Trumps Presidency 2025

[chasfh]

21 hours ago, ben9753 said:

(((Elissa Slotkin)))

I don’t necessarily agree with this, but I did see what you did there and I do appreciate the slyness.

[chasfh]

21 hours ago, Motown Bombers said:

They literally ran an abandoned Biden campaign. They voted for Jill Stein. Look at all the people associated with Bernie Sanders. Tulsi, Nina Turner, Brihana Joy Grey, David Sirota and the list goes on. 

Roughly one in 178 voters went for Jill Stein, which is 0.56%, and Kamala lapped Stein at the polls by 87x. And that doesn’t even take into account any votes Stein got that would otherwise have gone to Trump, an equally radical candidate, rather than Kamala, the relatively establishment choice.

The far left fringe simply did not cost Kamala the election, nor are they the potent political force dragging down the entire Democratic Party that you and Bill Maher make them out to be.

[Motown Bombers]

1 minute ago, chasfh said:

Roughly one in 178 voters went for Jill Stein, which is 0.56%, and Kamala lapped Stein at the polls by 87x. And that doesn’t even take into account any votes Stein got that would otherwise have gone to Trump, an equally radical candidate, rather than Kamala, the relatively establishment choice.

The far left fringe simply did not cost Kamala the election, nor are they the potent political force dragging down the entire Democratic Party that you and Bill Maher make them out to be.

Then Democrats don't need to listen to them then. 

[chasfh]

20 hours ago, Motown Bombers said:

Harris got 6 million fewer votes than Biden. Harris did worse with younger people and the demographic that tends to be progressive. 

Given the social history of America, two big reasons Kamala got six million fewer votes than Biden immediately leaps to mind.

[chasfh]

19 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

that is pretty much what I was going to say. And TBH, I would not blame Reagan for what happened in the 30 yrs since he left office. Reagan was capable of changing his mind and he became a Republican not because he was in bed with the Oligarchs, but because he believed the left was hurting the working class. Given that, I would argue there is at least a 50/50 chance that when he saw what was happening to the middle class, he would have moved toward revised policies.

Reagan may not have been the architect of the 30 years succeeding his tenure, and he may have even been horrified by what transpired. But the right wing government-is-evil revolution he ushered in did give the more radical reactionary forces in his party permission and cover to take over the party and ultimately the country, and what any of us speculate Reagan would have done differently had he realized the long-term impact of the movement he championed is not enough to exonerate him.

[gehringer_2]

8 minutes ago, chasfh said:

Reagan may not have been the architect of the 30 years succeeding his tenure, and he may have even been horrified by what transpired. But the right wing government-is-evil revolution he ushered in did give the more radical reactionary forces in his party permission and cover to take over the party and ultimately the country, and what any of us speculate Reagan would have done differently had he realized the long-term impact of the movement he championed is not enough to exonerate him.

Hindsight history is one of my pet Peeves.  It's an easy cop out for the Dems to blame all the issues on "Reagan Started It" when they've had 20 years of the Presidency since to have done something about the direction things were going. Clinton and his 'New Dems' had bought into the "knowledge and finance future" paradigm as much as any repub ever did. And the concentration of the historical blame game continues to be an intellectual diversion from the effort of figuring out what to do about where we are now. The Dems still don't have any consistent economic message for how to rebuild a private sector middle class economy (Biden had an idea but never articulated it in any effective way) which is what has left the door wide open to a charlatan like Trump to sell his snake oil. 

Edited Thursday at 01:40 PM by gehringer_2

[chasfh]

19 hours ago, Mr.TaterSalad said:

Who exactly are we winning over with that type of praise on Reagan? That's the same kind of failed strategy we just tried last election by trotting out Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger on the campaign trail and hoping there was some moderate base of Republicans sitting around, ready to vote for Democrats. The Republican Party of Reagan is dead and gone. It's a MAGA Party now and fully controlled by Donald Trump. There aren't a magical group of old school, 1980s-style Republicans that Democrats can win over. Those people either don't really exist or have already decided to cross over and become Democrats.

Democrats need to win back over non-college educated, white working class people in the middle who may have voted Biden in 2020 and then Trump again in 2024. Voters who's brains aren't fully rotted out by MAGA. They need to win back over more young men under the age of 35 of all racial makeups. They need to hold down the fort on black men under 50 and stop the erosion of Latino men under 50. Pandering to some yesteryear of Ronald Reagan isn't going to do that with any of those demographic IMO.

