Exactly. I think keeping Trump in power just because one thinks it will be harder for Republican enact their agenda is playing a absurd game of chicken. Republican have taken tribalism to a new level of insanity, with the as long as pisses liberals off, I am happy mentality. The flip side is for Democrat to think, keeping Trump in office for 4 years is going to total fuck over Republicans and they’ll be hosed in 2020.
If the last decade has taught us anything is that party line actions don’t lead to any lasting change. The other side will dismantle them as soon as they get into power. The only way to get lasting change in this country is bipartisan legislation.
Trump in power can do real damage domestically through executive orders, and in foreign affairs we have given the Imperial presidency near absolute authority. While it’s nice that there are adults on the foreign affairs team, President Trump trust his gut, which is virtually always wrong. You combine his incompetence, with a state and defense department that are devoid of upper level management staff and we have a nuclear bomb ready to explode.
I don’t really think that should be the lesson. Obamacare was not a bipartisan effort, but I still believe it will be the law of the land for a while. The New Deal in the 30’s wasn’t bipartisan. Hell, if you look at most major reforms in this nation, it very little was bipartisan.
You really should go back and check the legislation history of these bills.
Social Security Act 372-33
National Industrial Recovery Act 329-80
Medicare 315-114 (Republican split 50/50)
Give me some example of major bills passed on a partisan basis.
They at least tried pretty hard to pass the ACA with some Republican support. The Republicans have crazy party discipline though.
I think it was David Frum who kept pushing them to work with the Democrats to fix the the things they perceived as the worst in the ACA rather than simply obstruct it.
The Affordable Healthcare Act, the Stimulus, most of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society Program.
These articles seem to distinguish between bipartisanship and compromise. They call all the Social Security Act as bipartisan (a good point) but also point out that the Democrats did not compromise with the Republicans, unlike the Affordable Healthcare Act, where Obama did compromise with the Republican Party, but did not get bipartisan support.
Also, in both the Civil Rights era and the Great Depression, the Minority party was dealt such a blow that for the most part, they were sidelined when it came to getting the other party to compromise.
Again, I see your argument, and you are correct, in those instances, there was bipartisan support, but I would argue that it lacked bipartisan compromise. It wasn’t two sides coming together so much as one side voting along with the other.
More of a dog bites man, rather than man bites dog story, yes. If they reported there was NO direct investigation, that would be a bombshell, but this may at least confront the talking point of some that DT is still not under investigation.
So, they are reporting on what WaPo said, that Comey had implied, that we all basically already knew?
I do think, though (and this may be the point of the breaking news), that the word “criminal” is important here, because executive privilege would not apply.
Hate to burst the bubble, but Trump’s impact on EU elections isn’t anywhere near what a lot of US media pretends it to be. The 2016 highs you’re seeing are almost solely due to the EU immigrant crisis giving fuel to anti-immigrant parties who predicted a ‘tsunami of refugees’. By end 2016 it was clear that this wasn’t going to happen (partly due to the Turkey refugee deal) and support eroded as a result.
Furthermore, populist parties (both left and right) polling high before the election is pretty much standard issue here. It’s voters spouting their discontent, but when push comes to shove most of them vote for the safe centrist parties they always vote for.
And then there’s the specific reasons. The PVV didn’t lose at all, in fact growing by 25% becoming the second largest party.
Le Pen’s support dropped due to the meteoric rise of Macron in a nation where a lot of Le Pen voters were of the ‘anyone but Fillion’ variety. Without Macron, Le Pen would have won easily.
UKIP was basically made obsolete when Brexit was achieved. That and Farage leaving made them pretty much invisible from the public eye.
Only in Germany I’d say there is some effect from Trump because German politics are particularly sensitive to right authoritarianism (for obvious reasons). Of course, the continuous rancour within AfD’s upper ranks doesn’t help them either, and we have yet to see what the actual election result will be.
TL;DR Europeans don’t care nearly as much about Trump as one might think. He’s mainly fucking over US citizens after all.
