I am an immigrant to the US and have lived here for 20+ years. I find some of the principles appealing from both Democrats and Republicans and don’t have “fanatical commitment” to either side.
With that preamble, I’d often wondered, since the results of the last elections came in, as to whether Trump represents the failing of the Democrats during the Obama presidency to connect with the wider American demographics (The effect) or did Trump cause the widespread divisive politics of today (The cause) ?
I understand it maybe both but would like to hear which one is more important, in your opinion.
Interesting how an awful Republican POTUS could be due to failings of the Democratic Party. You don’t see any way Republican politics of division since, essentially, Ronald Reagan could’ve produced the Trump candidacy? Or any way the 20 year Republican campaign against HRC could’ve alienated just enough voters in key states away from her to give candidate Trump the EC?
Odd how it’s always Democratic failings that produce horrible Republican outcomes.
Checks and balances, sure, but that only 'splains some of it. It’s mostly lack of connecting.
It’s like when a good House bill dies in the Senate. That’s obviously the Dems’ fault. Pelosi should’ve passed it up more firmly, and the Minority Leader should’ve connected with the general American public.
Trump* isn’t fit to shovel shit from one place to another*.
To credit him for anything more than knowing how to use low cunning to exploit the sympathies of the shrinking right wing, low information, evangelical, often bigoted segment of the population is a mistake. What you see is what you get with Trump. His life laid bare for all to see is that of a narcissistic sociopath, pathological liar, bigot, sexual predator and lifetime grifter.
He is the result (effect) of ~63M voters who want to exact revenge on ‘the other’ and watch the world burn, delusionally believing they’ll be spared.
It’s unclear what you mean precisely by “Trump” here. I’m assuming you mean the fact that he was elected, in which case it’s worth noting that, broadly speaking,
The white working class has been trending republican for a long time.
Rural areas have been trending republican for a long time.
The educated/managerial class has been trending democrat for a long time.
All of these trends predate Obama.
As far as a partisanship. there again, I think you have to go much deeper and look farther back than Obama. ISTM the post-WW2 era was a high point of shared values, and we’ve been steadily getting more pulled apart since roughly the mid-60s.
Is “wider American demographic” a code word for rural white men? Because that’s the only way this question makes sense.
The Democrats don’t have a problem with demographics. The Democratic candidate got more votes than the Republican candidate in six out of the last seven presidential elections. The wider American demographic prefers the Democratic party. So the Democrats have no problem there.
The problem the Democrats have is that the Republicans have rigged the electoral system so that elections are not decided by who the majority votes for. Republicans appeal to the rural white male minority and our electoral system gives that minority group preferential treatment. (And in the interest of full disclosure, I’ll point out that I am a member of the rural white male minority.)
Trump didn’t cause this problem. It existed long before he came along. But he took advantage of it. And he supports it because it benefits him.
Sigh . . . and yet, Quicksilver, he won. It’s always going to come down to the fact that he won. As bad as he was, our side was worse. I wouldn’t be beating that particular dead horse so much, but it looks like we’ve nominated the same goddamned type out-of-touch candidate who couldn’t connect to a three-way phone call much less the American electorate, because, as Lewis Black famously put it, apparently the devil you do know is better than winning.
Trump is a symptom, not a doubt in my mind. Trump is the result of an uneducated and uninformed middle-aged American public (remember SAT scores in the 80s?) trying to figure out why they should listen to some whacked-out old guy who is too old to be called a Boomer and whose main talents seem to be forgetting what day it is and pissing people off before they even realize that he’s running for office.
Chickens, meet roost.
The only silver lining I see to this is that it’s not permanent. I’m back in college now studying for a couple of degrees alongside people who are half my age (and in some cases, a third of my age), and they’re smarter, more hard-working, and better informed than anyone I ever ran into in high school and undergrad. These are the people who are going to save us from ourselves and–quite rightly–despise us.
Also, I’ve been hearing this since 2000, and never mind 2016, and it still mystifies me.
The Republicans rigged the electoral system? Really? And how, pray tell, did they rig it? Did they use the dastardly, underhanded, super-secret, Plan-Z12 of actually appealing to the swing states? The absolute nerve!!
And Trump . . . took advantage of the problem? No, folks, Trump did NOT take advantage of any problem. Trump played the game and won, OK? When I play chess, and I managed to get my pawn to the other side of the board and turn it into the queen, I have not taken advantage of any problem, because the problem doesn’t exist. I have used strategy to play the game and turn the board to my advantage, and if I have two queens on the board, and my opponent has none, because I took his five moves ago in a king/queen fork, then it might not strike my opponent as fair, but I haven’t taken advantage of him.