Furthermore, if we're concerned about the assault on the federal workforce, let us not forget that started under Reagan. Reagan spent years trashing the federal government and federal employees. He fired air traffic controllers and made millions of Americans believe that nothing good can come out of the federal government. Reagan's rhetoric against federal bureaucrats and bureaucracy is part of the reason we ended up in this mess. 

I agree that Democrats need to win back the white working class to win broad-based elections, but that’s not going to happen with even moderate policies that nevertheless get successfully, if unfairly, associated with Marxism or radical anarchism. Because remember: the heyday of D really dominating R among the white working class was during Jim Crow days, when the party simultaneously tolerated a progressive multiracial faction in the northeast and a fascist authoritarian wing dominating everyday life in the south. And once D leadership starting working in the 1960s to truly defang the latter’s power to influence national platforms, that’s when the white working class started to abandon the party in numbers.

The unfortunate reality appears to be that at this moment, there’s only one effective way to get them back into the fold at this moment, and I promise you, you wouldn’t like that platform even one bit.

[gehringer_2]

3 minutes ago, chasfh said:

I agree that Democrats need to win back the white working class to win broad-based elections, but that’s not going to happen with even moderate policies that nevertheless get successfully, if unfairly, associated with Marxism or radical anarchism. Because remember: the heyday of D really dominating R among the white working class was during Jim Crow days, when the party simultaneously tolerated a progressive multiracial faction in the northeast and a fascist authoritarian wing dominating everyday life in the south. And once D leadership starting working in the 1960s to truly defang the latter’s power to influence national platforms, that’s when the white working class started to abandon the party in numbers.

The unfortunate reality appears to be that at this moment, there’s only one effective way to get them back into the fold at this moment, and I promise you, you wouldn’t like that platform even one bit.

there is, unfortunately, probably too much truth to this.

[chasfh]

1 minute ago, gehringer_2 said:

Hindsight history is one of my pet Peeves.  It's an easy cop out for the Dems to blame all the issues on "Reagan Started It" when they've had 20 years of the Presidency since to have done something about the direction things were going. Clinton and his 'New Dems' had bought into the "knowledge and finance future" paradigm as much as any repub ever did. And the concentration of the historical blame game continues to be an intellectual diversion from the effort of figuring out what to do about where we are now. The Dems still don't have any consistent economic message for how to rebuild a private sector middle class economy, which is what has left the door wide open to a charlatan like Trump to sell his snake oil. 

And speculative history is one of mine.

You can’t fix the present without understanding how the past got us here. Recognizing the impact of the Reagan revolution on today’s Trump party, and by extension the country, is not equivalent to throwing up our hands and giving up.

And I’m pretty sure that Trump is conclusively demonstrating that whatever economic message the Democrats could come up with that might appeal to the private sector middle class doesn’t matter all that much, because a distressingly high percentage of people did not vote for him because of economics—despite what they might politely tell mainstream media interviewers.

[Motown Bombers]

A Democrat hasn't won the majority of the white vote since Johnson.

[Motown Bombers]

14 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

Hindsight history is one of my pet Peeves.  It's an easy cop out for the Dems to blame all the issues on "Reagan Started It" when they've had 20 years of the Presidency since to have done something about the direction things were going. Clinton and his 'New Dems' had bought into the "knowledge and finance future" paradigm as much as any repub ever did. And the concentration of the historical blame game continues to be an intellectual diversion from the effort of figuring out what to do about where we are now. The Dems still don't have any consistent economic message for how to rebuild a private sector middle class economy (Biden had an idea but never articulated it in any effective way) which is what has left the door wide open to a charlatan like Trump to sell his snake oil. 

Biden's middle out economic policy angered billionaires to the point where the Tech Bros took over the country and used that fat bastard as a vessel. 

[mtutiger]

 

[mtutiger]

Seriously... 

[gehringer_2]

15 minutes ago, chasfh said:

because a distressingly high percentage of people did not vote for him because of economics—despite what they might politely tell mainstream media interviewers.

this is tough for me to gauge. The fact that Biden objectively had the best economy going in a long time still runs into the fact that that still isn't lifting large swaths of the population the way it used to. It's in large part de-industrialization/de-unionization, it's partly technology, it's just change in general that has shifted the economic landscape in ways no-one on either side paid enough attention to for too long. But the bottom line is that if you had 4 working limbs and an 8th grade education between 1946 and ~1980, you could go get a unionized industrial job somewhere, and bingo - you were in the middle class. So that became the expectation. Maybe that period was just the historical anomaly, though Europe's experience seems to argue it is primarily an American problem. 

