Funny that you mention Blagojevich, because he’s the first person that I think of whenever anyone claims that Democrats would be doing the same thing if the shoe was on the other foot.
I was living in Illinois at the time. I’ve been a Democrat all my life, and although I wasn’t crazy about Blago, I voted for him in 2003. Well, he was a horrible governor right out of the gate—a total buffoon who cared only about himself. When he ran for reelection in 2006, I crossed party lines for the first time in my life and voted for his GOP opponent, Judy Topinka. She lost.
When Blago was arrested for trying to sell Obama’s vacant Senate seat, the Democrats held supermajorities in both the state House and Senate. Did they defend him? Did they attack the Feds who arrested him? Did they insist that there was no harm done, because his attempted crime was unsuccessful? HELL NO! They quickly impeached his ass, got him out of office, and prohibited him from ever holding office in Illinois again. And the final vote was 59-0—no Democrats demeaned themselves by sticking up for the guy, the way Republicans are doing now with Trump.
So whenever anyone says the two parties are exactly the same, I tell them to go ask Rod. He’s still in federal prison, which is where Trump belongs (but he’ll never go there because he’ll pardon himself before he leaves office).
Did he put kids in cages? Did he slobber over dictators? Did he call an entire nation rapists? Did he attack the only black president? Did he bar an entire religion? Did he endorse murder? Did he tell over 13,000 lies----many of them vicious and breathtakingly malicious----over three years? Did he attempt to strongarm a vulnerable nation to slander his political rival? I mean, I could go on, but pretending that Trump isn’t a grotesquely vicious, petty, sleazy, crooked, dishonest, cruel, would-be murderet is disingenuous to say the least.
It’s worth pointing out that Edwin Edward’s won because his voting base was conservative whites in the south. Who are now trumps voting base. So that’s not really a fair comparison because the people who voted for Edward’s in the 1960s and trump today are the same kinds of people.
The modern democratic party is a coalition of liberals, out-groups and moderates. Would they vote for a criminal? As a last resort maybe but they’d hate doing it.
He would never get the nomination for president, but even so, I wouldn’t defend him. And I could imagine voting for someone like that only if he were running against Trump.
Trump is very specifically a by-product of the Republican Party. If Hillary Clinton were actually such a monster they could’ve nominated Rubio or Bush. But Trump is the logical conclusion of what that party has been doing nationally for the last few decades. (Edwards was just the by-product of regional cronyism.) Now Trump is such a stinking piece of shit that the Republicans have lost their sense of smell.
The basic problem is that a “Democrat Trump” is a contradiction in terms. Somebody who acts like Trump is *by definition *acting against the causes the Democrats support. It’s like a vegetarian electing somebody who wants to legalize and promote eating animals alive.
In other words, not like Trump at all. If he was like Trump he’d hate civil rights of any kind, and he’d be trying to have black people imprisoned or executed, not putting them in high positions. He certainly wouldn’t support voting rights.
In order to be like Trump someone has to be bigoted, incompetent, utterly selfish and dishonest, treacherous, stupid, and ignorant. He is fractally vile, horrible in every way on every level. Mere financial corruption is a sidenote to the sheer awfulness that is Trump.
It says a lot about you that you assume the Democrats are as corrupt as the Republicans are at this point, and you assume everyone else has jumped on the “fuck national interests and half the nation, I want my team to win” bandwagon.
Much depends on the opponent. If it were a Republican like Mitt Romney, I would easily support them over a Trump-like Democrat (per above definition). The problem is that principled Republicans have gone the way of the dodo; they’ve all gone full Trump now.
Maybe this is Mitt’s strategy, to be the one-eyed man in the land of the blind. But it would take a lot of Democratic malfeasance… a LOT… for me to reward the Republicans with any kind of conciliatory good faith after the last 4 years.
Where the hell did I mention Trump? Or defend Trump? I’ve never done that. Where did I “pretend” anything? Your response has nothing to do with my post. I was specifically addressing the claim that “One can’t be a corrupt asshole and champion progressive causes.” I was providing an example that, yes indeed, a politician who champions progressive causes can be a corrupt asshole.
Same message to you. Reading comprehension. Try it.
Absolutely false. Edwards’ primary voting base was blacks. To the tune of about 90-95% support. Conservative whites jumped to the Republican Party about the time Edwards was coming into prominence. Sure, he had enough high-level white support to keep him in power, but that was mostly due to cronyism and graft.
Well, and South Louisiana Cajuns/Creoles of course.
Anyway, I did not mean to sidetracks things this much. I just felt compelled to rebut a post stating that a progressive politician can’t be a corrupt asshole. I’ll admit that “populist” and “progressive” are not exactly the same, but Edwards, for his time, was quite progressive, especially when it came to matters of race.
