Grey Champions and the Election of 2016

[Kinser79]

(05-08-2016, 08:43 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Political campaigns can be doomed early.

I don't think I said they couldn't be.  However, we have with Daddy a track record of people first underestimating him, then trying to ignore him, then trying to manipulate him or the narrative, then becoming frustrated with his existence and finally having a total melt down usually on national television.  Seriously you should read the article I posted earlier about how Trump is taking out his opponents.  Maybe if Hillary reads a couple Breitbart articles she might have a snow ball's chance on a hot Florida day, but I doubt it.

Also this:

http://www.theonion.com/article/will-be-...nerv-52002

Yes I get that The Onion is satire, but if there wasn't some truth to the article the satire would fall flat.  Kind of how satire works.

Quote: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.

This would imply that we are NOT under freakish conditions.  First we are definitely in a 4T, have been since at least 2008 though I'd argue that the Catalyst happened with Katrina.  Second we've had a disastrous Neo-Con GOP Presidency followed by an effectively impotent New Democratic Presidency (meaning that both party establishments are at best ineffective and at worst actively dangerous).  Furthermore even if one assumes that the 4T started in '08 we are 8 years past the start, the regeneracy should have happened before now.  I don't know about you but I'd say the weather is pretty freaky right now.

Quote:So does the curriculum vitae of the politician.

I think you have failed to notice that Trump is not a politician.  Neither was Eisenhower, nor was Grant and nor was Jackson.  Granted the other three were generals, but I have seen nothing that would preclude Trump on the basis of his "experience".  Though it should be interesting to note that HRC attacked Obama on the basis of his experience and STILL lost.

Quote: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.

I agree which is why I brought up the fact that unless one is running against an incumbent president in the Primaries (which usually spells doom for that incumbent) and loses that person's presidential aspirations are over.  As such HRC has a long row to hoe and I don't think she'll pull it off.  Mostly because someone is going to do something (probably the Meme Team) that's going to make her lose her shit on national TV.  Add that together with all the other negatives she has and she'll never be elected.

Quote: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.

Herbert Hoover was more than a Cabinet member when he ran.  He was also an establishment GOP candidate running at a time when the establishment hadn't been discredited.

Quote:Donald Trump has been campaigning with stream-of-consciousness speeches laden with hollow bromides. He will be pinned down quickly.

The MSM has had a year to do it, they have failed so far.  See my points about the failure of the MSM to pin him down above.  I don't feel like repeating myself, It's Mom's day and she demands sushi.

Quote:Correction noted. My goof.

No you don't get a pass.  If you're going to trot out a coal magnate like he is the devil incarnate you could at least do everyone of the courtesy of doing your homework first.

Quote:I wouldn't disagree with Noam Chomsky on linguistics, but he has no authority on politics.

Except when he agrees with you in which case he has super mega authority.

Quote:Countries in desperation often turn to demagogues. Donald Trump is a demagogue.

I've not claimed he wasn't.  That being said, unlike other demagogues he hasn't been filtered out of the process already (he wouldn't be the first and won't be the last you know), usually they are so that proves that there isn't any real dirt on him.

Quote:...I am surprised that you show no contempt for the political beliefs of poor white people.

Why should I?  My BF is white, and he is a public school teacher (and therefore poor--seriously teachers get paid shit for the bullshit they have to put up with, I certainly wouldn't do it even if they paid twice the going rate) and thus poor.  I don't hold his views in contempt because I don't hold him in contempt.

Furthermore, and I know that this is going to fry your little pea brain, poor white people are not a monolithic group. Poor white people have a constituency for every ideology under the sun from Communism to Nazism.  The same can be said for Blacks (we're not a monolithic group and furthermore not all of us are poor either).  What I do have contempt for is the GOP Establishment, the Dem Establishment because the former are servile incompetents and the latter are impotent morons, and the MSM which is a lying cesspool of filth.

Quote: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.

If you plan on making a case like that I hope you have facts to back it up.  But I know you don't.

Quote: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.

No the plain and simple truth is the political order is no longer good for anyone who isn't a Wall Street magnate.  White, Black, Brown, Pink with purple polka dots, can't decide which genitals to have...doesn't matter.  The Democrats have been bought, the Establishment GOP always was--so any establishment candidate is not good for poor people regardless their race.

Quote: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.

They might if the threats to America presented by Daddy were internal threats.  If you listen to his rhetoric all of the threats are external.  Furthermore if one considers that Trump pisses off everyone in that power structure I see great appeal to Blacks, and Citizen Latinos as well as Legal Immigrants.

Quote: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.

An extraordinary claim, I hope you have extraordinary evidence to back it up.  Oh wait, you don't because if you did the Hillary people would have already run an attack ad by now.  That being said, Trump I assume has used loopholes, various accounting tricks and etc just like every other businessman does.  He didn't create the system but he's been very successful at working it.

Quote:So does Sarah Palin, who has some glaring weaknesses as a political campaigner, most notably her suspect skills as a communicator.

And yet, when the GOP ran her in the hopes of attracting the female vote (using the very identity politics originating with the left) it didn't work.  It didn't work not because of what she doesn't have between her legs, it didn't work because she was a blathering idiot.  Had she not been McCain would have been President for at least four years.

Quote: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.

Bill Clinton is a Republican?  Lets see, she voted for war in Iraq, she voted for bank deregulation (yes in the final form), has never turned down voting for a free trade agreement--particularly those that hurt US Manufacturing (Michigan might have felt some pain from those) voted for the Patriot Act turning the US into a de facto police state, has bent over backwards to reward crooks and liars on Wall Street.  Then she turned around got the US involved in a debacle in Libya, wants to go to war in Syria (you know because Iraq and Afghanistan were so successful) and has been more than willing to push the Neo-Con agenda and the New Democrat agenda (which is basically old-school republicanism minus the Christian Right).

So yes.  Hillary Rodham Clinton and her Husband are part of the problem.  Voting in those that caused this mess to fix it is insane.

Quote:We really needed a Sanders-like populist.

I agree which is why I voted for Sanders in the primary.  Not that it did any good...should Daddy manage to flip the GOP expect me to change my affiliation.

Quote: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.

Translation:  Obama is either a fool or a coward.

Obama had every opportunity to twist arms in Congress.  He could have come on TV and said "I want to do X, Y, and Z." and then forced the GOP to say no.  He didn't.  He tried to be conciliatory, he tried to placate them--it was seen as weakness and he did it long enough that he will be remembered as a weak president.  

Quote: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 wouldn't even give her the one good speech.  After her announcement as VP candidate, I googled her, I was not impressed.  Funny thing is, the BF who is more instinctively conservative than I am said at the time "Governor of Alaska?  That's like the principle of a home school."  We really laughed when NicePeter of Youtube used that exact same line in ERB.  And no we were not in contact with him--he was an unknown at the time so I can't take credit other than "great minds think alike".

Quote: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. 

Actually identity politics is not paramount, it is a sideshow.  It always has been and always will be.  Having a vagina won't put food in your belly.  Black Lives Matter won't bring greater parity with whites--it will result in black neighborhoods burnt to the ground by blacks themselves though.

As for Marxism-Leninism, I'm starting to come to the conclusion that the economic forces that gave rise to it are passing away and as such a new ideology is necessary.  Note that the Class Struggle continues, it is just that it is transforming into a more atomized basis which is likely the result of the conditions of late capitalism and the development of the internet as a basis for global communication.

As such, while much of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin is still very relevant, the left-right dynamic is breaking down and a new political order in the West is taking shape.  That order of course will be the division between cultural libertarians and cultural authoritarians.