I have hated Trump for a long time, but I do believe above all he is a showman and an ego. I think he said a lot of what he said to get elected, either that or he had an epiphany 16 months ago and changed his mind on everything.
His record is not one of the right winger. He was a democrat. He was friends with the Clintons.
I do think TARP is history. But I don’t see the GOP congress agreeing to fund anything he wanted. They all want tax cuts. Obamacare as it is now is dead, but he has said he wants some kind of healthcare, and not what the GOP has advocated.
As a fan of gridlock and do-nothing Presidents, Obama was really quite good. The last eight years have been pretty relaxed. Obamacare barely affects me. I think most of us will look back fondly on this time.
I can’t speak for other groups that may have been affected by him though.
We liberal elitists are now completely in the clear. The government is in Republican hands. Let them deal with him. Democrats can spend four years raising heirloom tomatoes, meditating, reading Jane Austen, traveling around the country, tasting artisan beers, and let the Republicans build the wall and carry on the trade war with China and deport the undocumented and deal with opioids, and we Democrats can go for a long, brisk walk and smell the roses.
I do find it strange that people still console themselves with the idea that Trump is too stupid, too lazy, whatever.
This man just made himself President of the United States. There’s literally no telling what he’ll do next with a servile and spineless Republican Congress at his back.
The GOP now has to figure what they actually want to do other than oppose Obama, which will be a shit show because they really don’t agree about it. Hopefully Dems will only stick their noses in when absolutely necessary.
I think he genuinely plans to invest in infrastructure and attempt to improve trade deals
I don’t think he will put much weight behind social oppression (except for immigration), and perhaps racial justice tempers will cool like they did under Nixon. Not great for the people who are angry for good reason, but perhaps useful as a way to move forward without violence.
He is not at all beholden to the GOP establishment, so perhaps he really will be able to create a shake that realigns the parties with how the country actually thinks.
Maybe we’ve really all been in a partisan bubble and he’s not that bad, his deplorable supporters are not really that numerous, and his crazier tendencies were either bluster or things that really will be reigned in by other powers.
Couple related points:
He’s not lazy in the strict sense, even if he’s prone to reject experts and believe conspiracies. He will not give up all the governing to Pence, but he will probably listen to advisers and make calls from what they say. If those advisers are all terrible people, that’s not much consolation.
The GOP establishment will not be completely servile. They may get a lot worse if Ryan steps down, but they have their own plans and they will want to push them.
So, perhaps he will not try or will find it very difficult to upend the system and become a dictator. He’s getting older, he mostly wanted to win, and the job of POTUS is prestigious and complex enough that overturning democracy itself may not really be that appealing to him (though I do think he will at least try to bend many constitutional protections to do the things he clearly favors like limit freedom of the press). He said 8 years in his victory speech, and I have no doubt he runs in 2020, but I also doubt he’ll be able to refuse to step down when his term (or gulp terms) is up. Hard to claim the vote is rigged when you control the government.
The recession was coming no matter who was elected. We’re due for one.
Social change will still happen in spite of President Trump. Recall Hillary was against gay marriage, destroyed black families with the crime bill, etc. I say this not to beat on Hillary but to remind everyone that society moves on like a boulder down a hill despite silly politicians and laws.
Shit, that’s my biggest concern. I look at this and think ‘this, barring getting into a shooting war with China or Russia, shouldn’t hurt me much long term’. I’m young, technically proficient, and a white male. The worst of this doesn’t hit me.
But I care about others. I care about what this means for minorities protesting for better treatment from officers, what this means for policing in general. I fear what this means for the working poor, for people who would otherwise face discrimination of any kind. I may not share in their troubles, but I’ll be damned if I won’t fight for them. That so many people stand to be hurt by the callow disregard of nearly half the populace makes me sick.
Being in Illinois I’ve never really had much reason to get involved. I’ve never voted in a competitive house district, for one. President? Running up the score for Clinton, for all the good that did. Hell this was the first time I voted in primaries.
I’ve never seen the point, frankly, of spending my time or money. Not here, at least. But now? I’ve got my eye on 2018, and am wondering what I can do, or is it really nothing (probably). I’m preparing to protest, to campaign, to do things I’ve never done because it has never mattered.
But nothing matters more now, Trump must be resisted. The fever must break. But I don’t know how.
Mr. Lee developed a distinctive Singaporean mechanism of political control, filing libel suits that sometimes drove his opponents into bankruptcy and doing battle with critics in the foreign press. Several foreign publications, including The International Herald Tribune, which is now called The International New York Times, have apologized and paid fines to settle libel suits.
The lawsuits challenged accusations of nepotism — members of Mr. Lee’s family hold influential positions in Singapore — and questions about the independence of the judiciary, which its critics say follows the lead of the executive branch.
Mr. Lee denied that the suits had a political purpose, saying they were essential to clearing his name of false accusations.
He seemed to believe that criticism would gain currency if it were not challenged vigorously. But the lawsuits themselves did as much as anything to diminish his reputation.
No real lessons there. Just interesting to note what a litigious head of state looks like.
Our best friends have a daughter that just entered journalism school (Univ of Missouri, IIRC). I’m worried about her future profession. Aside from the practice of journalism having gone to shit in general (with respect to reporting news), even worse, it might actually be unsafe to be a journalist given the venom Trump has spewed.
Another way to put this might be that politicians and laws come and go as expressions of what society wants. That said, hopefully societal whims expressed in this election are just anxiety over the speed of change and not a true desire to return to the days of Jim Crow.
Aw God…get a grip. Sorry to sound mean but come one man. Her real concern should be getting a job afterwards while newspapers and traditional forms of journalism disappear.
Think of it another way: what has Obama done precisely for Black Lives Matter, or people who want to buy a gay cake? These movements happened outside of the office of the President. Heck, his encouraging words probably harmed their cause because tribalists are programmed to hate whatever he says.
This is one area I’ll grant you guys could be a problem with certain picks for the Supreme Court, but American society has been working around those clowns for two hundred years. We’ll get through it.
I think I’d phrase it this way: I hope that saying “All this shit the government is doing is dumb!” is an easy talking point that could make him more popular, but actually replacing what are mostly smart policies is neither easy nor popular. We know he has no problem flatly denying all previous statements no matter how clear they were.
On the bright side, new tariffs and/or weaker dollars mean that the prices of computers and peripherals will probably go up here like they did in the U.K. So if you needed a good reason to upgrade your PC right away, now you have it!
