Even if one doesn’t think Trump will be able to get far, at the very least, he’ll continue mouthing off like he has been doing and be able to piss people off and hurt relations that way. Also remember that he’ll have people around him and appoint people to do his bidding, so he’ll be able to get a ways before somebody stops him. He creates so much uncertainty and chaos around him that you don’t know what he’s going to do. If Pence and the far right, plus his family, can keep him in check, then you have a far right administration that will likely roll back a lot of social progress. Chaos or a far right administration are not exactly pleasant options to choose from
If Trump loses though, I do wonder what the people in charge will do about those angry, pissed-off voters who have been supporting Trump. They are still going to be around and something needs to be done about or for them (particularly the ones who are suffering economic disruption)
I like to think our current system of government provides some measure of checks and balances in the event a total moronic asshole is placed in charge. Obviously Trump and Bush were not the first jerkoffs in 240 years.
Especially one who is himself coming in asshole waddya-gonna-do-boutit mode. Nixon at least understood that the dirty work had to be done dirty and covered up.
Y’know, the more I think about it, the more I come back to a musing I made earlier:
I have to wonder if it wouldn’t be a good thing to have an environment where the Trump demographic (obviously quite large) feels free to say what they in their heart of hearts want to say. My use of “say” and not “say and do” is deliberate, because obviously the actions would be downright horrifying, but I can’t help thinking that there needs to be SOME kind of outlet for all this racism and sexism and xenophobia, and whether them being able to air it out might not be a good thing.
Maybe if more people who want to elect Trump felt free to stand up and shout, “Black lives do NOT matter! They’re all thugs and gangbangers! Go away, and leave good white people alone!” or “Islam is a religion of hate! You’re all terrorists! We need to round them all up and put them in prison and make their religion illegal!” or “We need laws RIGHT NOW to make it legal to put gays into mental institutions, like the good old days!” or “Shut up, woman! I’m the man, and you’re inferior! Now go make me dinner before I beat the hell out of you!”, they’d feel would feel better for being able to speak their “truth”, and the rest of the nation would see just what kind of forces are behind him and his political ilk.
I hope I’m expressing myself clearly here, because if anything concerns me about this election, it’s seeing all this repressed rage against non-whites, non-straights, non-Christians, and women that’s just building and seething with nowhere to go, and it’s obviously going straight to Trump. It feels like a boil that needs to be lanced. That may be the ONLY thing good that comes out of a Trump presidency, honestly.
We had a long era when angry white men could say whatever they wanted to about other people. You could be quite open in your bigotry (as long as you were part of the majority).
Driving that sort of bigotry underground and out of sight has been one of the great victories of the last few decades. Why would we want to reverse it and go back to the bad old days?
But I’m wondering if the repression of it has given rise to Trump, and exposing it to sunlight again is the only way to shrivel it back down, to demonstrate to the majority of America that this crap is still here, it exists, it’s prevalent even in your neighbors, and that it still needs to be addressed, and to drive home just how deep and horrifying it is. I mean, it’s not like the U.S. is the only place this xenophobia rightward shift happening in, and people are already shrugging off stuff like BLM and affirmative action on the assumption that “racism is over”.
I don’t know if you’ve been on the internet lately, but people are already free to say whatever damn fool thing they want. Nobody is stopping bigots from saying the most astonishingly vicious shit. They even have their own messageboards and blogs. Some of them make disgustingly good money at it.
What’s changed is that, now a days, the rest of us (ie - the ones who are usually on the receiving end of that viciousness) are free to tell them off and refuse to associate with them. That’s the big difference - not that bigots want to say bigot things, but that the rest of us are vocal about not wanting to listen to their bigotry.
And really - bigots don’t want “free speech”. What they want is a powerless audience that can’t argue back, just like they had “in the good old days”. Well, they can tell it to their therapists because the rest of us are entitled to use our own freedom to put a moldy sock in it.
If Nixon had somehow skated through Watergate he would be remembered as a great President. His list of accomplishments is incredibly impressive.
Nixon was paranoid and dirty and looked like The Penguin, but he was a STATESMAN. He was a man who, for all his lust for power, saw his role as being to do his job as the holder of a given office, and he did, and as a result accomplished great things. Détente with China and arms reductions talks? Creation of the EPA? He did those things and more.
Do you think Donald Trump could do the good things Nixon did? I don’t think he could. He has neither the knowledge nor the temperament nor, frankly, the motivation to do anything to actually help his countrymen.
I’m not any more worried about Trump than I was Obama in 2008. I knew that Congress would block most of O’s liberal agenda.
Rest assured Trump’s more extreme ideas will never get through Congress. I doubt he’ll have any chance of getting reelected. Unless he surprises everybody and does a good job.
Trump doesn’t actually have a lot of policy ideas. My fear is that the Congress will go full Kansas and implement their conservative economic agenda, with Trump signing it all. Which Kansas has pretty much shown doesn’t actually work.
Wow … it’s like 1980 all over again … y’all need some original rhetoric … recycling the old stuff makes it meaningless.
Your county District Attorney’s election race will effect you far more than the Presidential race, and I’ll warrant y’all don’t even know who’s running.
I realize liberals love to trot out Kansas, but Kansas isn’t the only state governed by a conservative governor. In fact, the majority of states these days are governed by conservative governors(Thanks Obama we love you!).
Brownback has proven to be a horrible governor. But in Florida, Rick Scott has done a good job despite being disliked, Scott Walker, John Kasich, Mike Pence(and Mitch Daniels before him), most of the Western plains states…
Of course, things could go as badly as Kansas, but I hope Paul Ryan is smarter than Sam Brownback. My instincts tell me he is, since at core Brownback is just a Bible Thumper.
I was going to mention Walker and Wisconsin, actually. It’s not the dumpster fire that KS is, but comparing it to Dayton and Minnesota and it doesn’t look good (based on memory of probably 2-year old data at this point, so things may have changed).
Individuals matter though. I’ve said before that there is nothing inherently wrong with either liberalism or conservatism as a broad governing philosophy. But there are harebrained ideas in both ideologies and if a leader gets too attached to a particular harebrained idea(like supply side economics) that can lead to a failed administration.
Mark Dayton has gotten good reviews, and a lot of that is because he hasn’t gone and chased out all the businesses. Minnesota is one of the best states to do business in and that hasn’t changed under Dayton.
