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@Winger I agree. This country is divided and the left and the media have been against Trump since day one and the deep state earlier with their attempted coup. Nothing Trump can say or do is enough. He realizes this and is fighting fire and false narrative with the same playbook as the left and they don’t like it. From my perspective the right over here has had enough of weak politicians like Bush who were always compromising hoping they would get a good shake and then trashed after the fact. Trump has created a great economy, realizes the threat of China and thankfully has placed significant number of conservative judges to counter those making their own laws. His tweets are aimed at the left and you have to take them with a grain of salt. Often they are misinterpreted and sometimes they are stupid. But considering the opposition from career bureaucrats at every turn he has done a bang up job. His biggest mistake was to listen to Fauci and others about this virus. Could have ruined the economy and has caused irreparable pain to many unessential workers and small businesses. Fauci is another bureaucrat on the government dole who would not give a toss about the economy as he will always get his check. But he has his head back on his shoulders and Fauci has disappeared and the country is getting back to normal. Well at least in the states not lead by fear mongers.
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@antipodean said in US Politics:
If we're honest, Trump could cure cancer and CNN would complain he was putting oncologists out of a job. The situation is unrecoverable and the media are to blame. They are hopelessly partisan and hypocritical.
Meanwhile in the victim olympics:
I do agree with this. The media and politicians are mostly to blame for what is happening now, especially in the States. It's all about hyping things up, getting ratings, telling a narrative rather than actually trying to fix complex issues that are not black and white (pun intended) as they claim.
I just think Trump is equally as bad and, as the President, should shoulder much of the blame for continuing to feed the "left vs right" division. He's not some right wing saviour that's "giving it back to the left", he's just as bad.
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@No-Quarter said in US Politics:
Trump has been proven to be utterly unable to bring the nation together under a crisis, be that Covid or this civil unrest. He just continues to play politics, pitching people against each other for his own (perceived) benefit.
Can't disagree that Trump is barely capable of leading a country, and totally incapable in a crisis. But his opponents have equally shown themselves to be utterly unfit as well - more interested in point-scoring and undermining Trump than rallying in a national emergency.
There seems such a huge divide, full of rancour, puffed-up arrogance & outrage, and a complete unwillingness to consider another point of view. It's like two fundamentalist sects beating the shit out of each other.
Bums, the lot of them.
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@Victor-Meldrew the US is fucked, and from all their brilliant people they get to choose between two hugely flawed 70s year olds to lead the country
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@MajorRage said in US Politics:
@JC said in US Politics:
I don’t care if he’s Presidential. LBJ wasn’t, and he passed the Civil Rights Act.
As for the economic data, I’m sure you can explain it to me.You and I both know that you don't need anything explained. You also know that one person see's, another sees differently. Lost count of the times we'd receive back to back viewpoints the morning after economic data from banking economists which were completely opposite. It became a running joke.
You see that’s where you and I diverge. His job is to lead the country, not his voters. He can get away with being partisan (BTW I’m not suggesting for a moment that the Democrats are any better) until a crisis comes along that needs everybody to buy in, not just your base. When the shit hit the fan Trump signally failed to do that. And his personality is such that he can’t admit to any error or misjudgement, he doubles down and attacks the messengers. It’s incredibly immature.
In any event, what’s the endgame? A continual ping pong match of one half of the country screwing over the other half? That kind of self-destructiveness isn’t something a leader should encourage, but it’s as natural as breathing to Trump.
Not sure we diverge that much. Granted, it's not great country leadership to only serve the people who vote for you, but to an extent, politics has been going down that path for a while. It's one of the reasons a few observers (who I respecT) are seriously questioning democracy. Left & Right are currently too far apart.
Totally agree he's been sadly lacking in many areas the last few months when a style of bring it all together leadership was required.
Not much, no. I’ve said that.
Well at least you also acknowledge that the climate of recent months wasn't his fault ... a few don't.
But all of those things are city, county or state level responsibilities. How were any of them Obama’s fault, or the remedying of them Trump’s achievement?
Both of them put the reasoning firmly at Trump's feet. It's up to me whether or not I buy into that or not - I don't really know enough about Lander, Wyoming or Madison, NJ to defend/argue. I would suggest these guys do tho.
A few observations, some of which are based on discussions with a very good, NYC-based, mate, who is staunchly anti-Trump.
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Trump has actually done some things which have had a big positive impact on the economy. Reducing the Federal tax rate from 35%, with State tax on top, has both boosted earnings and encouraged a fair bit of US controlled business to come back onshore. But more important has been his eliminating multiple layers of often conflicting regulation. Where previously there were sometimes Federal/State/County and Municipal regulations, often conflicting, there has been substantial simplication and that has stimulated the economy enormously. In recent years US GDP growth has left Europe behind.
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China ought to be much more of a worry than US. China talks about free trade and environment, but the reality is that it honours the rules only in the breach. So competing with China under WTO rules is a losing game. Likewise the Paris Accord is meaningless. Chinese property 'rights' are a joke, albeit a sick one. And whereas US is still a democracy (of sorts) there is nothing in China to counterbalance the CCCP. Trump has been quite right to call China out for eating its lunch. Recent WHO deficiencies just a continuation.
Trump is very pragmatic election-wise. How ironical that much of his voter base are ex-Democrats. Despite all the spiel that globalisation is good, they have precious little to show for it. Meanwhile, the Democratic National Committee looks down its nose at these people and has the temerity to tell them how they should behave. Good luck swaying swing voters with that!
All that said, Trump is a caricature of a statesman, and surely it would not be beyond the wit of man for the DNC to get off its high horse and find a popular and sensible centralist candidate to take Trump down.
Instead they come up with Biden.
Expect echoes in November of the words of Wobblie great, George, 'Four more years'.
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@Victor-Meldrew yep, as has been mentioned already, they are just running the 'I ain't Trump' campaign, which isn't gonna pick up new voters, instead will lead to more sitting on thier hands thinking what's the point, while the fervent Trump fans will be out as they do.
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@taniwharugby said in US Politics:
@Victor-Meldrew yep, as has been mentioned already, they are just running the 'I ain't Trump' campaign, which isn't gonna pick up new voters, instead will lead to more sitting on thier hands thinking what's the point, while the fervent Trump fans will be out as they do.
I agree that Biden doesn't feel like the kind of guy to move the needle. I've said it before, IMHO the key to the Dems winning is Trump himself. If he creates enough outrage that more anti-Trump voters come out in force than Trump supporters, the Dems will win. But they may not come out because they feel Biden is a superior candidate
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Biden has another problem.
His own party has a large number of rather fanatical socialists.
Trying to get the hard core Bernie vote while not coming across as too left to the swing states centrists is a problem.
Of course, Trump will exploit this division to the hilt. -
@Frank said in US Politics:
Biden has another problem.
His own party has a large number of rather fanatical socialists.
Trying to get the hard core Bernie vote while not coming across as too left to the swing states centrists is a problem.
Of course, Trump will exploit this division to the hilt.It will be a big ask to see all of these groups vote for Joe just because they don't want Don. If Trump loses I would look back and say his tactic of appearing tough to his base but creating as much outrage as he has would have cost him. But his core are staunchly behind him so all of those dems voters, including Bernie's lot will need to come out if they are to win
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@Frank said in US Politics:
It's happening.
Summary: Let's abolish the police. We don't have a clue what we are going to replace them with nor the impact it's going to have on crime, public safety and people's lives, but at least we can feel virtuous and say we did something.
What could possibly go wrong?
US Politics