(04-13-2019, 07:15 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:(04-12-2019, 08:34 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: I think you should ignore that fact and continue what you've been doing for the last decade. In other words, you should continue lying and promoting/advancing a false sense of hope to liberal voters.
Mr. Brower is not lying, but it's true we should remember the lesson of 2016 and not be complacent about another Trump win being possible. As Bill Maher said before the election, "Hillary Clinton is not a sure thing." Bernie Sanders is not a sure thing either.
Thank you, Eric. I could be wrong about the 2020 election if the political climate reverts to what it was in late 2016, let alone 2014 or 2010, wave years for the Republican Party. In such a case, Donald Trump still wins, if perhaps with a barer margin in the Electoral College -- or even gains some. I cannot understand why someone predicts something like that except if he has a rosy view of the chances of Trump to get re-elected.
I don't ordinarily make predictions unless I see some pattern fitting precedent. The pattern need not be perfect, but it needs to (1) be decisive, and (2) have relevant precedent. President Trump is decisively behind other Presidents at this stage, including some who eventually got defeated, and it is not for doing things that create short-term pain for long-term improvements. Reagan was one of the least effective Presidents at this stage, and such reflects that he compelled many Americans to lower their expectations so that he could set economic policies to put an end to stagflation. In the early 1980s America had the best-educated salesclerks in malls and fast-food workers ever, which was one way of ensuring that people sold out their dreams cheaply.
Interest rates fell, and employment rose -- even if it was because people had to work two minimum-wage jobs to survive. Wages stagnated, profits and executive compensation skyrocketed, and Big Business was able to establish labor discipline as harsh for many people as it was in the 1920s. The problem is that we are stuck in that trend. It will crash, and the Millennial Generation reminds me of the French generation that stormed the Bastille. Having seen economic conditions at their most unforgiving most of their lives and hearing their older late-X siblings or late-Boom or early-X parents complain about life being harder without compensation, they have no cause to believe the pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die promises of people who exercise great power and show no restraints in personal indulgence.
For all our prosperity, we are mishandling it badly. We have food surpluses -- and food insecurity for millions. We have opulent splendor that aristocrats of early-modern aristocrats of central Europe could imagine, but we also have gross deprivation. There has never been a time and place in which it has been more rewarding and secure to be filthy rich than contemporary America, but with worsening poverty. The bounty of capitalist productivity has not been trickling down.
Unlike Classic X'er, utterly incompetent at statistical inference, I recognize such as one of my strengths. I can see patterns and deviations from them. I see a Presidency in disarray to an unprecedented extent in a President's first term. For Presidents who did not get re-elected in the last century (Hoover, Ford, the elder Bush, and Carter) I often see one glaring problem. Hoover was fine except for his economic stewardship. Ford lacked experience in winning statewide elections and did not learn how to run an effective campaign in 1976 until it was too late. Carter thought that he could bring his Atlanta model to Washington -- and national politicians stopped him early. The elder Bush solved most of the problems of his time but had no coherent idea of what to do in a Second Act.
Trump does not know how government works, and it shows. He is cruel and corrupt as no President has ever been. He offends he sensibilities of all liberals and even many conservatives. Sure, he has fanatical supporters, but so does every despot and dictator. I cannot now see him getting re-elected in a fair and honest election unless America starts believing as he does.
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.