You’re missing his point. Tactics.
Hey, you can’t go teabagging without a Dick Army.
Good points on the lack of leadership. This is millions of disgusted yet unorganized citizens, rising up against an administration that is both evil and incompetent. But where were these fuckers in November?
Yes, I accept your correction. “Ideas” was a poor word choice.
A Trump presidency, before Election Day, was only a fleeting figment of the imagination, and hard to picture exactly what it would be like. Now, in February, people do know what a Trump presidency is like. Imagination never holds a candle to reality.
I think there are three reasons why Democrats can’t or won’t obstruct as well as Republicans:
- Democrats are a much more diverse coalition, with a lot more conflicting internal interests;
- Democrats don’t have as much practice or experience being obstructors;
- Democrats often feel more pressure to behave like “the adults in the room” (Democratic politicians; that is, not Democratic rank-and-file voters) and so may be judged more severely for obstruction than GOPers.
I know I’m not doing a good job articulating this but I’m going to keep trying. 
Yes I am talking tactics but I also worry about the counter-reaction to Trump swinging the pendulum too far the other way and deepening the divide in the US even further. Trump is an embarrassing incompetent who is willing to do harm to the US and the whole world in order to massage his ego. I don’t know if he is self-aware enough to be truly evil but he is willing to surround himself with evil people and allow them to do evil things in order to be President. I think there is a danger that those that oppose him (including myself) will allow this to make the battle less about doing what is right and more about defeating Trump and by extension the Republicans. My side is always right and the other side is always wrong. Ideology could become more important than good governance for everyone. There is a danger that this rancor will continue long after Trump is out of office and continue this Charlie Foxtrot that is the US for a long time to come.
The left doesn’t have the propaganda machine/echo machine of the right in the form of talk radio and Fox news but I am not sure that is necessary in this social media age. I am seeing lots of Facebook posts from those that oppose Trump that have less to do with facts and reason and more to pure emotion. The far left positions I see are just as kooky as many of the far right.
I have seen what a rabbit hole the right wing media can be. Last night, I sat in my FIL’s hospital room after he had a cancerous growth removed from his tongue. I thought even those this man has become a rabid Tea Partier he is not a bad man but he has had his thinking distorted. This man married my MIL and took in her 3 kids, including my wife, when they had only the clothes on their backs even though he had 3 kids of his own and not much money himself. He loved and raised those kids as his own and worked very hard to give them a good life. He has been nothing but kind & generous to me in the past 25 years but he has become distrustful and even hateful of anyone who is not of his group.
He worked as a toolmaker, line supervisor and finally a QA supervisor for large plant of a Fortune 100 company. He was a man of facts, reason, and practical science but he came to believe any myth that came out of the far right machine. He was a 6 Sigma black belt and used statistics extensively in his QA work but now all Muslims are terrorists and all immigrants are freeloading criminals. A fierce believer in the American dream who would now deny that dream to others based on their religion or the color of their skin. He showed no real interest in guns and used to be dismissive of religion but in the past few years he amassed quite the gun collection and joined a church almost as if he had to because that’s what his “tribe” does.
The Tea Party and their ilk took people with good intentions and honest political differences down a rabbit hole where facts, pragmatism, and good governance don’t matter and any political tactic that made their side win was okay and be damned the damage those tactics might do. These people were able to hijack a party with these tactics. This led to an unthinkable candidate becoming elected President. I worry that the counter reaction to this President might lead to something similar on the political left. I don’t think it will be as anywhere as extreme but there is a divide in this country that is growing. That divide could easily far outlast the Trump presidency and ended up doing more damage than Trump.
Yep, more than once I also pointed that a significant number of voters told themselves that Trump was only exaggerating or even lying about most of his dumb policies, and that he would be more liberal or independent minded or effective like he appeared to be years ago.
This is what an awakening looks like…
… the rude kind.
The difference is that unlike radical opposition to Obama which required conspiracy theories that he was a Muslim jehadist, born in Kenya, who is setting up death panels which run false flag school massacres to take away our guns. We can portray Trump as a narcissist who knows nothing about governing or policy and has advisors with connections with white nationalists, while still remaining in the fact based real world.
I think you’re right that reaction to Trump will further polarize the country, but short of acquiescing to the alternative reality based policy we see from the Republicans these days I don’t see how that is avoidable.
It’s hard to see from a website like the SDMB, but I have seen little indication that anything Trump has done to date will do much to convince Trump voters that they made a mistake.
