Big Picture American Politics

[Jwb]

That's because people who have an intense personal dislike for Trump tend to fixate on him as the cause of our problems instead of being a symptom of other issues.  You are seeing this effect in reverse with a lot conservatives, Biden-Derangement Syndrome, over gas prices and the fact that inflation is really really bad.

One of the reasons why I tend to take centrist positions is because I recognize how both parties have enabled him in various ways - his 2016 win itself was basically a kneejerk reaction to most of the same problems we have right now.  Go watch some of the interviews younger Trump gave on political stuff - similar to today, but with more of a Clintonian spin. Oprah essentially told him to run for President back in the early 90's and he said no, but I sometimes think we would have been better off if he had tried back then and lost.

Jwb and I differ on what Trump really "means" I think in the greater context of politics.  I see him as an inevitable outcome in a country that has grown disillusioned with both Reagan's conservativism and Clinton / Obama styled neoliberalism.  We got here because people way smarter than Trump failed and because both parties have grown less and less tolerant of each other with every passing election cycle.

Going back to Trump himself for a bit - If he had been more careful with his words and reined in his bad habits, he probably could have run as an establishment Democrat, but I think Obama roasting him at that White House correspondents dinner pushed him into a different trajectory and put the idea in his head that he could run as a Republican and capitalize on his personal grievances.  His loss to Biden shows there's a limit to grievance-based politics with independents though.

we don't disagree on what Trump means,  based on your generic description.

You might not be aware of this but I was a Trump supporter in 2016. I don't look at the guy and not understand the initial appeal he had for so many. But initially i was unsure of his intentions or how he would actually rule.  I even naively thought it was possible he would do a hard pivot to the center once he was in power. But he never did that.  He basically just went in and tried to do exactly what he said he was going to do.

What we disagree about is not where the demand for someone like Trump came from... we can both agree that the conditions for someone like Trump to get in was the frustration that people felt towards both of the parties at the time.  We just seem to disagree about Trump as a person.  I think he was trying to steal the election and you think what.... he was actually just wanting some of his people to go down and hold signs while Biden becomes president? I just feel like we're watching different movies.

[Nimbly9]

it's not that I find it too doom and gloom.  I'm the number one proponent of the robot apocalypse on this site/MB and always have been.  I'm waiting for the day when they actually take over and all the futurists realize they aren't going to be invited to the party after all.  It's going to be robots only my friend. That's my prophecy that I stole from a Jaan Tallin speech in 2012 or so called the intelligence stairway, and I've been repeating it ever since I watched that fateful youtube lecture.   I'm actually probably one of the few people on here who won't completely roll their eyes at the idea of AI apocalypse.

But that's besides the point.  You could have invoked AI apocalypse at any point earlier in the conversation to render the entire conversation meaningless. So it's really a cheap dodge to me.  You waited till I wrote a fuckin essay of the distinction between Trump and Biden and then your response to that is yeah but AI... I don't know if you are trolling or what at this point. That was literally the hardest pivot I've ever seen.

I didn't pivot.  I've never been that personally invested in political outcomes.  You asked how someone who followed politics closely could not have the same POV you did so I just elaborated on it.  I've talked about these subjects before on other threads. Even back on MB they called me a tech bro essentially for the sin of actually talking from personal experience.  Imagine that.

we don't disagree on what Trump means,  based on your generic description.

You might not be aware of this but I was a Trump supporter in 2016. I don't look at the guy and not understand the initial appeal he had for so many. But initially i was unsure of his intentions or how he would actually rule.  I even naively thought it was possible he would do a hard pivot to the center once he was in power. But he never did that.  He basically just went in and tried to do exactly what he said he was going to do.

What we disagree about is not where the demand for someone like Trump came from... we can both agree that the conditions for someone like Trump to get in was the frustration that people felt towards both of the parties at the time.  We just seem to disagree about Trump as a person.  I think he was trying to steal the election and you think what.... he was actually just wanting some of his people to go down and hold signs while Biden becomes president? I just feel like we're watching different movies.

