for it (not that it helps anyone suffering from what they did) whereas none of the Repubs have.  It's a great way to catch up with history that one may have forgotten, or be too young to have lived through, in a relatively short period of time.

What I don't quite get is why the alt right haters go after the Clintonsfor all these imaginary bs crimes, when there are very fine real issues they could beat them with.  But of course, incarceration of African Americans is an issue the alt right is right down with, right?

 

 

 

[SerPaladin]

1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

It's close, but not quite. Don't go after immigration quite so openly racist - do it because you need to deal with our country first. Don't plan on cutting policies like Trump has said (like the EPA or DoE) - instead either promise better education and better results. And definitely put out a tax plan that goes all in on taxing the rich, and blames them and the wall street elites and the political elites for the problems - and wants to punish them. 

Trump can't be the kind of person that does this at all. There are a lot of others that could. 

I don't think you lose the evangelicals. The evangelicals have been shown to be entirely pragmatic in their choice of voters. You might lose mormons, but probably not like Trump has. 

That could be the basis of a "rust-belt" centered party growing out of the Trump coalition.

I think with the immigration plank downplayed, but still including your "punishing" tax policy and playing up the abortion and social themes, you could (theoretically) build a party around the evangelicals that swept up minorities currently on the D side. Evangelicals taking up the income inequality plank of the D platform as "Christian" could make inroads. I threw that parenthetical in there for one simple reason. Those Evangelicals tend to have a significant overlap with the racists/ Alt-right types. They would have to literally have a come to Jesus moment.

Trump's "center", the last guys who will give up the fight, appear to be the conspiracy minded Alex Jones and Breitbart crew. That's a good thing. Those guys are confirmed crazy, and it's well known.

[Kalbear]

Right. I'm saying that like evangelicals the truly insane people are going to have to latch on to whatever movement most closely gives them what they want and beg for scraps. They're loud right now, but they're still (I believe) mostly a small minority of R voters. 

You could even make it a largely "Christian" cause too, if you wanted, but that runs the risk of alienating the Sandernistas. I think it'd be better to say that you support a "Western" viewpoint instead - where Enlightenment, Protestantism and founding principles are rewarded, while extremist religion views are not. This would again possibly hurt in some evangelical areas, but you'd still likely have them coming on board because you are against Islamic viewpoints. 

So you lose the latino vote for a bit, but probably not extremely (and as I pointed out, the latino vote nationally doesn't actually affect the elections a whole lot yet). You probably get quite a bit of AA voting, especially if you spend some outreach targeting it specifically early; you don't have to get it all, but you just have to put some cracks in it and make it plausible that your policies will help the poor AA community heavily too. You lose all of wall street and a lot of intellectual liberals, but gain working class liberals and hopefully young voters. 

[lokisnow]

5 hours ago, Arch-MaesterPhilip said:

I'm fine with the general election rules as they are.  The electoral college doesn't really bother me. 

Although I would prefer something like the Westminster system.  

The electoral college forces a two party system in any coordinated national election.

but more importantly, the electoral college, like the House of Representatives was a compromise created to protect and defend the institution of slavery. Virginia slave lords like Madison could use slave populations to artificially inflate their number of representatives in the house, and use the electoral college to also minimize the impact of the north having more property owning white male voters. 

It was a stellar construction to make sure the voting weight of every slave lord was worth far more than the combined weight of non slave lords.

The electoral college, we keep it because of how much we love slavery or how much we hate talking about slavery.

[Ariadne23]

What I wonder is this: Does anyone really believe that some significant portion of self-identified-white "mainstream" Republicans truly do not care whatsoever about a future non-majority-white America? Not for reasons of political expediency, but in a more fundamental, identity politics kind of way. Is it not possible that more and more of them grow more sympathetic to the alt-right movement as time goes on and people who identify as northern european heritage become a minority in this country? I for one do not identify belonging to the western political/philosophical/ideological tradition with being "white," but that's a stretch for a lot of people, and those people seem to easily equate that demographic decline with some kind of eventual loss of whatever we mean when we say "western values" (which ironically includes placing a high value on diversity and tolerance as the best way to avoid a stagnating culture, but I'll just set that aside for now). This greatly concerns me.

[Tywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

Another amazing quote in there showing his disrespect/misunderstanding of our constitutional system.  He apparently implied that if he wins, Paul Ryan should be removed as speaker.  While it is true that the House could choose a different speaker, the position is certainly NOT a presidential appointment.  Nor should it be.

Yeah I noticed that too. Honestly I think we're at the point where we can concluded that Trump doesn't know very much about the government in general.

[Ariadne23]

6 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Yeah I noticed that too. Honestly I think we're at the point where we can concluded that Trump doesn't know very much about the government in general.

He'd have to care to know in order to know. I imagine he thinks rules (like those preventing sexual assault or harassment, for example) are the silly things beta humans put in place to protect themselves from alpha males like himself. 

[Tywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

I've been thinking a lot about what a different two-party system would look like, and how the Trump alt right crapsack coalition could be absorbed.

What I've figured is that they'll go entirely for white populism. Go for popular tax cuts that boost the poor across the board and more entitlement programs which are universally pretty liked. Tax the rich, because why not? Go for anti-immigration (across the board, not naming any nationality), go for anti-trade across the board, go for distinct lack of interventionism across the board. Don't care that much about criminal justice reform but do care about decriminalizing some drugs, especially given the opioid addiction. Attack wall street heavily, attack banks heavily. Promise to keep borders secure and safe and staying out of the business of others, and point to decades of interventionist disasters. Split the difference on things like abortion in the party too, if you can - have a lot of pro-lifers and pro-choice folks and point out that you can respect both. Probably go a bit anti-gay, though only a smidgen - denounce explicit laws designed to discriminate, but also denounce court overreach. 

It wouldn't be the republican party as it exists right now, but you could build it from the current ashes without too much of difficulty, I suspect.

The Democrats would lose a lot of their ability to fight on policy (tax cuts and the like), they would lose a lot of their ability to fight on entitlement, and they would have to wage a war on saying why immigration is good, why globalism is good, and why intervention is good. 

In this hypothetical, what happens to the Country Club Republicans? I think that's the group that might have the biggest impact on any type of realignment.  They can't stay with the alt-right, and they can't go it alone. But if they try and join forces with the Democrats, the left might bail on the party and that could elevate the Greens as a viable third party. And therein lies the problem, because we're almost to the point where there are three viable factions. 

[Jaxom 1974]

http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/trailguide/la-na-trailguide-updates-trump-backers-tweet-repealthe19th-1476299001-htmlstory.html

This is a joke, right? 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Jaxom,

Given the people supporting Trump I somehow doubt it.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

9 minutes ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/trailguide/la-na-trailguide-updates-trump-backers-tweet-repealthe19th-1476299001-htmlstory.html

This is a joke, right? 

It's upsetting that this is a thing.  But so are a lot of things about this campaign.

[Kalbear]

26 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

In this hypothetical, what happens to the Country Club Republicans? I think that's the group that might have the biggest impact on any type of realignment.  They can't stay with the alt-right, and they can't go it alone. But if they try and join forces with the Democrats, the left might bail on the party and that could elevate the Greens as a viable third party. And therein lies the problem, because we're almost to the point where there are three viable factions. 

There just aren't that many of them, honestly. They would likely be the ones that are pro globalism, pro free-trade, and pro intervention. In this they'd likely move over to the Democrats (as many have in this election). 

[Martell Spy]

Support for diversity is a powerful glue that holds the Democratic party together. And this is likely only going to increase as the party becomes even more diverse. Recall it was Bernie Sanders supporters that were on the news all the time protesting Trump. I'm a leftist myself, and I just can't see them taking the 30 silver coins to go join nationalists in exchange for some economic policy. The Republican or nationalist party would have to make major reforms to get them and lose large amounts of voters in the process. All indications right now are that the Democratic party holds together, whatever form that takes.

As for the Republicans, well either they'll get their shit together, or it will be very good for Democrats in the short term and terrible for the country in the long term. It's not impossible that they won't. They just selected Romney in 2012 after all. Some of the people right now supporting Trump are just people that will vote R no matter what. The big donors of the party may have to look in a mirror though. By so many of them having their own bought politician like a race horse, they helped Trump rise. They are one of the problems their party needs to fix, or they may do it again in 2020.