People laughed because Trump doesn’t have any liberal roots. Trump patronized democrats because the political power structure in NYC was and is primarily democratic. Trump wasn’t friends with Mario Cuomo or Ed Koch, or god forbid, David Dinkins, but he’s been buddies with Rudy Giuliani for decades.
Trump most definitely has a political ideology: his right wing racism and xenophobia have been exhaustively documented.
I’d appreciate an answer as well. You have an utterly evil, completely incompetent, thoroughly corrupt Soviet puppet in the White House. None of that seems to matter to HD. I’d like to know what issues are important and how are they worth putting up with all of the serious shortcomings of the incumbent?
You say that now. But we don’t really know it until Trump shoots somebody and we get to see if you condemn him for it.
Trump tried to get elected as a Democrat for years. But Democrats have standards and they wouldn’t elect Trump to office.
So Trump switched to the Republicans.
The USA in general won’t unify around Trump. The Bushes could pass themselves off as military leaders to at least some people. Trump really can’t. The blowback will go beyond a split in the country to a general repudiation of someone who almost everyone knows shouldn’t be there, can’t handle it, and can’t be trusted with authority. Trump’s support won’t hold at 40%, but more like 15%.
A significant number of Dopers will also blame it on Obama and/or Hillary Clinton and start or hijack several pit threads to push that view.
Some of those people will then accuse anyone debunking the attempts to blame Obama/Clinton of “handwaving away” their claims and “making excuses”, even as they themselves blatantly handwave away the claims of others and make their own excuses.
Whatever Trump would do, the liberals will criticize it and hate him, his base will praise it and love him, and the conservatives will do whatever it takes to stay in the majority.
Which office did he run for?
I think Trump has only ever shown interest in the Presidency, going back 30 years. I read a story once about NY GOP asking him to run for some lower office–mayor? governor?–and he turned them down, saying he’d run for President later.
That may even be his version of events, but the point remains. He didn’t want to be in public office; he wanted to be President.
That may have been as part of a general quest for maximum celebrity; or just to finally be at a station treated as “above the law” and extremely hard to prosecute for his crimes; or, you know, maybe he doesn’t care about politics enough to know what other offices there are?
Well, when the first one happened, here’s what we should have done: Sweep up the mess and get on with our lives. Look for some obvious security holes that might need to be plugged, which were all pretty much identified the first day. It did no real good to emasculate the Bill of Rights and have a minority sailor sing God Bless America at ever ball game and take Granny’s Fixodent away at airports.
I’m with you except for the Bill of Rights bit. We have suffered a lot of inconvenience, but I don’t recall having any of my constitutional rights taken away.
I can see it spiking, because my money says that Trump would obliterate the country that attacked us.
The USA Patriot Act by itself included a huge volume of proposed constitutional violations, many of which were ruled to be so by the courts. It was even argued that the Patriot Act was already in its rough draft, and was rushed into place with 9-11 as a pretext, certain that the public would embrace it uncritically.
We know from the first 9-11, the president could literally declare open-ended martial law and a general suspension of the Bill of Rights, with barely a whimper of protest from the citizenry.
One thing I didn’t see (though I may have missed it) is that there’s a “fool me once” issue on this. We rallied around Bush, and his administration used that to get us into two wars, neither of which actually dealing with the problem. They were able to manufacture a chemical weapons crisis because our emotions were high. They were able to pass laws that reduced our freedom for security.
Another Bush would find it hard to rally the country. Trump has it even harder because no one trusts him. We’re more conspiratorially minded. How many people would blame Trump? Even more than did Bush, there’s just no reason to trust him. Trump would have no problem killing Americans. It’s his incompetency that keeps his raw evil in check.
Which “country” attacked us on 9/11?
I do want to quickly point out the contradiction here, since it’s so nice. If the country rallies around Trump, then we don’t do any of the things Shodan proposes. And if we do say those things, than so did the rest of the country.
The only way it works is if you think we are remotely different from the other liberals in this country. But you know very well that we aren’t.
Also, given your own stated opinions on Trump, this really doesn’t carry any underlying meaning. There’sa reason why you didn’t say you thought it could happen.
There isn’t any contradiction. Even if the country rallies around Trump, the SDMB will attack him for everything, anything, or nothing.
You are different. The SDMB is way left of center, and way left of the rest of the country.
There doesn’t seem to be a limit to the power of denial.
Regards,
Shodan
And even if there is substantial reason to criticize him, some people will continue to assert that all criticism is entirely for partisan reasons, particularly those who attacked the previous administration for everything, anything, or nothing entirely for partisan reasons.
Some things are unchanging.
Or projection.
I wasn’t aware that anyone had asserted that “all” criticism of Trump is entirely partisan, at least in this thread.
The SDMB overall would certainly continue to attack Trump for everything no matter what the rest of the country does, but as I pointed out, the SDMB isn’t mainstream America.
Indeed they are, including fanatic anti-Trump sentiment on the SDMB.
Regards,
Shodan