Based on everything we actually know, it doesn't really seem like Trump had a clear plan for anything.  It looks more like he was just fuming and fumbling around and hoping someone would indulge him, similar to the "perfect call" to Ukraine.  Which is funny because nobody went to jail for essentially pulling the a similar kind of shenanigans with Shokin a few years before that. 

From a personality analysis standpoint - I think Trump would have stolen the election if someone gave him a clear path to it and mapped it out. That actual path never really materialized, otherwise you'd have all the major governing bodies of every state invoking the 14th amendment on his ass for the upcoming cycle.

To me, it matters less what people want or say and more about what they actually do in practice.  I don't think Trump did enough of the latter to showcase that he "really" thought he could steal an election.  He heard what he wanted to hear from Eastman and Giuliani and thought he could contest the results.  He also made assumptions about Pence that clearly were not true.

[Jwb]

I mean yes if someone gave him the path to steal the election he obviously would have done it. He had no clear path, and everyone around him told him so,  yet he still tried anyway.  There's no contradiction there.  He tried and failed.

And yes he had expectations for Pence that Pence didn't fulfill.  What were those expectations again,  from your pov?

[Nimbly9]

I mean yes if someone gave him the path to steal the election he obviously would have done it. He had no clear path, and everyone around him told him so,  yet he still tried anyway.  There's no contradiction there.  He tried and failed.

And yes he had expectations for Pence that Pence didn't fulfill.  What were those expectations again,  from your pov?

He thought the Vice-President had powers that allowed him to somehow put an election on standstill before the ratification while they re-counted all the votes or some other nonsense. But there's no way anything like that could have ever happened because most of his court cases failed. 

Trump's only legitimate defense (kinda) is that he genuinely believed that Pence had powers as VP that would let him pause the certification to prove the fraud claims that Trump thought were dismissed unfairly by the courts.  And Trump is so gullible and dumb and prone to affirmation bias that it wouldn't surprise me if that was the case.  But if he does make that case, then he could still lose in court because ignorance doesn't excuse it.

A question for you. Do you think that it makes a difference if Trump goes to jail or not?

[Lisnaholic]

That's because people who have an intense personal dislike for Trump tend to fixate on him as the cause of our problems instead of being a symptom of other issues.  You are seeing this effect in reverse with a lot conservatives, Biden-Derangement Syndrome, over gas prices and the fact that inflation is really really bad.

Yep, that's true. Some passionate haters on both sides are focussed on Biden and Trump in a way that's pretty unhealthy. Although on MB I was told, with some justification, that I had "a hate boner" for Trump, these days I try to be more egalitarian and spread my hatred more evenly across the Republican party.

Jwb and I differ on what Trump really "means" I think in the greater context of politics.  I see him as an inevitable outcome in a country that has grown disillusioned with both Reagan's conservativism and Clinton / Obama styled neoliberalism.  We got here because people way smarter than Trump failed and because both parties have grown less and less tolerant of each other with every passing election cycle.

^ I think we got here because the Republican party have abandoned the traditional responsablilities of government and any time there's a conflict between Trump + the law, or Trump+ the constitution, they go with Trump. For example,  They wouldn't vote against him when he was impeached for the Ukraine call.

Also, at state and local level the Republicans are blocking or dismantling the processes of normal governance: McConnel refusing to seat a Supreme Court judge, waiting til his party could chose one; Tupperville blocking military appointments; Kevin McCarthy keeping George Santos in office, DeSantis doing I can't quite remember what in Florida, etc etc. None of that is the way normal governance was conducted, afaik. 
I'd agree that the parties are becoming less tolerant of each other, but I'd lay the blame for that squarely at the door of the Republicans' bad-faith manoeuvres - and that includes their extreme Bad Loserism, which means that every process in which they lose is attacked as a witch-hunt and, where possible, becomes the subject of yet another laughable Gym Jordan "oversight investigation". 

