Any Trump supporters here?

Politics & Elections
21

I’m an immigrant, and a legal one, but it hurts me to see so many people support a man who has such vehement opposition to immigrants considering this is a land of immigrants. He says illegal immigrants, and he may mean it, but I’m pretty sure his followers mean “brown people who look vaguely Arab or Mexican”, which is pretty much where I fit.

It’s upsetting to know how unvalued we are in the country we love and have lived in for so long.

So no, not a Trump supporter here, and honestly I’d look a little dubiously at anyone who claimed to be for reals.

Also, I’d rather not have an apocalypse. Why are people in favor of that? I have about 40 good years left in me, please leave the apocalypse for after that.

22

He just threw that up there.

23

On what planet? Here on Earth, he’s having the exact opposite effect: All the other candidates are doubling or tripling their output of inane pablum in a feeble attempt to keep up with him.

24

It seems to me that if you eliminate major party candidates, then you eliminate anyone capable of running the country. Part of being a president is dealing with the political reality that is the two party system. You can correctly state that perhaps it shouldn’t be that way, but that’s the hand we were dealt. Third party candidates serve useful only as protest votes.

25

I think this kind of extrapolation does not help in countering his popularity. I think a certain portion, though definitely not all, of his popularity is based on the fact that his opponents want to lump things he says with other things and end up making errors of extrapolation that are easily countered. Trump has said he is for legal immigration, and creating a more efficient path for that, and as I have said before, 2 of his 3 wives are immigrants. Casting his followers as racist etc. is not a good strategy to win them over to your side IMHO.

I think there is plenty to find fault with in Trump, a lot of his stances are truly cringeworthy; but you can’t really fight low information assertions with equally low information assertions. And telling people that they support a candidate because they are stupid or racist, when they may not be, is not really a great strategy.

26

You got a better idea?

27

Essentially have them hate the plutocrats more than they do the immigrants.

28

No:(

Actually, I think a little understanding would go a long way. I believe that many more differences in opinion have to do with environmental differences then differences in character or intellect. I think many liberals who come from a middle class background should be more humble and understanding of people from a working class background.

To the working class person, saying educated does not necessarily mean what it does to the middle class person. For example, I grew up in an upper middle class environment, college was just expected. I was in my 20’s when I realized how small a number of the voting population actually has a 4 year degree(only about a third AFAIK). Now, people like me, growing up where I did, suppose that the reason people don’t go to college is because they are dumb or lazy - without even considering the enormous financial advantage they have. I didn’t have to pay a dime for undergrad - it was all paid through tuition exchange because of my dad’s job. My parents also didn’t want me to work - it might interfere with my grades. I got straight A’s!! I must be super smart! It wasn’t until an unfortunately long time after that that I realized that if you took all that support away I probably would not have graduated at all.

So, when liberal/democratic people go on about how intellectual and educated they are, it is much more similar to aristocrats making claims to superiority due to their “royal blood” than any real achievement in the minds of many working people. Many college graduates also do not realize how much of a minority college educated people are, and in the eyes of many working class people they are a privileged minority not a deserving one.

29

You’ve come a long way, baby.

30

So, let Trump and Sanders debate.

31

You are assuming his supporters can type? Spell? Read?

32

I don’t support Trump, but I don’t hate him either. Both my grandparents (Democrats) love him, and are planning on voting for him.

33

Thank you for that one. :smiley:

34

I don’t support him at all, but I’m thrilled that he is in the race.

With him in there, the GOP nomination fight has devolved into a brand of vicious infighting that hasn’t been seen in generations. Moreover, the Trump effect has led to the disqualification of people who (in another universe) would be top tier GOP candidates & (consequently) far more disastrous for the country.

I’m telling you, Scott Walker would NOT have exited the race if Trump weren’t running, and Walker was the one candidate whom I most legitimately feared as a potential president. I’m increasingly hopeful that Trump can knock out Jeb! next, and then hopefully Rubio. If he can manage that, then there’s nothing stopping the Dems from winning in '16 IMO.

35

Well done, Mr. Clinton, from a grateful country. :wink:

36

Moderate and reasonable Republicans wouldn’t have this problem, or at least not nearly so bad a problem, if they hadn’t got greedy. With the help of modern technology and demographics, the gerrymandered a political map that ensures that not only do they want the support of the knuckle-walking Trogs, they need them, they must have them.

They tweaked, they twerked. They carefully sculptured districts that would give them just enough of an edge to get them over the magic number, the famous “50% plus one”.

Most conservatives are, well, conservative. The “radical conservative” is as much an oxymoron as the “extreme centrist”. For years upon years, they kept promising the TP cadres that just one more election, just one more big push, and then no more socialized medicine, no more gay marriage, prayer everywhere, no more abortions, you know the drill. They were assuring conservatives that they would resist change, and promising the TP they would demand change.

But it never happened. And now the people who used to be grumpy are insanely angry, now they want change, and they want it now! Which is the very definition of radical.

Their acute and intelligent demographic analysis has painted the Republicans into a corner. The moderate conservative depends mostly upon an equally moderate and conservative Republican voter base. But to get over that essential “50% plus one” line, they also must have the minority of radical Republicans to win the close races they engineered the system to create! Which is to say, they wouldn’t be so dependent on the extreme right if they hadn’t made it so they would be!

The most underreported story ever is how the Republicans got a million less votes in the House races, but still managed to gain a huge victory. Their problem is not so much that the TP will put up an opposing candidate in the primaries, though that is a problem. What’s the worse problem is that the TP crowd won’t go vote for the moderate righty candidate, they aren’t listening to the old sales pitch any more.

Its not that they will be crushed beneath a huge wave of Dem voters, but that they will lose just enough of the TP crowd to lose the close ones, in races engineered to be close but to favor the right.

Ooopsy-daisy.

37

That’s the downside of gerrymandering - you spread your support thinner, and if the tide turns against you, you’re defending, and losing, *more *vulnerable seats than if you had played it straight.

So *is *there a tide turning against the TP? I don’t really see it yet, do you?

38

I certainly don’t.

I recall some here saying the Tea Party was irrelevant and in its death throes 4 years ago. Such nonsensical pronouncements were comical back then in their obvious absurdity. As the Tea Party has pretty much taken over the GOP at this point, I find much less to laugh about now in this regard.

39

Not since 1976, in fact. Read The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan, by Rick Perlstein, for a truly stomach-churning account of the now-forgotten sordid ugliness that was the 1976 Republican Convention – last major-party convention in America, AFAICR, where the choice of presidential nominee was not a foregone conclusion. If this next one comes down to a floor fight, it’ll be even worse.

40

The tide turning against the TP is generational-cultural attrition. It is inevitable and inexorable and irreversible. But it works slooooow.