Trump said he wanted to ban Muslim immigration; he implemented a moratorium on people from the seven countries. Said moratorium is more popular than otherwise among the general public AFAICT. Trump said he would nominate a conservative to the Supreme Court - he picked a good one. Pretty much all the objections I have read to Trump cabinet nominees is simply that they aren’t liberal Democrats. The stuff about his links to Putin are speculation, nobody cares (apart from the Left) if he releases his taxes, and the stuff about his NSA advisor is kind of - well, not petty exactly, but the guy he picked as National Security advisor talked with the Russkis before he was confirmed. And lied about it to Pence, but immediately resigned or was fired. Not that major a scandal, and over almost immediately. Hard to make hay out of it.
Trump shooting his mouth off - I don’t think anyone, friend or foe alike, expected anything else.
Regards,
Shodan
Mathematically I’m not sure if it needs to sway any Trump voters to succeed – if it motivates Democrats to turn out like '06 and '08 in '18 and '20, then it would probably be hugely successful, electorally speaking.
I always felt the Tea Party was a repudiation of establishment Republicans who had become moderates. Thus the term RINO Republican In Name Only came into use. Even now guys like McCain and Graham are despised by Trump supporters for advocating amnesty and going along with Democrats.
Who are the moderates in the Democrat party that my liberals friends want replaced? What policies do you feel are too moderate and need to be more left leaning? You guys seem to be pretty happy with what you have now. No need for a Left Wing Tea Party as far as I can tell.
Shodan wrote: " Pretty much all the objections I have read to Trump cabinet nominees is simply that they aren’t liberal Democrats."
It’s not that at all. You expect a conservative to nominate conservatives. But the main source of opposition stems not from the idea that these people will bring a conservative perspective on running the agencies, but a belief that they are overtly hostile to the mission of the agencies in question.
If a Democrat nominated Jane Fonda to be Secretary of Defense or Willie Nelson to head the DEA, or (were he not dead) Jack Kevorkian as Surgeon General would you characterize Republican qualms about such nominees as: " Pretty much a,ll the objections I have read to these cabinet nominees is simply that they aren’t conservative republicans."? I think not.
AFAIK, the Bernie Bros consider the Clintons, and the entire Clinton wing of the party, to have been DINOs.
Radicals hack out the path and clear the site. Progressives build the cabins and the fireplaces. Liberals come along when the hot showers are installed. Wishy-washy “centrists” get on my nerves, and I wish to God we didn’t need them so bad. 'Course, both sides do it…
Howabout a Testicle Navey?
It’s the same thing. Look at the DeVos nomination. Liberals opposed her because she supports school choice and vouchers. That’s a conservative position, and therefore liberals frame their objections as saying she is hostile to the mission of education. Because they believe the mission of the DoEd is public schools and public schools only - anything that threatens the revenue stream of the teachers’ unions is anathema.
Regards,
Shodan
This seems about as likely and accurate as “conservatives want to destroy all unions and public schools”. How about some reasonable and nuanced discussion, in which we recognize that the other side is probably mostly honest in their desires and beliefs – for education, for example, each side generally believes their policies are the most likely to result in quality education for children, rather than being motivated by something nefarious…?
Strangely, all the opposition I saw to DeVos had to do with the fact that she had no professional or personal experience with the public education system and demonstrated deep ignorance both of the requirements of the job she was nominated for and of basic current issues in educational policy. But hey - the Republicans opposed Obama’s nominees because he was a Democrat, the Democrats opposed Trump’s nominees because they’re unqualified in every sense, so both sides do the same thing, right?
Yes, her positions are conservative. But they aren’t typical conservative. They are well out of the mainstream entirely. She’s actively hostile to the concept of public schools.
She also has a complete lack of knowledge on any of the policy issues. She’s not someone who knows the stuff but has conservative ideas on how to deal with it. She’s someone who doesn’t actually know what the job entails, and couldn’t even the bare minimum of preparation. She can’t answer basic questions and had to dodge.
She’s also a Dominionist, and has as her goal the plan to force God into our schools. She’s anti-separation of Church and State. In fact, that’s why she hates public schools. Hell, she advocates teaching Creationism.
She also paid a lot for the job, which means a whole lot of corruption going on. She flat out said “I have decided to stop taking offense at the suggestion that we are buying influence. Now I simply concede the point. They are right. We do expect something in return.”
In short, leave out the Christian stuff, and she’s basically Trump. She’s inexperienced, knows nothing about what she’s doing,has no desire to learn, and is rather corrupt. All she needs is to open a Twitter account.
The problem with this comparison is that conservatives (#notallconservativesbutcloseenough) want to destroy all unions, and at least a sizable minority of conservatives want to bring an end to “government schools” as they call them.