(12-02-2016, 01:35 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:(11-15-2016, 04:45 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Needless to say, I dread his Presidency. I would rather that Mitt Romney had won in 2012 and have won this time in a landslide. This is not a difference between 'liberal' and 'conservative'; it is between 'decency' and 'evil'
The right viewed Obama in much the same way by 2012. Pity folks on the left didn't see that the right's response would be to nominate an equally extreme candidate in 2016, and vote for Romney in 2012 as a compromise candidate. Of course in 2012, it was Romney that the left was painting as evil.
Pity also that Romney didn't run this time, if we assume he would have won. I met him briefly at a fundraiser for Governor Baker in 2013 or 2014 and encouraged him to run again, and I'm sure many others did as well. Ultimately, though, he disliked campaigning too much to do it again, exactly because of the negativity one has to engage in to win. That is, of course, one of the main reasons he didn't win in 2012; he wasn't willing to go as far down that road as the other guy.
Donald Trump is about as far to the Right as Castro was to the Left. Both hid their extremism until taking power, and both even use the same low level of political discourse. Barack Obama is far closer to the center.
Nobody can predict who the next Presidential nominee will be in the upcoming election. Maybe we would all be better off had Mitt Romney, for all his faults, been elected over Obama in 2012... but I would not be screaming so much had America gotten Romney this time.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.