I’VE BEATEN HIM!!
It goes back to that sense of entitlement I keep seeing on the Politics/Elections room as well as the Pit. That somehow, we’re bad people for not falling all over ourselves to kiss the bad, uncharismatic candidate’s ass. Entitled people win arguments on message boards. They tend not to win elections, because electoral politics tend not to give a flying fuck about opinions on message boards.
That’s not what happened. Trump didn’t advance his pawn across the board and promote to a queen. Trump - and other Republicans - are handed a second queen at the start of the game.
That’s only a fair system if you think Republicans are supposed to win the game and the rules should be designed to give them an advantage.
It is the fault of we Democrats in that we didn’t cause red necks to vote for our party.
Aren’t they deplorable?
There should have been statements like, “I understand these guys are worried about their coal jobs going down the drain. Anytime an industry begins to fail, the government should find some way to create new jobs for these guys. Give tax incentives for another industry to move into that area, for example.”
Sorry, Nemo, but if those swing states in the electoral college tend to vote Republican, then that’s just tough. Plenty of Democrats have managed to win elections with the electoral college, and maybe, just maybe, if we got serious . . . we might even be able to capture some of those states. Maybe. Probably not this election, though, right?
Nobody handed Trump a queen. A bunch of states vote Republican, because that’s how they roll. It’s part of the game. Perhaps if we stopped complaining about that and started seeing what we could do to change people’s minds in those states (again, not this year), things could change.
Or we could just keep complaining again and again about the electoral college and see where that gets us.
That’s what we’re doing – fighting for higher minimum wage, union protections, health care, etc. Stuff that would help most of them. Some of them will see it and vote Democrat – others won’t, probably because they value angering liberals and harming immigrants and minorities more than they value these issues, even if they might improve their lives.
We can see this story in many parts of the South (and elsewhere!) over and over again. So many white communities had a choice between ending segregation/oppression and economic stagnation, and many or most chose economic stagnation for decades (many also chose to plunder black communities, improving their wealth at least in the short or medium term). Segregation and oppression were more important to them than greater wealth for their communities. Just like Nazi Germany had a choice to put resources towards murdering Jews or trying to win the war, and they chose murdering Jews, over and over again. The Nazis valued murdering Jews even more than their own regime’s survival! It doesn’t make logical sense, but many humans’ decision making doesn’t make logical sense.
Trump is the president and he is responsible for all of it. ALL of it.
Did this shit happen under Obama? Nope. But if it had, I’m pretty sure he would have come out and calmed people down. Which is what you expect, from a leader. Not hiding out in the white house and tweeting incendiary shit.
Welcome to the human condition!! This is the task you’ve set for yourself, OK? As bad as those peckerwoods are, they have a vote, and some of them might even live in a state where they can put that vote to good use. This is where we have to play a better game than our opponents. You’re not going to reach the peckerwoods. Not now, not ever. What you CAN do–and what plenty of candidates HAVE done–is motivate enough people in the state to outvote the peckerwoods and put in a decent, likable person, who knows how to get his message out to young voters… You know what would really help with that? Running a decent, likable person, who knows how to get his message out to young voters in the first place. This is why focusing on Trump is a bad idea. This is why running candidates with qualifications such as “not quite as lousy as Trump” is not going to win. Because peckerwoods vote, too, and all they have to do to win is outvote the decent folk. Not outnumber the decent folk (because I don’t think they do). Outvote the decent folk.
And we beat Nazi Germany, and the last I checked, Nazi Germany has a perfectly functional political system in place, nary a death camp to be found. Oh, and also, segregation and Jim Crowe are no more in the South. And we didn’t even have to fight a shooting war to do overturn that, although things certainly got violent. I might add that the South is quite a bit better economically, too. OK, Mississippi and Alabama still kind of suck, but the South is turning into a good place to live. I’m sensing the next hipster haven somewhere down there, myself, and it might even be on par with San Francisco. Seriously, things have changed, things are changing, and things will change. They always do.
Long story short, iiAndyiii, don’t tell me why it can’t be done. Tell me why it can, and we’ll go from there.
Trump is an effect, not a cause. *All *presidents are an effect. Presidents don’t elect themselves. They are elected by voters (okay, if you want to be pedantic, they are elected by electors who are elected by voters) and those *voters *are the cause. The cause of everything. Everything that happens in America is on you, voters.
Of course, every cause is also an effect of some prior cause, and one of the many causes that contribute to the outcome of an election is the previous administration. But that is only one cause out of many. The economy, the world situation, pandemics, demographics, technology, the media, weather patterns… all are contributing causes that are ultimately filtered through the voters.