U.S. Politics: He's an Idiot, Plain and Simple

[DMC]

Just now, Rorshach said:

I’d hazard a guess at your Bureaucracy thread.

Indeed, but last time I checked there's no modules to speak of.

[DMC]

6 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

but the parties have become more polarized, not the electorate.

The electorate has been polarized.  It's folly to think they haven't.

[Chaircat Meow]

It certainly looks to me like Trump has a degree of political insight that raises him above mere moronhood, despite being poorly educated and suffering from a lack of impulse control. 

He and his campaign team understood that neither party was speaking to voters who moderately agreed with socially conservative positions but wanted a bigger state and protection against globalisation, and the progressive-liberal worldview that promotes it. Capturing these votes by attacking free trade and mass immigration allowed him to upend the electoral map and win despite defying the conventional wisdom of ‘his party.’

The Republican party were defeatist, thinking they were on the wrong side of history and believed they had to soften their opposition to the demographic and ideological changes overtaking America (in so far as they were really opposed to these anyway) to cultivate the rising hispanic and young progressive vote.

Small government would be the raison d’etre of the party, salted with a bit of Christian conservatism. This is not likely to work in the age of globalisation and we see this in Europe as well as America.

Generally if you change strategy in the face of more experienced opinion and your plan works, it seems peculiar you don’t get some credit for nous. Trump was also peppering himself with holes during the campaign so if he had been a bit more disciplined he’d likely have done even better and won the popular vote too.

As for luck, of course he was very lucky. No one can become the leader of a country of 320 million + in the face of massive competition for the job and a very gruelling campaign process without lots of luck. A real genius would need lots of luck to win, even if a moron might need more. So to insist he was lucky is to say nothing interesting. 

 

[Shryke]

11 hours ago, dmc515 said:

Yes, that's exactly why I'm calling Sanders a grifter.  He's been in Congress since 1991.  He knows better.  Thus, grifter.

Nah, he's just hopeful. He's a true believer. He's not trying to grift anyone, he really believes he could pull it off.

[DanteGabriel]

2 hours ago, Martell Spy said:

Jared Kushner’s Father, Charles: Ethics Watchdogs Are ‘Jerks’

https://www.thedailybeast.com/jared-kushners-father-charles-ethics-watchdogs-are-jerks?ref=home

"And those ethics watchdogs were especially jerky when they sent me to prison just because I hired a prostitute to seduce and blackmail my brother-in-law, to prevent him from testifying against me in a federal corruption case." No wonder Jared Kushner fit right in with the Trumps.

[mankytoes]

1 hour ago, dmc515 said:

Huh?  I'm confused and feel like an old man.  What thread - and more specifically what modules?  Have no idea what you're referring to.

Oh sorry, context, I'm talking about your Bureaucracy Thread, and my study for my Politics degree.  

[Shryke]

1 hour ago, Chaircat Meow said:

It certainly looks to me like Trump has a degree of political insight that raises him above mere moronhood, despite being poorly educated and suffering from a lack of impulse control. 

He and his campaign team understood that neither party was speaking to voters who moderately agreed with socially conservative positions but wanted a bigger state and protection against globalisation, and the progressive-liberal worldview that promotes it. Capturing these votes by attacking free-trade and mass immigration allowed him to upend the electoral map and win despite defying the conventional wisdom of ‘his party.’

The Republican party were defeatist, thinking they were on the wrong side of history and believed they had to soften their opposition to the demographic and ideological changes overtaking America (in so far as they were really opposed to these anyway) to cultivate the rising hispanic and young progressive vote.

Small government would be the raison d’etre of the party, salted with a bit of Christian conservatism. This is not likely to work in the age of globalisation and we see this in Europe as well as America.

Generally if you change strategy in the face of more experienced opinion and your plan works, it seems peculiar you don’t get some credit for nous. Trump was also peppering himself with holes during the campaign so if he had been a bit more disciplined he’d likely have done even better and won the popular vote too.

