President Trump Optimism thread

I don’t know, that makes me depressed as fuck. Here we have a racist couple, encouraged enough to blatantly disrupt a flight with their obnoxious comments.

When the fringe is emboldened enough to go public, then we’ve got a problem with those in charge who turn a blind eye to them. We all know this was part of Trumps support, if not even part of his platform. Sure, the folks on that plane didn’t tolerate it, but it sure seems like a huge portion of GOP leadership turns a blind eye to it, or won’t speak out against this crap.

The GOP barely makes a peep about that stuff because it depends on those people’s votes, without which they couldn’t get elected, which itself is necessary to enact their real agenda of taking us back to the 1890’s, before all these pesky child labor laws, workers comp, unemployment insurance benefits, food and drug regulation, social security, etc.

I sometimes think the GOP is held hostage by gerrymandering as much as the rest of us are. I feel like if some external force could sweep away these gerrymandered districts they’d flip their policies at the drop of a hat.

Kicking racists off a plane is awesome.

I’ve had enough of these motherfucking racists on a motherfucking plane!

Haha, that’s great, I had the same thought going through my head.

On the upside, ragtime everywhere, and people dress up again to take Sunday walks!

He’s looking older, more tired, and far less orange. He also looks bored as shit.

Hmm, I do enjoy a jaunty ragtime tune, as well as barbershop quartets. And hey, laudanum will also be freely available (not to mention “Mary Jane”).
Still, I’m rather fond of the other stuff I mentioned.

They say the presidency ages you, and he’s already the oldest president in history!

A while back Timex asked why Rasmussen polls had Trump’s approval rating so much higher than anyone else’s.

I answered that Rasmussen, historically, just isn’t that great of a pollster. Which is true, but doesn’t really explain the consistently high numbers for Trump as opposed to say, just flakier Rassmussen numbers all around.

But Nate Silver explains the core reason
: pollsters like Gallup (who basically invented Presidential approval polling in the 1940s) poll all adults in their Presidential approval polls. Rasmussen is polling likely voters in their approval polls. Why they’re doing this is questionable - likely voters is a very restrictive screen and there’s no election imminent - but because likely voters skew much older than all adults, this method tends to favor Trump, whose core constituency is in the 50-70 range.

Me, I’ll stick to Gallup’s all-adults polls, both because they allow for historical comparisons (can Trump beat Nixon to the bottom?) and because they have such nice graphs. Now if only they didn’t create the specious illusion of trends by using moving averages …

Obligatory:

How can any sane thinking person waste any time reaching out to the Trump voter when this happens:

Arthur Herstein, 74, a writer from Bowie, Maryland, said he was frustrated by Obama’s “over-the-top” vacation and travel expenses.

Still, Herstein said he doesn’t believe it’s the case that Trump is on pace to spend more on vacation and travel. He waved away a Washington Post story held up on a reporter’s phone.

“I believe that the story exists,” Herstein said. “But the facts in it can’t possibly be right. That absolutely can’t be right. How did Trump spend $10 million in one month and Obama spent $11 million in a year? It defies logic.”

Fuck them.

“I believe that the story exists” is a key quote.

Trump’s demonization of the mainstream press and peddling of the catchall phrase “fake news” has provided a cognitive escape hatch allowing his supporters to disregard any information they dislike.

It reminds me of an interview with a fundamentalist in the early-2000s PBS documentary “Evolution,” in which the guy kept falling back on, I think, the Corinthians quote, “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God,” in response to any and all rational arguments in favor of the science. He had an internally consistent belief system that was totally impermeable.

It goes without saying that this is fucking terrifying.

And this is after a month.
The dude is not prepared for this gig.

Most of them are lost, to be honest. Like Sir @Gordon_Cameron pointed out (I’m just gonna start appending “sir” before your name because I think it has a great ring to it), the “fake news” mantra allows them to disregard any facts or information that they don’t want to confront or find unpleasant.

I find it extremely unfortunate and dangerous, because the news media does have agendas of their own (namely, they’re a business), they will be wrong at times, and they absolutely should be monitored and criticized. But it doesn’t mean that the New York Times, Wall Street Journal,or the Washington Post are on equal footing with www.bigbobsbigotryblog.com. The real news outlets will retract stories if it’s shown they’re wrong and they make an effort at verifying facts. Big Bob just says whatever he wants and critics be damned.

I’ve had so many conversations where I’ll be zeroing in on an argument about something, but when Trump supporters get cornered they just shrug and start disputing reality. You just can’t reach people like that.

While this bothers me, I don’t think it’s any different than it’s ever been. There’s always a core group on both sides (liberal and conservative) that are unwilling to budge from their beliefs.

It’s different this year. The ante has been upped by flat-out reality-denying narrative of Trump. Supporters can now reject the truth and facts.