Bush the Younger was just as much a small d democrat as his father. When Obama was elected, the incumbent didn’t claim it was rigged, so the question of whether the military would escort Bush out of the White House didn’t arise. It has never once in US history arisen because we never before elected a Trump.
Maybe Trump can walk out of the White House and say the election was rigged at the same time. But i will say this: The probability of Trump not running for a second term is less than the chance he would do all he could to reverse an electoral loss.
A job is what you make it. This may not be your experience, but it is mine and I’m sure it is Trump’s.
If he really can’t find 40 hours of interesting work at the While House, he could always spend half the week earning his Celebrity Apprentice executive producer pay.
Has a president ever come into office where the opposing party loathes him, and his own party, with about a 90% majority, would prefer his vice president in the oval office? I can’t see how he makes it to 2020.
Of course Snowboarder Bo is going to come back to this thread in 2 years make a post that actually Trump will get a second term, then in 2020 bump it either way to say. “watcha know, I was right! Lets go to the quarry and throw tings down there!”
I think a major factor in Trump’s victory was his lack of a public service record, ironic as that is. Hillary had an extensive public service record, but in this age of bullshitting, it turned out to be fairly easy to blame every and anything on her. Are you a pissed-off American? Well, why didn’t Hillary do anything to solve your problems? After all, she’s been God Emperor of Earth for 30 years! Your problems are her fault. There really wasn’t a corresponding rebuttal to this line as Trump was a total political outsider.
In 2020 this will no longer be the case. Trump will be firmly established as the ultimate American political figure. With the House and the Senate under Republican control- well, I don’t doubt that Trump supporters will somehow find a way to blame all their problems on “liberals”, but at the same time it is going to be hard for Trump and the Republicans to deny all accountability for all the lousy things that will likely transpire over the next 4 years. Impoverished Rust Belt, Midwestern and Southern rural folks will have a tough time not noticing that their prospects do not improve under Republican policies, and are in fact worse. All that right-wing propaganda media is going to be put to the test, and I suspect it won’t be good enough when compared to their continued unhappy existences under a Trump administration. And that will be the end of Trump. 1 term.
Now, what if I’m wrong? Personally, I am not somebody that needs government intervention. All I need to do is to keep my job and I’ll be fine. If Trump somehow succeeds in improving the lives of all the aggrieved Americans who voted for him out of hope or desperation, well, in that specific case, would a second Trump term be so unreasonable? I doubt the Republicans could ever accomplish that, selfish bastards that they are, but like so many others I was dead wrong about the political winds this season, so…
And the only thing really giving pause to GOP Congressmembers is a potential backlash from Trump voters.
At least if he dies from natural causes he won’t become some kind of martyr. Of course there’ll be all manner of conspiracy theories that the causes weren’t as natural as they seem for generations to come.
That’s not exactly a long-term solution. If Pence & the Cabinet invoke Section 4 while Trump is mentally alert to object (instead of say comatose or totally incapacitated after a stoke) he can sent a written notice to Congress that he’s able to resume this duties; Congress then has 4 days to rule against him (by 2/3rds majorities in both houses), otherwise he resumes power and can immediate fire his entire Cabinet (well other than Pence). Even if Congress sides with Pence all Trump has to day is wait 21 days and start the whole process over again. Impeachment by contrast only takes a majority vote in the House of Representatives, followed by a 2/3rds majority removal vote in the Senate (which can also permanently bar him from ever holding public office again).
The bar for a “normal democracy” has been completely redefined by this campaign. From both parties being virtually hijacked by outsiders and strong implications of interference by another world power to the vicious tenor of debates and candidate statements and “facts are what you feel” approach, this campaign has essentially undermined the normal expectations of a presidential election notwithstanding that one candidate refused to agree to the results of the electoral process (unless it selected him) and still insists that there were millions of fraudulent votes without a shred of evidence. There is really no way that this won’t inform future campaigns on just what the voting public will tune into and put up with, and that does not speak well of the American public regardless of what party you align with.
And this doesn’t even speak to a President(Elect) who has violated essentially all norms and already demonstrated a complete lack of commitment to either performing the duties of office or even holding to his own pledge to reduce corruption, instead actually selecting the worst collection of insiders and conflicted businesspeople as his cabinet and head of major agencies, all of which is totally legal but completely unprecedented.
