05-08-2016, 08:43 AM
(05-08-2016, 03:38 AM)Kinser79 Wrote:(05-08-2016, 12:49 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Appealing to anger and ignorance, but only those of white people? Just look at his abysmal approval ratings.
I don't care about any polls except those people will be voting in in November. It is May, the election is in November. An eternity in politics.
Quote:Primaries and the general election work under very different rules.
But people do not. If the negative attack ads didn't work in the primaries, they won't work in the general either. Besides that there is the female factor too. Hillary goes negative, she will be percieved as being "bitchy", which further increases her negatives (of which she has plenty). Not to mention it opens her up for attack ads and unlike Daddy, Hillary has some real dirt.
Political campaigns can be doomed early. Some are successful only under freakish circumstances (think of the US Senate race in Indiana in 2012. Strategy and perceptions of course matter. Sure, in theory a major-league baseball team that goes 5-26 at the start of its season has a theoretical chance to end up 95-67 and have a chance to win the World Series... but that is absurdly unlikely.
So does the curriculum vitae of the politician. There may be no stated requirements other than citizenship, residency, and age for the Presidency, but as a rule we find that certain patterns of prior achievement can lead to the Presidency and others in practice don't. In theory we can elect a skid-row bum as President. In practice we don't. A plutocrat with no experience in public office? At least Herbert Hoover had had a Cabinet post and had administered a relief project.
Donald Trump has been campaigning with stream-of-consciousness speeches laden with hollow bromides. He will be pinned down quickly.
Quote:So who gets to sport "Peabody Coal", associated with the coal gangster Don Blankenship?
I know facts are not your strong point, but Don Blankenship is the CEO of Massey Energy. Peabody Coal (which doesn't need quotations because that is the actual name of the company) does not employ Blankenship. Futhermore Peabody has undergone Chapter 11. I don't think they are in a position to donate to anyone's political campaign until after their debts have been cleared. Kinda how Chapter 11 works.
Correction noted. My goof.
Quote:It's also a declining constituency.
The white aspects of it, perhaps. However, working people are going to be the majority for a long long time, and they are going to be those very "low information voters" that the Democratic Elites mock.
See the thing is, and I know you wouldn't understand this because it requires actually thinking rather than regurgitating a handful of talking points you may have memorized, is that Trump's success is due because he's outside of the Establishment. It is the same appeal that Sanders had. Both parties are hated, the Democrats for their elitism and neo-puritanicalism and selling out the common man, the GOP for their servile adherence to the whims of the ultra-rich.
Of all people it was Noam Chomsky that predicted the rise of someone like Trump. Unfortunately he expected that someone like him would fit the crook mold--and Trump is no crook.
I wouldn't disagree with Noam Chomsky on linguistics, but he has no authority on politics.
Countries in desperation often turn to demagogues. Donald Trump is a demagogue.
...I am surprised that you show no contempt for the political beliefs of poor white people. I could make the case that white Christians are less sophisticated than other demographic groups similar in formal education and vocational achievement in politics. Maybe they could long kiss up to reactionary elites with impunity because those elites have a heritage of tossing a few table scraps to them while giving the shaft to non-whites. Maybe they have no fear of being treated as pariahs. Maybe some white subcultures are simply thankful that the bad stuff happens to other people.
The plain, simple truth is that the political order no longer is good to poor white people as it used to be. There is no longer patronage that might get someone a temporary job patching potholes for the county road commission.
A black or a Mexican-American may recognize that the old, reactionary, white-dominated power structure has never been and will never do them any good until the people affiliated with that power structure are off the scene and until people of whatever ethnicity become even-handed. An Asian-American might recognize the potential of becoming a pariah; successful minorities have been the most vulnerable to callow opportunists who offer to share the loot and opportunities with the angry majority.
Donald Trump may not be a crook in the sense that he has found ways to get graft while in public office, but he is a crony capitalist.
Quote:Face it. Because we have never had a female President we will never have one. We never elected a handicapped President before FDR, so he had no chance of being elected. Just like we were never going to have a Catholic President until JFK was elected. Or like we had absolutely no chance to ever elect someone black.
I know that for Liberals these days everything comes down to identity politics. Do you really think that women will vote for Shillary because she has a vagina
So does Sarah Palin, who has some glaring weaknesses as a political campaigner, most notably her suspect skills as a communicator.
--even though every prescription she has comes directly from the very prescriptions that caused this mess? Well I'm sure some women would--but we call those women morons. Of course I would call anyone who thinks that voting the same people in that caused this mess, into office and expecting anything different are either stupid, or crazy and possibly both.
What do you mean, got us into this mess? I put more fault on the Republican Party and those who pull the strings on Republican politicians.
As for FDR, he actively hid his polio, or whatever he had--they're not sure it was polio now. JFK said point blank that he wasn't going to take direction from the Pope (what some people--who weren't going to vote for him anyway--feared) and he didn't. As for Obama...well I didn't vote for him because he was black, maybe you did probably some of your latent racism since we know that is the equivalent to original sin (or at least for white people who happen to be liberals, and cuckservatives to a lesser extent). I voted for him because he didn't pick Sarah Palin as his VP.
We really needed a Sanders-like populist. Barack Obama may have erred on the side of conciliation, underestimating the viciousness of the opposition unprecedented in American political history. He may have expected Republicans to look out first for voters and cut deals. The paymasters of current GOP pols expect loyalty to them above any other loyalties.
Seriously McCain lost me after picking her. I vetted her before he did apparently because I knew she was unqualified just by googling her minutes after the announcement. I'll give McCain a pass on being overly harsh on that, it was a failure of his staff really. I'm not even sure he knows what the internet is.
She gave one good speech... and after that she had practically no value as a campaigner. Just because she found a rapt audience in places she thought she was doing well with her 'Real America' shtick. The cameras were rolling and the microphones were open. Her 'Real America' speech went back to the closest city and then got spread nationwide -- to people that she thought that she could ridicule safely. One must assume that the cameras are rolling and that the microphones are rolling,
I'm not going to bother with the rest of your examples because they all fall under the same category. Identity is not the basis of politics, never has been and never will be. Try harder.
In recent years, identity politics has become paramount. That happens when compromise falls before ideology and the demands of donors. Democracy depends upon political figures and public administrators cutting deals instead of cutting throats. But what can I say of someone (this can be seen in Kinser's posts on the dying Fourth Turning forums) who has Josef Stalin as a hero.
...Even if Karl Marx has some relevance in analyzing sick societies, Marxism-Leninism in all forms is dead as an economic solution.
I think I'll let Milo explain. I can't help myself he's cute, smart and he has the right politics.
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.