Trump’s base wanted a trash-talking insult comic. He’s really good at that. I hate his fucking guts and I hate all his jokes, but I have to admit he knows how to work a crowd, and he has a good comedic sense that really helps him land a punch. He’s really funny in his own way. If he weren’t, we wouldn’t be talking about him right now.
In that sense he’s a good communicator. He knows what his audience wants, he knows how to give it to them, knows how to pick a target as a foil. I think this is why people call Hillary a “bad candidate”. Not because of anything she did or didn’t do, but because she was a perfect target for an insult comic like Trump, and didn’t really know how to parry him.
I think even Obama himself (as a freshman Senator) might have failed against Trump. 2016 just wasn’t the year for earnest, serious public-minded institutionalists. It was a year for giving a wedgie to the treasurer of the chess team. Trump was the ideal guy for that job. Knock on wood, maybe that trick is too cheap to pull off more than once in a generation.
I think there is something much bigger going on that is driving electoral politics in crazy directions. It’s not just America - here in Canada we elected someone Prime Minister whose only ‘qualification’ was that he was the son of a previous Prime Minister. His job history was a couple of semesters as a substitute teacher and he worked as a snowboarding instructor for a while.
Look around the world, and the people getting elected tend to be populists, grifters, the power hungry, or pliable tools of the establishment.
We aren’t getting quality people to go into politics anymore because politics has become so destructive to personal lives that no one who cares more about their family or reputation will go near Presidential politics unless they have no shame (Trump), are already fully in the game and have political families that are either already vetted or can stand the heat (Clinton, Jeb Bush).
We used to select our candidates for President/Prime minister from the ranks of CEOs, Governors, or other people with serious track records and executive experience. Now it seems all we get are career politicians with little or no experience outside of it, people desperate for power, or people selected to do the bidding of the powerful interests behind them.
Blame 24/7 news and social media for the crap politicians we are getting on all sides, in all western countries. Also blame our tendency to believe propaganda and lies and character assassination when it suits our political interests.
I do, but likely not on the same level as you. NOT being solid on policy and experience is what makes someone a terrible candidate. BEING solid on policy and experience is what makes an excellent candidate.
Oh, and it’s also necessary to not be a Republican.
What brings this rant today? I’m just wondering if something particular happened in your life, or if it’s just the accretion of terrible that’s been happening for the last several years. Either way, I’m just checking in to see if your ok.
A candidate is a thing in an election. Elections have results.
If your good candidates keep losing and the terrible ones keep winning, it isn’t anyone’s place to tell you that you have to change your definitions. But if you care about the election maybe you should run some terrible candidates.
That doesn’t demonstrate that she want “disliked and distrusted.” I dislike and distrust Hillary Clinton. I still voted for her, because look at the alternative.
Who are you referring to? I know that conservatives always claim to want a business man in the white house, but as far as presidents go, Trump was the first and we know how that turned out. I’m not as familiar about Canadian politics, but a quick google search seem to all talk about the prime minister of Bulgaria.
Can someone explain how those who voted third party, didn’t vote, or voted repuke in states HRC won cost her the election? Use New York or California as examples.
And since your avatar is holding the mallet o’ understanding I wouldn’t dare to disagree. Apart from that, I think you’re right (@kaylasdad99).
I don’t often agree with @Sam_Stone, but I think he’s on to something. I’ve noticed the same thing happening this side of the pond. Look at Boris Johnson for instance, or Andrzej Duda and Viktor Orban. And I’m not exactly proud of our PM Mark Rutte either. The political situation where the extreme on the right and left cancel out the middle field and thus hollowing out the support base for forming a government (we broke our own record for duration of post-election formation this year, 258 days and counting), is eerily reminiscent of Weimar in the 1930s. And we all know how that ended. I don’t think this is a new phenomenon but it’s not a good sign. And the US is in a similar development AFAICT, but further down the road.
I think a much bigger problem is that the extreme right is nothing but a bunch of violent thugs that, at this point, comprise approximately 80% of the Republican senators and about 90% of Republican congressman and a whole bunch of not-very-smart moderates look at that, and look at the fact that their are about a half dozen Democratic Congress members that non- violently advocate for extremely progressive policies and scream………
BOTH SIDES! I need to be mean to Alexandria Ocasio Cortez if I’m going to criticize the insurrection or else I’m a hypocrite.
Republicans still piss me off, but they are just nasty gaslighting trolls doing what they do. I’m much more pissed off at my fellow moderates who have gone back to desperately working on their towel folding skills - thinking that if they become perfect the Republicans will stop bitch slapping them.
Like I said, Weimar and more specifically the beer hall putsch come to mind. AFAIK right-wing idiots and fascists are usually thugs. At first thugs in disguise but I’m afraid you’re past that stage already. Completely agree with you on the bothsideism. I didn’t mean to implicate that. For Orbán and Duda it’s largely the same, the base is thuggery. We have Thierry Baudet for that particular brand of politics
This is unfortunately true. If you look at European history in the 1930s, particularly in France and Spain, you’ll see that France was able to keep at least the homegrown fascists at bay because the Left was able to unite behind Léon Blum. In Spain that didn’t work out, so they ended up with Franco.
Info provided by my husband btw, who studied History in college, particularly 20th century Europe.
I’d argue that you should have said that from the beginning. Saying someone is a “terrible candidate” has a lot more baggage than saying that someone is “bad at communicating.” To me, calling someone a “terrible X” implies they are bad in all aspects of X. And, yes, I’d say judge candidates by how good they would be at the job. I mean, Trump was a good campaigner, but I’d never call him a good candidate for president.
I’d also say that, rather than take offense at someone disagreeing with your word choice, it makes more sense to just explain what you mean. I don’t see what would have been lost if you’d just agreed that “yeah, what I meant was that she was bad at campaigning, which made her a bad choice for the Democratic nominee.”
I also don’t agree that she should have realized it further back. She wasn’t that bad. And I don’t blame her for other Democrats not thinking they could run against her. And I definitely don’t blame her for Sanders playing dirty when he started alleging fraud, giving Democrats an excuse to not vote for her.
I do blame her for other things she did, like not listening to her husband’s advice and being overconfident in the “blue firewall.” She needed to talk to the white lower classes, too. I don’t actually see her as a particularly bad communicator. She just didn’t communicate the things she needed to win. She should have run like Biden did.
But, even if she had, it was the built up hatred for her that was the main problem. And that part was not a reflection on her, which is why I don’t agree with the word “terrible” or most of the rest of your initial post. That laid the blame on her way more than it should, IMO.
And I can’t blame her for the Democrats deciding she was such a good candidate that they needed to stay out of her way. If she convinced them of that, then that’s arguing she’s actually a good candidate.
The 2015 election called. They want their losing talking points back.
The only thing you missed here is calling him “Justine”, or mocking his hair.
This garbage was stupid in 2015, and the electorate knew it. But keep on bonking that chicken - perhaps it will work one day.
Or perhaps the opposition will get a candidate with a better resume than being a mail boy in an oil company, or a clerk in a tiny insurance company (with a lie about being a “broker”)
No, I also missed his flunking out of engineering school, wearing black face multiple times, his love of funny costumes and habit of inappropriate touching. Also a super fan of Fidel Castro.