[Nimbly9]

I think you should take a closer look at the Clinton era and 2000 election.  A lot of what you are talking about isn't something that just materialized in the Obama era or even more recently.

Every administration since FDR has pushed the boundaries of what was considered "acceptable" in various ways (sometimes small, sometimes big), especially the 12 year period that comprises the Bush and Obama terms. Remember Operation Fast & Furious with Obama's AG, Eric Holder and what he did? That definitely wasn't the "normal process" of governance in action.

The problem is people have short-term memory and tend to not learn from history if they weren't aware of it to begin with, which is the case for the quietly expanding boundaries of federal power since the late 90's.  Social media has also destroyed a lot of what we think about as far as "proper" decorum goes across society.

I'd lay the blame for that squarely at the door of the Republicans' bad-faith manoeuvres - and that includes their extreme Bad Loserism, which means that every process in which they lose is attacked as a witch-hunt and, where possible, becomes the subject of yet another laughable Gym Jordan "oversight investigation". 

So what do you call the fake Christopher Steele penned dossier on Trump, the endless investigations that had little to show for them and constant harping by major Democrats all across the country from 2016 to 2020 that Trump was an illegitimate President despite the fact that there was nonexistent voter fraud?  I'm sure the Republicans took a lot of notes throughout these various occurrences because, as you so kindly pointed out, they aren't exactly the most creative people.  But they are very good at observing Democrats and then doubling down on what they learn when they get a swing at power.

I hope Trump goes to jail, because it would send a message that nobody is ever above the law.  But the idea that somehow Republican "bad faith" measures is the main reason how we got here, as opposed to 30+ years of bad actors in both parties, is most definitely not an accurate take and you are just paving the way for someone even worse than Trump in the future.  Both parties should not be questioning elections, investigating eachother and treating eachother like mortal enemies.  If people don't learn, then Trump's left-wing or right-wing successor might be able to subvert democracy in a far more effective fashion because they'll play into the polarization with more finesse and know how to exploit it. 

Don't believe me? Look at how RFK Jr. has built his campaign off of both vaccine-skeptical Dems and Independents, plus even getting some Republicans on board with him against Biden.  He might not be the guy who will ultimately do what I'm talking about, but somebody eventually will.

[Jwb]

He thought the Vice-President had powers that allowed him to somehow put an election on standstill before the ratification while they re-counted all the votes or some other nonsense. But there's no way anything like that could have ever happened because most of his court cases failed. 

Trump's only legitimate defense (kinda) is that he genuinely believed that Pence had powers as VP that would let him pause the certification to prove the fraud claims that Trump thought were dismissed unfairly by the courts.  And Trump is so gullible and dumb and prone to affirmation bias that it wouldn't surprise me if that was the case.  But if he does make that case, then he could still lose in court because ignorance doesn't excuse it.

A question for you. Do you think that it makes a difference if Trump goes to jail or not?

That's not a defense to me.  He was told plainly by Pence and others that he didn't have the authority to do so.  He just chose to ignore that because he was dead set on trying to overturn the results. And like I told you, he was literally showing his hand during the campaign by claiming it was going to be rigged and that the mail in ballots would be fraudulent and all that nonsense long before the election even happened. Because the pandemic was crushing his chance at reelection and he knew it.  He could not have been less subtle about it in a lot of ways without just outright saying what his plans were.  The perpetual benefit of the doubt you seem to extend to him has to be the complete inverse of TDS. It's  pretty infantilizing.

And yeah I do think it matters if he goes to jail,  given he is running for President. But even if he doesn't go to jail you absolutely have to at least indict him just for the sheer sake of having even the facade of still having some sort of rule of law politically. 