Whatever happens in the future, we’ve opened this particular box and Trump popped out. There is no stuffing the Jack back down in it even when Trump is long gone.
That’s easy. He’ll look like a boiled ham with his tiny trotters trying to grasp every gold-colored item he can find. He’s like a Bond villain from the imagination of Eric Blair. “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
This my view. I never would have predicted Trump would win the election - right up to the day he did it. (I also would have predicted George W. Bush couldn’t get re-elected.) So obviously I’m not qualified to predict how badly the voters can screw up.
The man hasn’t even done anything either good or (probably) bad. It’s impossible to predict now. I will say I don’t see him getting bored with it. He can be in the spotlight and on the news everyday. You really think he will tire of that? It’s what he lives for.
And mine as well. I was astounded (to say the least) to see Trump win anything.
The incumbent has the advantage in a race. Not a lock, the advantage. And yes, Trump will be 74, but I don’t think he is going to be engaged enough in the day-to-day of the Presidency to wear him down - it will be like being a real estate developer only moreso. Maybe some charismatic younger Democrat will unseat him in 2020. Or he will have health problems serious enough to disqualify him. But probably not.
If he hasn’t been knocked out of the race by whatever he is accused of now, he isn’t going to be impeached for anything either. The GOP controls both houses of Congress, and I would be surprised if that changes in 2018.
We shall see. As noted, all my predictions of political outcomes have been wrong. So will this one be, unless I am wrong about being wrong.
I am trying not to wish ill on Trump. As with Obama, I hope rather than expect to have things go well with the country.
Regards,
Shodan
PS - Loach is correct - he won’t resign. He ran on hunger for attention. Nothing in the world gets more attention than President of the USA>
I don’t think he will tire of the attention, but he will tire of the constant nagging pressure from those around him who expect him to actually do some work. And even though nothing will dissuade his worshippers from their adoration, just about everyone else will start to shower him with negative attention when he fails to actually DO anything.
I don’t think he’ll resign, however. He’ll just keep doing more outrageous things to generate more attention and adoration from his followers for “not taking any crap off the Washington insiders” or some such nonsense. Meanwhile, Pence is grooming himself to be President.
With the team of people he’s assembling, it’s starting to resemble the cast of Seven Days in May.
I think he’ll be assassinated during the inauguration by a Republican cabal. It will be “found” to be the work of ISIS, Liberals, Ukrainians, CNN assassins, or any combination thereof. The brain dead Trump supporters will believe every word, and the assassination will be used to invade Iran, Syria, the Ukraine, or to impose martial law in the US and foster an atmosphere of “you’re with us, or against us” in this country. The Constitution will be ignored. C ivil rights will be trampled. Defense contractors will make out like bandits.
I’m guessing Trump will not finish his first term. Age & obviously bad health, for one. Then there’s the fact that he will be expected to do *some *work.
Some Senate Republicans are already sniffing around The Russian Connection. Then there are the conflicts of interest they will be shocked to discover.
At the first hint of trouble, Trump resigns–then whines forever. And President Pence will continue installing the Republican Program. Humongous tax cuts benefiting the rich, cuts in “entitlement” programs, killing off the unions, continuing to erode voters’ rights. The usual.
He’s already done plenty of things that are ‘bad’ by any definition, including manipulating the perfectly legal operations of a company through state-level tax incentives and the implied threat of the parent company losing contracts (which is arguably racketeering), changing the US stance on relations with China (“It’s pronounced ‘Gy-na’!”) and Taiwan through an ill-advised call without even contacting the State Department, and refusing to receive daily intelligence briefings to make him aware of the impact of world events on national security and US opererations abroad. And he is so pathetically thin-skinned he finds it necessary to respond to every criticism with multiple tweets like an adolescent girl, call the news media for a conference and then berate them for not covering him in a favorable light, and continuing to espouse the baseless conspiracy theory that millions of illegal voters cost him the popular vote, thus undermining credibility in the entire electoral process with zero evidence of any kind.
Donald Trump will stay in office long enough to see Alec Baldwin prosecuted for tax evasion, defamation of character, or some other manufactured offense, and will then resign to hand over the reins to Mike Pence, who will use the collection of insult comics and would be Schultzstaffel extras in a thankfully unmade Indiana Jones sequel to impose his Evangelical, hyperconservative, petroleum-industry-friendly agenda on the nation.
