08-13-2017, 05:23 PM
(08-13-2017, 02:26 PM)Mikebert Wrote:(06-23-2017, 03:41 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: I have yet to see President Trump get anything right. That is not so far a question of the objectionable quality of his agenda; he has done little but vilify his predecessor and his opponents.
This is true. But do you not see that Trump in the WH is damaging to the Republican brand in a way that was worse than Bush? Now that the foreign policy blob has neutered the president I do not see him being able to start WW III. So what is going to be about is reversing stuff Obama did. He will not be able to start a new conservative narrative as did Reagan. This means Democrats should get another bite at the apple.
The question is now whether he gets away with it. The best hope that I have for the circumstances is that the current Trump term is analogous to the second Bush term. The big fault with the analogy is that the preceding eight years were by a competent predecessor who created few problems. Another 'bite at the apple' could be a massive loss of House seats of incumbent Republicans, perhaps three (and that is stretching the possibilities) Senate gains for the Democrats, and massive losses of Governorships and state legislatures. If Americans cannot defeat Trump at the polls until 2020 they can neutralize the powers of the Presidency.
I can imagine President Trump resigning if he loses one or both Houses of Congress. He has not been effective at getting his legislative agenda passed. He has not been strengthening the hold of Republicans on either House of Congress. Diplomatic efforts overseas tend to be centered in trying to outlast this President. Of course that makes Mike Pence President. He could hardly be less competent but he could be more extreme and abrasive. I would expect a President Pence to double down on an anti-labor, anti-environment, anti-feminist, and Fundamentalist-friendly agenda... and fail.
Democrats will get another bite of the apple.
Quote:Here is a trend I see as disturbing. Compare Reagan to Bush II to Trump. Each of these captured the presidency from the opposition in the post-1980 Republican-dominated political world. Can you see the declining trend is quality? Consider just what sort of Republican will be get in 2032 if the two-and-two pattern continues?
I can see the trend, but I also warn that extrapolation of any trend has its obvious hazards. Anyone predicting the S&P index based on stock prices in 1928 and early 1929 had a very flawed basis of prediction.
There is nothing like persistent, catastrophic defeat to force a political party to change its approach and develop a new coalition that together make victory possible. Maybe Republicans will need to piece together a coalition that has room for well-educated people. Sustainable coalitions may have very different people, but they do not have constituencies incompatible with each other. Democrats could keep together a coalition that depended upon white racist agrarians of the South and non-WASP (then largely working-class) people as late as the 1950s. They cannot piece together a coalition of educated rationalists and intellect-bashing Christian fundamentalists.
Quote:The chief challenge for Democrats, when they do come back to power is, what can they do so that when they eventually are succeeded by a Republican he/she won't be *worse* than Trump?
Maybe they can start paying attention to constituent service -- delivering the goodies from big projects to aid to vulnerable people. That's how the New Deal worked.
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.