But I will say one thing... if this dude literally beats 91 or whatever cases and doesn't get a single conviction that is going to be a serious optical L for the democrats.  It already looks like they are going after him to a lot of outside observers. That will only cement that legacy.  Though I will say personally it seems to me he's earned all the heat.

[Nimbly9]

The perpetual benefit of the doubt you seem to extend to him has to be the complete inverse of TDS. It's  pretty infantilizing.

I dunno, I just find it difficult to believe a guy who doesn't even read books and apparently eats nothing but fast food is capable of overturning the neoliberal capitalist nightmare engine we call democracy when he's hated so much by so many different people.  And what was he going to tell people in November 2020 if he happened to win? That his own victory was a rigged election? He was playing a pretty dangerous game if he really thought that far ahead.

Wild times we live in either way.  Nobody a decade ago could have imagined some of this stuff.

[Jwb]

I mean so far he wasn't capable.  So once again  that doesn't contradict him trying to do so,  the incompetence angle that is.  And while I can agree to an extent his actions display a level of incompetence, I don't think he's quite as stupid as you seem to think he is.  He's perfectly capable of hedging his bets in advance,  and if you will recall he actually made similar proclamations in 16. About how the elections were going to be rigged against him.  When asked if he would respect the results he would respond that he would respect them if he won. But that time he did win.

[Nimbly9]

I mean so far he wasn't capable.  So once again  that doesn't contradict him trying to do so,  the incompetence angle that is.  And while I can agree to an extent his actions display a level of incompetence, I don't think he's quite as stupid as you seem to think he is.  He's perfectly capable of hedging his bets in advance,  and if you will recall he actually made similar proclamations in 16. About how the elections were going to be rigged against him.  When asked if he would respect the results he would respond that he would respect them if he won. But that time he did win.

I remember what he said in 2016.  I also remember reading "leaked" conversations from people (I think it was from CNN) on his campaign team saying that he actually didn't want to be President back then and was extremely surprised when he subsequently won. If that's actually true, it would explain a lot.

[SGR]

Trump complains about his mugshot and the rigged election, and then immediately shifts to selling his mugshot merch:

"Here it is if you wanna go out and get it, you can go out and get it. Have fun with it! But people do like it, I must say." 

[Lisnaholic]

I think you should take a closer look at the Clinton era and 2000 election.  A lot of what you are talking about isn't something that just materialized in the Obama era or even more recently.

Every administration since FDR has pushed the boundaries of what was considered "acceptable" in various ways (sometimes small, sometimes big), especially the 12 year period that comprises the Bush and Obama terms. Remember Operation Fast & Furious with Obama's AG, Eric Holder and what he did? That definitely wasn't the "normal process" of governance in action.

The problem is people have short-term memory and tend to not learn from history if they weren't aware of it to begin with, which is the case for the quietly expanding boundaries of federal power since the late 90's.  Social media has also destroyed a lot of what we think about as far as "proper" decorum goes across society.

Yep, I would learn more if I went deeper into that era of US history, where you clearly have the advantage over me, in terms of knowledge. But then, history by its nature is always in the rear-view mirror: details become less important, then forgotten as the here and now demand our attention.

So what do you call the fake Christopher Steele penned dossier on Trump, the endless investigations that had little to show for them and constant harping by major Democrats all across the country from 2016 to 2020 that Trump was an illegitimate President despite the fact that there was nonexistent voter fraud?