 As for luck, of course he was very lucky. No one can become the leader of a country of 320 million + in the face of massive competition for the job and a very gruelling campaign process without lots of luck. A real genius would need lots of luck to win, even if a moron might need more. So to insist he was lucky is to say nothing interesting. 

  

Trump exploited the division in the GOP between the people running the place and their voters. He did this because he's one of the base. He thinks like them, he gets all his information from the same place they get all their information, etc, etc. So he just blabs whatever comes to the top of his head and he wins because there's a large base within the GOP for the special blend of white identity politics: racism, protectionism and government aid but only for the "right people".

On top of this he's an outsider candidate in a climate where everyone still wants outsider candidates because they hate their own government and it's politicians because of a bunch of factors. Life sucks for a lot of people in the US and life sucks breeds anti-incumbency voting.

[Altherion]

9 hours ago, mankytoes said:

Do you actually believe in the electoral college on principle? Can you explain to me why it's better than the simple "winner takes all" system most countries use (often with a run off between the top two candidates)? It's a throw back to when it was "these United States", not "the United States".

The electoral college is definitely a historical artifact and I have no strong feelings about it. My point was simply that it makes no sense to judge performance in a contest by some parameter which was completely irrelevant as far as winning that contest was concerned.

[mankytoes]

2 hours ago, Shryke said:

Trump exploited the division in the GOP between the people running the place and their voters. He did this because he's one of the base. He thinks like them, he gets all his information from the same place they get all their information, etc, etc. So he just blabs whatever comes to the top of his head and he wins because there's a large base within the GOP for the special blend of white identity politics: racism, protectionism and government aid but only for the "right people".

On top of this he's an outsider candidate in a climate where everyone still wants outsider candidates because they hate their own government and it's politicians because of a bunch of factors. Life sucks for a lot of people in the US and life sucks breeds anti-incumbency voting.

It's interesting to me that this idea is so popular across the political spectrum, considering he was a registered Democrat as recently as 2009. For better or for worse, he's got a reputation for being sincere in his views that I don't think is deserved. 

That I definitely agree with, and it isn't like there is no reason for that, by any standard Congress does not generally function well. But unqualified people are not the answer. It's like if a school has teaching problems, you wouldn't just start hiring unqualified teachers. 

[Shryke]

7 minutes ago, mankytoes said:

It's interesting to me that this idea is so popular across the political spectrum, considering he was a registered Democrat as recently as 2009. For better or for worse, he's got a reputation for being sincere in his views that I don't think is deserved. 

That I definitely agree with, and it isn't like there is no reason for that, by any standard Congress does not generally function well. But unqualified people are not the answer. It's like if a school has teaching problems, you wouldn't just start hiring unqualified teachers. 

That's because that factoid is irrelevant. He's always been a huge fucking racist and law-and-order lover and idiot.

He's probably been supposedly a democrat because he works in New York City.

[mankytoes]

31 minutes ago, Shryke said:

That's because that factoid is irrelevant. He's always been a huge fucking racist and law-and-order lover and idiot.

He's probably been supposedly a democrat because he works in New York City.

I'm not sure it would be considered irrelevant if any other politician jumped ship like that. 

He doesn't just work in New York City, he was born and raised there, with multi-millionaire parents. It's hard to think of anyone else from that background as "one of the base". 

[HoodedCrow]

He speaks at a third grade level and repeats himself, so the main thing that people hear it the anger, the race baiting, the misogyny, the “ liberal” hate and the hatred directed at particular people. Once the amygdala is engaged, irrationality and mob behavior ensue. I guess that’s smartish. He equates his own crap to fake WWF drumming up of ratings, with pictures.

[felice]

4 hours ago, Altherion said:

The electoral college is definitely a historical artifact and I have no strong feelings about it.

How can someone posting in a US Politics thread not have strong feelings about something that was instrumental in the election of two of the last three presidents?

[HoodedCrow]

Felice, because his tribe wins that way.

[Shryke]

3 hours ago, mankytoes said:

I'm not sure it would be considered irrelevant if any other politician jumped ship like that. 