At any rate, it's easy to argue too many Americans don't vote in their best economic interests anymore, but maybe too many Americans can't see the difference when it comes to their day to day lives.

Edited Thursday at 01:59 PM by gehringer_2

[Motown Bombers]

We've seen this play out. Johnson passes the Civil Rights Act, southern whites (or white working class as we call them today) flip out and go Republican. The far left is enraged about a conflict overseas and protests. Johnson becomes unpopular and drops out. Corrupt Republican wins. Rinse/repeat. Biden's economic policies helped people of color, white people got angry, the far left lost their mind over Gaza, Biden is forced to drop out, corrupt Republican wins. 

[gehringer_2]

and maybe another aspect of this that back in the day, when the economy got bad, unemployment was a more immediate effect, you were either working or you weren't or at least worried about you job or not. But today we get a lot more underemployment, so administrations come go and GDP waxes and wanes, but maybe your is relatively secure, but it's just a ****ty one so nothing changes for you.

[gehringer_2]

18 minutes ago, Motown Bombers said:

Biden's middle out economic policy angered billionaires to the point where the Tech Bros took over the country and used that fat bastard as a vessel. 

which is also bizarre since Biden's economy was gangbusters for them all. Greed knows no bounds apparently.

[gehringer_2]

9 minutes ago, Motown Bombers said:

We've seen this play out. Johnson passes the Civil Rights Act, southern whites (or white working class as we call them today) flip out and go Republican. The far left is enraged about a conflict overseas and protests. Johnson becomes unpopular and drops out. Corrupt Republican wins. Rinse/repeat. Biden's economic policies helped people of color, white people got angry, the far left lost their mind over Gaza, Biden is forced to drop out, corrupt Republican wins. 

If you take this a true, what would still be bizarre is the magnification factor involved. Vietnam was a 1000x more significant issue to American than Gaza, the CRA's impact was objectively seismic compared to anything Biden accomplished. Do we blame information technology that a country amplifies everything out of proportion now?

Edited Thursday at 02:19 PM by gehringer_2

[Motown Bombers]

18 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

If you take this a true, what would still be bizarre is the magnification factor involved. Vietnam was a 1000x more significant issue to American than Gaza, the CRA's impact was objectively seismic compared to anything Biden accomplished. Do we blame information technology that a country amplifies everything out of proportion now?

The media climate is much worse now than during Johnson. Misinformation is so rampant that a lot of what happened in Gaza was exaggerated or straight up not true. You didn't have Fox news, podcasts, or social media in the 60's that were run amok with conspiracies, foreign influence, and straight up inaccurate information. 

[chasfh]

20 hours ago, CMRivdogs said:

 

Probably closer to the truth ...

[chasfh]

19 hours ago, Hongbit said:

Sure, there are far too many brainwashed magas that would jump off a roof for him but I can’t believe that number is anywhere close to 77 Million.  

There have to be millions, if not tens of millions that can be swayed.  This will require the Dems to run an electable candidate which they’ve only done once in the last 3. 

Solid code word.

Not criticizing you at all. I agree with this.

[chasfh]

18 hours ago, CMRivdogs said:

Back when America was theoretically great. Take it back to these rates

 

Trump has already stated in explicit language that the period during which America was great was the Gilded Age, not the 1950s.

[chasfh]

18 hours ago, Motown Bombers said:

They should get in line behind Democrats. They then need to elect more Democrats to push the party left.

You mean like Joe Biden?

[Motown Bombers]

5 minutes ago, chasfh said:

You mean like Joe Biden?

Yes. Exactly like Joe Biden. No president had been as far to the left as Biden since Johnson. He wanted to go even farther left but was hamstrung by a senate that included Manchin and Sinema. Vote for more senators to cancel out Manchin, the agenda moves farther left, and the next president runs to the left of Biden. instead, they yelled nothing was good enough and lost their minds over Gaza. The result is the most right wing presidency in history. 

[chasfh]

15 hours ago, Tigermojo said:

Why does he want Canada if it's full of cartels? He doesn't say he wants Mexico as the 51st state. 

Maybe they see Canada as being the cute girl who needs to be rescued from the swarthy worldly people she’s starting to hang out with.