^ This comment discourages me from trawling through history in search of the Dem evil doings that you claim are there. For instance, you are rather mis-describing the Steele dossier, which was not entirely fake, and was about Trump campaign/Russia more than about Trump himself:

Several key allegations made in June 2016 were later corroborated by the January 2017 report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence,[3][4] namely that Vladimir Putin favored Trump over Hillary Clinton;[3][5] that he personally ordered an "influence campaign" to harm Clinton's campaign and to "undermine public faith in the US democratic process"; that he ordered cyberattacks on both parties;[3] and that many Trump campaign officials and associates had numerous secretive contacts with Russian agents.[6]

That's from wikipedia, and their article makes it clear that the Steele dossier is a mixed bag of substantiated and unsubstantiated. Isn't it disingenious of you to ignore the former and label it as the later?
Then the next criticism you aim at the Dems "endless investigations that had little to show" surely applies more to the Republicans. Without checking, this is what I have on my scorecard of investigations:

Wins for the Democrats:
Russia investigation: Flynn pleads guilty, Manaforte goes to prison
Campaign Finance Violations: Cohen goes to prison, Trump is the "unindicted co-conspirator"
Ukraine phone call: President impeached
Mueller Report: multiple indictments, multiple "obstruction of justice" charges that were not advanced because of the whole "can't indict the President" rule
Four current investigations/cases: a total of 91 charges against Trump now pending, plus multiple allies indicted

Losses for the Republicans:
TEN Benghazi investigations: rather muddy results, but here's wiki's take-away line: "none of the ten investigations found any evidence to support those allegations [of cover up/lying]."
Hillary Email investigation: "no criminal intent"
Durham Report: approx 1 failed indictment, that was chucked out by courts
Gym Jordan's busy committees: "But so far, these investigations seem to be flopping. They don't seem to be sticking in the public consciousness. They haven't uncovered page one news about Hunter Biden's laptop, or about the origins of Covid-19, or about a supposed government conspiracy to silence conservatives on Twitter." That was from March of this year, so feel free to updated me on his successes since then.

(My apologies for any errors of fact in the above list: I have done it from memory alone, except for the quotes, which are the result of well over 5 mins of research.)

I'm sure the Republicans took a lot of notes throughout these various occurrences because, as you so kindly pointed out, they aren't exactly the most creative people.  But they are very good at observing Democrats and then doubling down on what they learn when they get a swing at power.

^ I wonder who "you" is ? I didn't point out anything about creativity.

[Nimbly9]

It isn't disingenuous.  The Steele dossier was utilized as an excuse to set off a ton of different questionable investigations before a shred of information in it was verified.  Republicans have way more hard evidence right now to investigate Biden than the Feds had when they spun up Crossfire Hurricane. Furthermore, that dossier was paid for by people who had a bone to pick with Trump to begin with. 

There's hard evidence out that that Joe was involved with Hunter and his uncle's influence peddling during his time as VP.  20 different LLCs involved in sheltering payments to Hunter from various sources.  And why does Joe have all these different email aliases? That's pretty weird. 

Furthermore, nothing you listed about the Democrats is a win because the Republicans got what they really wanted out of Trump's term - domination of the Supreme Court and hundreds of new judges appointed in courts across the U.S. with way more conservative views.  Trump and his endless controversial existence proved to be the answer to their prayers for the only thing that really mattered, and I'm sure they got a good laugh out of it.

The only wins the Democrats have is that Biden won 2020, followed by their narrow Senate wins in the midterms...but Trump and Biden are literally neck & neck in most major polls as of right now precisely because Biden has done an arguably worse job than Trump did at managing the economy and ongoing Covid-19 policy.

Politico - Biden and Trump in a dead heat in hypothetical 2024 rematch, poll finds


Seriously, has Biden actually done anything notable with the latter other than getting the vaccines that the Trump administration made out to the public? We didn't need a Democratic president specifically for that.  If Trump had gotten re-elected he would have pushed the vaccines out and bragged about how great they were.  Makes one wonder if any of the anti-vax stuff would have materialized in that alternate timeline...

The truth is that the average American household has even less buying power now than they did when Biden took office over two years ago, and from my perspective that's a way bigger problem than Trump bungling a global pandemic that would have found a way to spread here in the U.S. regardless of what policies were or were not in place. 