He doesn't just work in New York City, he was born and raised there, with multi-millionaire parents. It's hard to think of anyone else from that background as "one of the base". 

It absolutely would. Charles Kushner, Jared's scumbag criminal father, was also a democratic donor. Because he worked in and around NYC.

He's absolutely one of the base. He's a racist old white guy who spends most of his day watching cable news and believing the conspiracy theories fed to him by right-wing media. He's such a stereotypical republican it's almost funny.

[DanteGabriel]

3 hours ago, mankytoes said:

I'm not sure it would be considered irrelevant if any other politician jumped ship like that. 

He doesn't just work in New York City, he was born and raised there, with multi-millionaire parents. It's hard to think of anyone else from that background as "one of the base". 

Considering he wasn't a politician until after his birther turn, and he's always been a racist shitheel, I don't think his "jumping ship" to the Republican Party was very earthshaking at all.

[Altherion]

1 hour ago, felice said:

How can someone posting in a US Politics thread not have strong feelings about something that was instrumental in the election of two of the last three presidents?

Technically, it was instrumental in the election of every President since the very beginning. I used to feel strongly about it when I was a teenager, but then I learned more about the many, many attempts to come up with an ideal democratic system and even though our Electoral College is an accident of history, it's not actually too bad. It is much less harmful than, for example, the first-past-the-post (also known as winner-takes-all) voting system used in most states which gives all of the electors to the candidate who won a plurality (not necessarily even the majority) of votes.

[butterbumps!]

9 hours ago, Chaircat Meow said:

It certainly looks to me like Trump has a degree of political insight that raises him above mere moronhood, despite being poorly educated and suffering from a lack of impulse control. 

He and his campaign team understood that neither party was speaking to voters who moderately agreed with socially conservative positions but wanted a bigger state and protection against globalisation, and the progressive-liberal worldview that promotes it. Capturing these votes by attacking free-trade and mass immigration allowed him to upend the electoral map and win despite defying the conventional wisdom of ‘his party.’

The Republican party were defeatist, thinking they were on the wrong side of history and believed they had to soften their opposition to the demographic and ideological changes overtaking America (in so far as they were really opposed to these anyway) to cultivate the rising hispanic and young progressive vote.

Small government would be the raison d’etre of the party, salted with a bit of Christian conservatism. This is not likely to work in the age of globalisation and we see this in Europe as well as America.

Generally if you change strategy in the face of more experienced opinion and your plan works, it seems peculiar you don’t get some credit for nous. Trump was also peppering himself with holes during the campaign so if he had been a bit more disciplined he’d likely have done even better and won the popular vote too.

How about this: do you think that Trump is different in private from what we see in public?   Specifically, do you think he is capable of being something other than what we see, such that it is and was a deliberate choice on his part to sell the low-information, Fox News-watcher, imbecile persona that turned out to be successful?

Quote

As for luck, of course he was very lucky. No one can become the leader of a country of 320 million + in the face of massive competition for the job and a very gruelling campaign process without lots of luck. A real genius would need lots of luck to win, even if a moron might need more. So to insist he was lucky is to say nothing interesting. 

Except that's not what anyone here said, and is a pretty disingenuous read on why luck came into the discussion.  Someone posited that Trump couldn't possibly have bumbled to the top through a combo of American bigotry and luck. To which a number of us are like, yea, he really could have, and did.

[HoodedCrow]

And foreign “help”. With advisors like Roger Stone, etc. And never count out American misogyny. Trump is the just the reality show figure head, with the magic and heavy editing of television. He was only good at shady business deals in which he went broke but left the burden on other people and tacking advantage of marketing before that. American banks and fellow New Yorkers knew his game, but he played to base newbs. Some people love aggression in whatever form, even if he secretly despises his marks.

 

[butterbumps!]

Oh yea, without a doubt.  I've been categorizing the misogyny under "bigotry," and things like foreign "help" under "luck" -- part of the ridiculous confluence of outside factors that converged into perfect alignment for him.  And the foreign help even had a lot to do with how stupid he is; it was preference for a divisive, corrupt, useful idiot.