Who Is The Left's Equivalent Of Donald Trump?

[Bryan_Ekers]

@up_the_junction

I’ve used the word as I intended

You and Humpty Dumpty, bub.

[watchwolf49]

Gwyneth Paltrow … or maybe Tom Cruise … I’m surprised no one but me would bring up Moonbeam, or have Democrats come to accept him now-a-day? …

@nelliebly

Are we looking for people who meet the constitutional requirements to become President? If so, Barack Obama is out … [snip]

A bit of a nitpick here, Barack Obama cannot run for President again … the 22nd Amendment is specific: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice …” which doesn’t necessarily prohibit Obama from being President again …

Let Nancy Pelosi have the nomination, have her name Obama as the Vice Presidential candidate with the promise to promptly resign the presidency if elected … thus Obama would serve a third term without violating the above mentioned Constitutional provision … [wolfish grin] …

[TroutMan]

@watchwolf49

A bit of a nitpick here, Barack Obama cannot run for President again … the 22nd Amendment is specific: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice …” which doesn’t necessarily prohibit Obama from being President again …

This isn’t a decided matter, but most people interpret the 12th Amendment (no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice President of the United States) as prohibiting that. The former president is ineligible to be on the ballot as President, therefore they are ineligible to be on the ballot as VP.

[Fiveyearlurker]

There is no correct answer to this question, and that fact speaks volumes. Whoever the left equivalent of Trump is, he or she has not been elevated past crazy blogger who says crazy shit status.

[Spice_Weasel]

@Ulfreida

But there are droves of A-list celebs with those qualities. But are they fascist demagogues? Are they narcissistic sociopaths? Do they lack all morals? Are they sexual predators? Are they kleptocrats? Are they suffering from senile dementia?

Okay, but let’s look at it a different way. All these things you listed are things that horrify liberals, clearly if they horrified his supporters he never would have received the votes. We have to reframe this in a way where the qualities of the Democratic candidate are anathema to Trump voters, or in the very least, conservatives as a whole.

I’ve still got Kanye in the lead.

Okay, maybe R. Kelly? That adds the sexual predator bit back in.

[eschereal]

@up_the_junction

… metro liberals can pompously mock his Twitter stuff - for not being sufficiently ‘presidential’, but it just points up even more their own disconnection and arrogance.

Twitter is ipso facto unpresidential. Why should the President feel compelled to blort out trivial nonsense on a regular basis? It plays out as whining, which is, ahem, for lusers.

[Dewey_Finn]

@up_the_junction

Oh sure, it’s not change in the sense of the Obama strap line - that didn’t appeal to the desperate and disenfranchised, it’s genuine drain the swamp change. They are happy for Trump to properly smash the DC system. There is nothing in it for the already abandoned.

For example, metro liberals can pompously mock his Twitter stuff - for not being sufficiently ‘presidential’, but it just points up even more their own disconnection and arrogance.

Except that he didn’t drain the swamp. His cabinet is full of the same insiders (from Goldman Sachs, for example) that previous cabinets had.

And as for Twitter, why does he need it as a means to communicate? He already has the ear of every form of media and world leader. He can issue a statement, talk directly to the press or have his spokesperson say whatever he wants.

[nelliebly]

@up_the_junction

Oh sure, it’s not change in the sense of the Obama strap line - that didn’t appeal to the desperate and disenfranchised, it’s genuine drain the swamp change. They are happy for Trump to properly smash the DC system. There is nothing in it for the already abandoned.

For example, metro liberals can pompously mock his Twitter stuff - for not being sufficiently ‘presidential’, but it just points up even more their own disconnection and arrogance.

But he’s not smashing the “DC system,” and his supporters don’t care if he does: they only care if he continues to spout and sputter, via Twitter or anywhere else, and I think that’s noteworthy: actual change no longer matters to them; only the bluster. Maybe they see it as catharsis-by-proxy.

Case in point: Trump hasn’t in fact drained the swamp. In fact, lobbyists say business has never been better.

In the first half of 2017, spending hit nearly $1.7 billion, the highest since 2012. 'I don’t think that anything’s really changed," Republican lobbyist Brian Wild told Politico. “If anything, the lobbying business is booming right now.

” (Cite)

But to Trump’s core supporters, that doesn’t matter. Nothing he has promised and hasn’t accomplished matters.