(And no, I don't need any strawman comments about anything Trump said during the pandemic about getting UV light inside the body or that he downplayed the pandemic - all of that stuff is just optics and not relevant to what the U.S. federally actually acted upon as time went on)

Just for reference here, governors Cuomo and Newsom are good cases in points here of how things can get out of control despite doing all the "right" things.  It's true that Trump is an idiot and extremely flawed....but Biden is supposed to be the "adult" on this playground and the one with decades of experience.  So what's his excuse for where we are right now? Whatever it is, it couldn't be good.

He talks about job numbers and Bidenomics but none of it really matters if the average American's buying power isn't better than it was under Trump, and Biden has miserably failed in that department.  He's living proof that maybe we need to rethink our current democratic process in a big way, especially since guys like Andrew Yang and Bernie Sanders were squashed despite their popularity in favor of Biden.

If I were in the Dems' shoes, I'd put Biden out to pasture and let Gavin Newsom or Cornel West step up and make the case against Republicans.

[Lisnaholic]

It isn't disingenuous.  The Steele dossier was utilized as an excuse to set off a ton of different questionable investigations before a shred of information in it was verified.  Republicans have way more hard evidence right now to investigate Biden than the Feds had when they spun up Crossfire Hurricane. Furthermore, that dossier was paid for by people who had a bone to pick with Trump to begin with.

^ But none of that makes it fake,which was the point I was contesting. 

There's hard evidence out that that Joe was involved with Hunter and his uncle's influence peddling during his time as VP.  20 different LLCs involved in sheltering payments to Hunter from various sources.  And why does Joe have all these different email aliases? That's pretty weird. 

^ Yep, we hear so much about "hard evidence" from Gym Jordan, R Giuliani, Trump, Kari Lake, et al. but somehow it never materializes when it's time to shut up or put up in the courts ....and "pretty weird" is not evidence of criminality, afaik.

Furthermore, nothing you listed about the Democrats is a win because the Republicans got what they really wanted out of Trump's term - domination of the Supreme Court and hundreds of new judges appointed in courts across the U.S. with way more conservative views.

^ I could've titled my lists better, but I was mainly refuting your contention about the Dems "...  the endless investigations that had little to show for them ..." . Your argument now  that none of them are wins because of the Supreme Court isn't very strong, imo. I might as well say the Republicans have no wins because Biden is Pres, not Trump.

The economy: we've talked about this before, I'm sure. It changes over time, and although it's important to voters, it isn't a very accurate way to assess the conduct of different Presidents imo.

Yes, the most recent neck-and-neck poll is alarming, but things will no doubt change between now and election day. As for Biden being too old, I'm happy to agree with you. I think he should see out his term (health permitting) and pass on the batton.

[Nimbly9]

On the contrary - the dossier was ultimately discredited because the main Russian source that Christopher Steele used, Igor Danchenko, was arrested for lying to the FBI.  Steele also presented everything in the dossier as irrefutable evidence, only to later say that "not everything in here was true" when pressed.

You can say the ends justify the means because Russia liked Trump over Clinton, but inferring that it's okay to make things up in order to create a reason to go after anyone, no matter who it is, is fundamentally wrong and it sets a pretty terrible precedent.  At least in the case of the Bidens there's Hunter's laptop and an email audit trail and some interesting implications from Devon Archer's testimony.  If the Republicans don't come up with something meaty within the next year, then I'd say that's a pretty big fail and deserves mockery.

That being said, your lists didn't really seem like much of a refutation of anything I mentioned. The ultimate purpose of all of those Democrat-led investigations was to get Trump thrown out of office prematurely and/or prove he was illegitimately elected, outcomes that did not occur. Your definition of a fail seems to equate to "well the Republicans didn't get X out of Y" (like Benghazi) when it the general consensus here in the U.S. is that the Democrats wasted four years in their various investigations with very little to show for it, with the Mueller Report in particular becoming a point of mockery even by CNN and MSNBC for its lack of payoff despite the massive buildup.