Anyway, carry on with the hypothetical of the OP. I do find it an interesting discussion here.
Suppose Democrat Trump had accomplished many of the goals of the Democrat party has had for a long time. He undid tax breaks for the super wealthy and gasp actually increased taxes on them, cut corporate welfare, enacted and empowered more environmental legislation, worked to decrease man made global warming, increased the minimum wage, rebuilt the department of education, cut the idiotic wall funding, worked toward more health care coverage toward all, increased infrastructure development, enacted real campaign finance reform, put more intelligent judges on the bench, enacted reasonable gun control legislation, and the rest. Suppose you had a Democrat Trump who accomplished for the party all the things Trump has done for the Republican party (judges, tax cuts for the rich, gutting the federal government, crackdown on immigration, roll back consumer protection, gut environmental protection, less governmental regulation of businesses, etc.)
Ummmmm, still no.
With Trump, Republicans have gotten so much of what they’ve wanted for a long time that they’re willing to put up with pretty much anything. Democrats are better than that.
It should be noted that, the 2nd time around, Edwards’ opponent was David Duke. And conservative white Louisianans pretty overwhelmingly supported Duke. So it wasn’t like Edwards was facing some average Republican – he was facing an open white supremacist… and Duke came pretty close to winning!
That was an early indication of what kind of politicians conservative white Americans are willing to support.
In divemaster’s 1st post, he quoted the statement to which he was responding, then explained it again for you, and both times you ignored it. Try reading rather than projecting.
Democrats can be as corrupt and still get elected to office over and over again. We really haven’t seen Democrats as bad as Republicans at the Federal level, but that might just mean they’re smarter and better at hiding it. The baseness of Trump is at an altogether different level. A Democrat Trump, I think, would get more support than s/he should, but I don’t think would pass the primaries. I certainly believe one could be electable for state offices, and possibly the House.
Republicans today (speaking very broadly) are far more tribal than Democrats are - they may have intraparty squabbles but woe betide anyone outside the group who dares to criticize a member of the tribe. And they struggle to understand that the Democrats are not like that. So not only did they spend the Obama administration obstructing everything and making up fake scandals to try to bring him down, they now assume that any attempts to obstruct Trump’s agenda or nominees and any investigations are similarly purely partisan in nature rather than merit-based.
Would I vote for a corrupt Democrat over a Republican? Depends on the Republican and indeed the Democrat. So I might do if I genuinely thought the Democrat was the least worst option…but I certainly wouldn’t make excuses for the Democrat’s corruption. (Plus, I’ve been a Independent for years).
Bill Clinton’s moral failings were largely personal. We knew he was a cheating horndog when he was first elected and I remember at the time saying that I hoped Hillary was giving him a boot to the groin on a regular basis for it, but we weren’t electing him Pope and there was no evidence of actual political corruption. Plus, unlike the Republicans, Democrats don’t tend to run on a platform of moral purity, family values and pretending to be ‘holier than thou’ so there wasn’t the level of overt hypocrisy as when, say, Newt Gingrich had multiple mistresses. I’m not defending Bill’s cheating; I just always thought that was his and Hillary’s business. Likewise, it’s not that Trump has cheated on all his wives that bothers me; it’s the hypocrisy of his evangelical supporters and his party at large that does (plus the campaign-related payments for the women’s silence).
Democrats have had plenty of corrupt politicians over the years; there is no arguing with that. But in recent years the Democrats have made more of an effort to clean house, whereas the Republicans of late seem to be doubling down. I’m sure there are plenty of venal local Democrats but for a Trump to rise to the top he could only do so as a Republican.
[I used to be a big Bob Dole supporter, and frankly I miss the days when I believed both parties were fielding reasonably honorable candidates. Maybe I was just more naïve back then.)
Someone acting like Trump is now is acting against the causes Democrats support. But I remain convinced Trump has no ideology, he’s just a fair weather sociopath. You might be forgetting he was a registered member of the Democratic Party from 2001-2009. I do think he has always been a crook, a pig and somewhat racist, but his current political virulence I’m pretty convinced is just meat for the base. Nasty populism and demagoguery works for him so he’s all in. It’s just another con and a handy cover for his political and administrative incoherence.
“Suppose the Dems had a lunatic demagogue who you knew was corrupt to the core and would use the office for personal gain. Suppose you knew he would advocate using agencies to reward his loyalists and punish his enemies”
Not sure how you get “fascistic fucking TRAITOR” out of that.
“Thanks for all your hard work! Now, regarding your obstruction of justice and collusion with foreign powers’ interference with our election processes, we’ll be expediting your impeachment so that the treason trials can be brought to bear with no undo delay!”