The Partisan Divide on Issues

[pbrower2a]

(05-20-2021, 02:55 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(05-17-2021, 08:03 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(05-17-2021, 01:52 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: It feels to me like things are coming to a head again as they have not for a while.  Georgia and New York are targeting Trump.  The DC courts are circling Barr and his so called Justice Department.  Florida is holding meetings where the state law gives the governor the right to block extradition.  They are circling Gaetz too.  I have a feeling that we will some day move from ‘it is in the works’ to ‘it is happening.’

Can you run a presidential campaign while not daring to leave Florida?

Eugene Debs got 914,191 votes (3.41% of the popular vote) in 1920 despite being in jail. The 3.41% is unusually high for a Third Party nominee. Trump does have his cult, and he has plenty of local proxies. He can appear by closed-circuit television anywhere he wants, as at (presumably right-wing) churches. 

More troublesome is that Democrats have found how to defeat him. Show him lying. Show him egging on Putschists. Show the ugly stats of COVID-19.  

As for Matt Gaetz -- the facts are circling him like vultures around a dying creature.  

He's just part of the problem for the lowly partisan hacks like you these days.

Matt Gaetz is but one of 435 Congressional representatives, and I cannot predict that he will be indicted and convicted (if he is convicted, he will be expelled from Congress). As for Trump, he still is a problem for American political life.

Quote:Trump has 70 some million supporters right now.

Yes, I know -- 74 million people voted for that horrible man. A recent poll suggested that he would get only 36% of the popular vote in a rematch with Joe Biden. That is solid support but that is near the low end in a Presidential election -- territory of Alf Landon, Barry Goldwater, and George McGovern.  Maybe he could do a bit better than that. Sure it is only 48-36, but it will be far harder for Trump to gain 11% between now and November 2024. This is of course after the Capitol Putsch, and I have little doubt that voters will remember the Putsch... and condemn Republicans who soiled themselves. 

Extending the term of a Leader who lost an election? Robert Mugabe did that.  

Yes, I know -- Trump supporters are more fervent in their belief, but that is how things go with extremists either Left or Right. I also expect about 6.4% of people between ages 55 and 90, who are about 5% more R than D to have died off between November 2020 and November 2024 and be stricken from the voting rolls (nobody really opposes getting dead people off the voter rolls, does he?) while new voters much more D than R enter the electorate before November 2024. 

Worker pay has been going up, which is especially important to younger workers as voters, and they are more likely to thank Biden than Republicans.   

Quote:Liz Chaney was removed from her leadership position because Donald Trump still has the support of the vast majority of the Republican base today.

I'm not predicting a continuance of a threadbare D majority in the House as of January 3, 2023, but slight as the D majority is now and the usual result in a midterm is against the President's Party, the Republican Party has done much that is grossly discreditable. The shadow of Donald Trump may still give us the feeling of a "six-year itch" involving former President Trump that would have happened otherwise (that is, if we still had free elections, which is something that would not be so certain had Trump's violent supporters succeeded at extending a failed term as President.

Quote:Trump knows plenty of rich Americans who have no interest in Marxism.

It is safe to assume that most of America's super-rich tycoons, executives, and big landowners (giant farms and large apartment complexes) are so reactionary that they would support a Pinochet-like ideologue who gives them super-cheap labor that has no institutional protection (because labor unions are banned or employers have no obligation to recognize them) obliged to pay monopoly prices for everything from food to medicine and rent. If that and some humane-sounding version of Marxism are the choices, then I will go with Marxism, if necessary from exile.   

The problem is that many of those rich Americans would thrive under fascism while the vast majority of Americans would either suffer or die. 


Admit it, Classic X'er: Donald Trump was a political disaster and an affront to the moral values of most of us. We needed better and got something hideous.

Quote:He'll most likely gain several million more by the next election as Biden/Harris and the clueless Democrats continue dividing the country and continue  f---ing up everything and making matters worse for Americans.

So how did things get better under Trump? Speaking of clueless, this man had people tear-gassed so that he could display a Bible that he manifestly neither reads nor heeds in front of a church that he does not attend. While he was President, we saw the initial stages of a secret police that drove vans with US flags and Trump banners. There  was no name like Cheka, Ovra, Gestapo, NKVD, KGB, Stasi, Tontons Macoutes, SAVAK, BOSS, Securitate, or Mukhabarat, but the pattern was being set. 

To spoof Benjamin Franklin, those who would sacrifice their basic liberties for economic gain will get neither liberty nor economic gain. That is a good case against fascism, Nazism, and Ku Kluxism on the Right or Marxism-Leninism and for a time Ba'athism on the Left.  (The Ba'athism of Satan Hussein and of Assad pere and fils in Syria have become fascism even if they were once revolutionary-leftist).  

Quote:Matt Gaetz always reminded me of John Edwards. As I recall, you were pretty fond of John Edwards back in the day.

On ideology. Once he was shown to have cheated on his wife I changed my tune. I thought that Edwards would be able to get away with far more and more fundamental change in American life than Obama. In 2008 that change seemed vital. After Trump that change is again vital to the preservation of liberty, prosperity, and human hope. 

I disliked Donald Trump even when he was a young man.