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[pbrower2a]

(05-30-2019, 02:14 PM)AspieMillennial Wrote:

(05-30-2019, 12:21 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Donald Trump is a clueless failure as recent polls of approval in the low 40s and disapproval numbers in the low-fifties show. He will need a huge improvement in public opinion to have a chance to get re-elected.

Demographics do not help him, to put it mildly. Older generations in the electorate may be voting, in general, about 55-45 R; millennial adults are voting about 65-35 D. The Republican Party has little to offer Millennial adults except more debt, lower pay, and higher prices and taxes, and I do not see that changing. Millennial voters are roughly replacing older voters as new voters the older voters dying off or becoming unable to vote due to senility. Older voters (mostly) are leaving the electorate at roughly a 1.5% rate every year, and I am not distinguishing Silent, Boom, and X adults.

So 1.5% of the electorate that is net 10% R is replaced every year by an electorate that is net-30% D, so the electorate goes 0.6% more D every year, and 2.4% more D from 2016 to 2020.

Trump is a demagogue, the sort who creates more problems than he solves without the excuse of the world changing too fast. The Gray Champion forces changes that anticipate history. A true regeneracy requires a sizable majority to go along. As for us Boomers -- most of us are near, at, or past retirement age, so even if we make the changes we will not be around to appreciate them. Know well that the Millennial Generation is starting to participate in elections in numbers suggesting that civic participation is important to them. Sure, the post-Crisis world will not fit a Blue Boomer ideal -- but will not fit a Red Boomer ideal, either. MAGA? It will be as much in contempt as "New Era" politics of the 1920s.

There are some Millennial supporters of Trump because we're tired of the privilege rhetoric, the impractical solutions, the open borders, and all the guilting complexes that the liberals try to put on us. Some leftist shouting "YOU ARE TOXIC AND PROBLEMATIC" or "YOU NEED TO STOP DRIVING OR EATING MEAT" isn't going to change my mind at all. I will still drive and do as I wish despite the screaming irrational leftists. They need to cool their fee fees.

Donald Trump is no conservative; he is a radical rightist using populist motifs as rhetoric. His economic values are a discredited mirror-image Marxism which holds that what Marxists find wrong about capitalism at its worst are virtues. Economic inequality without the justification of rewarding virtues such as thrift, integrity, competence, industry, cautious use of resources, and reasonable risk-taking that create wealth is nothing more than an endorsement of people being filthy rich due to birth, corruption, crime, or connections. What Marx said was wrong in pathological capitalism, especially the sort that cleaves to feudal privilege, is undeniable. Capitalism has the means for doing better, and markets work far better than central planning. The rentier classes who profit off human suffering make a far better argument for anti-capitalist revolution than can any leftist demagogue.

Conservatives such as Theodore Roosevelt (he considered himself a conservative for such) believe that material progress can and must create a legacy of better and richer lives for people not rich and powerful. A valid conservatism thwarts revolution with reform. So get the children out of the factories and mines and into the schoolhouse so that they can be better workers as adults, set aside some natural beauty for people to appreciate (Man does not live by bread alone), and impose some ethical values (such as "do not hurt your customers") upon people tempted to sell patent medicines full of alcohol and opiates that mask medical disasters.

A conservative like Dwight Eisenhower saw the power of the expressway to facilitate travel and transportation. Government might not operate business, but it can certainly facilitate business. Government can also foster ethnic equity that prevents riots and radicalism. Most importantly, the rule of law is essential to constraining the despotic and elitist policies of politicians.

For a long time, conservatives insisted upon free trade and upon the effort to keep a lid on debt and inflation. The last two Republican Presidents (Dubya and Trump) have been big-government right-wingers who have bloated the deficit and sponsored economic bubbles. That must end.

So yes, there are some extreme Leftists who would regulate life into misery by taking the joy out of life. They deserve recognition for what they are, destroyers of what makes life enjoyable. We can all learn to carry our own durable shopping bags to the stores.