Over the course of three rainy, dreary days last week, I revisited and shook hands with the president’s base—that thirtysomething percent of the electorate who resolutely approve of the job he is doing, the segment of voters who share his view that the Russia investigation is a “witch hunt” that “has nothing to do with him,” and who applaud his judicial nominees and his determination to gut the federal regulatory apparatus. But what I wasn’t prepared for was how readily these same people had abandoned the contract he had made with them. Their satisfaction with Trump now seems untethered to the things they once said mattered to them the most.

…as I compared this year’s answers to last year’s responses it seemed clear that the basis of people’s support had morphed. Johnstown voters do not intend to hold the president accountable for the nonnegotiable pledges he made to them. It’s not that the people who made Trump president have generously moved the goalposts for him. It’s that they have eliminated the goalposts altogether.

(Cite)

There is no equivalent to Donald Trump, liberal or otherwise, but one day, after either four or eight years in office, he’ll no longer be President. What kind of candidate is likely to succeed him given the changed expectations of the electorate would be an interesting debate.

[nearwildheaven]

@Darren_Garrison

I’ll go with Jessie Jackson. He seems to have mellowed down in recent years, but once his goal in life was to never rest as long as there was a TV screen not showing Jessie Jackson.

I was going to pretty much say the same thing.

[AI_Proofreader]

nm

[Chisquirrel]

@Spice_Weasel

Okay, maybe R. Kelly? That adds the sexual predator bit back in.

Maybe, but -

anathema to Trump voters,

Sexual predation is a feature, not a bug.

You need someone like the Pope, but with an excess of melatonin.

[Sage_Rat]

Jeff Boss

Goodspaceguy

Stan Lippmann

Jenny McCarthy

Jim Carrey

Charlie Sheen

Alicia Silverstone

[up_the_junction]

@Dewey_Finn

Except that he didn’t drain the swamp. His cabinet is full of the same insiders (from Goldman Sachs, for example) that previous cabinets had.

@nelliebly

Case in point: Trump hasn’t in fact drained the swamp.

Of course he didn’t. They re/registered and voted in 2016 out of emotionally based desperation, as I said generational and familial and community desperation.

The political system has failed working and non working poor for decades, the abject cruelty is he encouraged them to hope, which some still cling on to.

[up_the_junction]

Make your own minds up, is this the third world: Remote Area Medical: Serving the Underserved - YouTube

[kaylasdad99]

WillFarnaby
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@Procrustus

No, on all counts.

@Lemur866

Uh huh.

What a great idea that was!

[foolsguinea]

You actually want to win? Dennis Kucinich. He’s weird but apparently harmless, and he was doing the “no strings” bit before Trump showed up and crashed the GOP.

[kaylasdad99]

@watchwolf49

Gwyneth Paltrow … or maybe Tom Cruise … I’m surprised no one but me would bring up Moonbeam, or have Democrats come to accept him now-a-day? …

The term “Moonbeam” seems to imply some disconnect from REALITY (defined here as a description of the way the universe actually exists).

Please be so good as to make your case for how this applies (and has EVER applied) to Gov. Brown.

In the unlikely event that I am mistaken about whom the term “Moonbeam” is in reference to, please identify the subject of your scorn by name, and answer the same question.

TIA

[foolsguinea]

@Snowboarder_Bo

Y’all are short-sighted and locked into the past. Look at the names being thrown out: Oprah, Paltrow, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton. Fuck those has-beens.

To fight Trump at the polls, there’s really only one Democratic candidate that could kick his fat ass back to reality TV: Lady Gaga.

We get her to run with Johnny Knoxville as her Veep candidate (for the lovable, “aw shucks that didn’t hurt” “fuck you; I’ll goddammed do it” idiot companion factor so prevalent in Veeps in modern times (and let’s face it, who is more American than Johnny Knoxville?)) and BAM! (Margera) we got us a Democratic POTUS again!

I would consider voting for this ticket. I mean, there’s no likelihood Gaga would do it, but I would consider it.

[kaylasdad99]

@watchwolf49

A bit of a nitpick here, Barack Obama cannot run for President again … the 22nd Amendment is specific: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice …” which doesn’t necessarily prohibit Obama from being President again …

Double nitpick. He is constitutionally barred from being elected again. Nothing in there to stop him from running.

[eschereal]

Michael Rappaport