The old ones are the best. Seems that every election cycle this comes up…whoever is in the opposite party claims unemployment is much higher than the figures being shown by the government (because they are cleverly using different figures that are about different things). Once elected, however, they are able to use the same figures previously used by their opponents to show how much better things are today than they were before they were elected. IF he’s elected he’ll probably be better than most presidents at deflecting or lying about his past positions and their failures or his lack of delivery by spinning things to either look like he never said what we all know he said, spinning the failure as due to Congress (he’d actually have a point here, since I doubt either the Republicans OR the Democrats would support him), or that he’s flip flopped on whatever it is because he’s a reasonable guy and you have to be flexible and negotiate, blah blah blah.
Trump is like one of those contestants on a reality show…he’s totally gaming our system. That’s why he’s been able to get the traction he’s getting…it’s the same mechanism that has millions of Americans watching a lame show like Survivor for year after year.
And Democrat voters who listen to Clinton who promises to return jobs to America, or who listen to Sanders promise free educations? They somehow do understand all of the “myriad of factors?”
Most presidential candidates promise all things to all people. Unfortunate but true. What isn’t true is that only one party does it. The Republican voters won’t take the streets with pitchforks in hand any more than Democrats have done in the past.
Ok, I know this is a hypothetical thread, but let’s at least try to keep our speculation vaguely believable.
And, yeah, the same thing that happens to all presidents when they don’t deliver. Some people get disillusioned and stop supporting them. Some people find someone else to blame for the failures (sometimes they’re correct). Most people get distracted by something else.
That’s sort of my take, too. Being president is not fun, and I can easily see him pulling a Sarah Palin and quitting, assuming he wins. I think his candidacy was a joke all along, and now he’s got some crazy idea that he can actually win, but reality is going smack him in the face if and when he sits in the Oval Office.
Indeed, I don’t think he has any serious plans as to what he’d do as President, except looting the government and arranging to have things named after himself. He’ll delegate everything.
I think the difference is that behind most politicians promises is the implicit understanding that they have to work within the political system. They have a political agenda, but everyone knows they are limited by Congress and the system of trade offs that are our political reality.
Trump is billing himself as not being a part of that system. He’s sold himself as a master deal-maker who can impose his will without concern for the trade-offs every other politician makes. So I do think people will want to see some evidence that being an outsider works.
Again, Trump supporters also do not think like the Republicans of the recent past.
Still missing the point, these are not your father’s republicans, or at least the Republicans that your fathers and many moderate Republicans of today thought they knew.
Exactly. His candidacy is the test for a hypothesis about what ails the political process. His failure would disprove the hypothesis.
Of course, voters don’t all evaluate these things rationally. But some marginal percentage of Americans will shift from evaluating our political crisis as a problem of outsider vs. politician class, and start evaluating it in a different way (likely blaming corporate power(.
Pretty much. His entire goal is simply to BE President. He’ll probably make various deals with whoever is running Congress to pass anything they send him as long as he comes out of it looking good and can claim anything successful was all his idea. Anything that doesn’t work will be all the fault of someone else.
His followers will lap it up, the GOP will take advantage of the situation for two years and then there will be a major Congressional swing to the Democrats at the midterm.
If we were elected President - something I think is very unlikely - he has no need of Joe Arpaio and his ilk. There will be plenty of opportunistic politicians in Washington who will be quite happy to sit at the right hand of the Devil rather than in his way.
I think the related-but-more-important question is: who is the Dick Cheney in all this? If The Donald is a character/figurehead, what Power Player will know how to work the Bureaucracy, offer to do so in support of Trump, but really exert power?
And how do you know all this? What clear, evidence do you have that voters today are just so much more different than voters 8 years ago?
Seems like you just want to really believe that hundreds of thousands of Republicans are just foaming at the mouth like zombies in the basement ready to attack.
Passionate Republican and passionate Democrats are all that different, your desires to the contrary.
Wrong again, the Republicans I’m talking about are just about 38% of them. And the reality is that once the contest goes to the general election many more republicans will become enablers of that 38%
The point is then that those that will do so are just about the same Arpaio and his ilk. I’m afraid that there is a lot of wishful thinking by expecting a change from what we are seeing now coming from Trump. I prefer to take him seriously.
Well, look at what happened to similarly “extreme” candidates in previous races: they got marginalized.
Possibly the closest thing to Trump’s candidacy in recent years is that of Pat Buchanan in 2000 on the Reform Party ticket. Buchanan had a similar “take this country back” conservative militancy, although in a more overtly religious vein:
Buchanan ended up with 0.4% of the popular vote.
Wealthy businessman Steve Forbes actually sought the Republican nomination in that same year, using claims of “outsider” and “business-savvy” credentials somewhat similar to Trump’s to support his rather bizarre suite of proposals (remember the Forbes flat tax?). His campaign was described in Time as “wacky, saturated with money and ultimately embarrassing to all concerned.” He never got any serious traction as a candidate either.
Trump’s campaign and overall attitude aren’t that much different from those of various fringe conservatives of previous elections. What’s seriously different this time is what an “un-fringe” reception he’s getting from Republican voters.
IF he’s elected he’ll probably be better than most presidents at deflecting or lying about his past positions and their failures or his lack of delivery by spinning things to either look like he never said what we all know he said, spinning the failure as due to Congress (he’d actually have a point here, since I doubt either the Republicans OR the Democrats would support him), or that he’s flip flopped on whatever it is because he’s a reasonable guy and you have to be flexible and negotiate, blah blah blah.