His sociopathy is showing. Most people would not want to risk the well-being of billions of people if they are just going on their gut and shooting from the hip.
absolutely. I was just making fun of strosb4bros for her other post using bright red font for various things, including some claim about my or liberals “naivety”. I won’t bother to pasted it here, but you can probably find it easily from my prior post history. I don’t post all that much. Just to needle the dumbasses here.
He had a deal with the company that operated the Panama ports, but then bragged about it non-stop to the point where China forced the issue to stop the sale at all costs. When he unveiled those crazy numbers, I thought tariffs would be negotiating tactic only for a different faction to say there won't be any negotiations, now it's a flip flop back to negotiating but with zero leverage. These tariffs would deeply hurt our companies profit margins, which is the main thing the oligarchy and stock market cares about. Just like his first run (Woodward), he lives off conflict in his cabinet, and he'll either choose whoever "wins" that internal debate or is the last person who talks to him . But there's few adults in the room this time, and the more the press builds up the remaining figures like Bassent, the more Trump and the other factions will resent him. I'm not a white guy, but there are structural parts of the game where promoting meritocracy means I get a comfortable living in a suburb completely detached from whatever the hell was on the local news or papers that I never bothered to watch or read. One of the reasons that we need a larger industrial base is that the American plurality has become too populist. Democrats are not going to win elections with the demographics posting on this forum. You can call it Idiocracy or whatever but they're still Americans. They could be your neighbors, the mailman, waitress...maid or landscaper soon? Teachers would be right up there if it weren't for unions. The last time I checked, their pension funds are at risk All of the other Trump standbys like desantis, Cruz and Vance show a willingness to entertain similar con authoritarian behavior. I honestly don't know how Dems can recover that vote without being just as "populist" with crazy desperate ideas. They might vote a Dem to replace Trump out of disgust but that's not inspiring or lasting as a brand.
Things do not look good for Democrats, but in the modern world things can change quickly. Just look back to the 6 months before the 2016 election. The Republicans were a mess coming off the smoldering remains of Bush and lacked a viable candidate and many people did not think that Trump had any real opportunities to win. Then look at four years ago. The Democrats are vastly behind on social media and cultural influences at this point - but this happened post Reagan as well. I agree with you that the Democrats are going to have to become more populist if they want to win elections in the near future. I fully expect someone to emerge, just like Clinton and Obama emerged. Indeed, we already are seeing populism bubbling to the front. The only Democrats getting any real traction right now are Sanders and AOC.
That's the shackles of a dual party system, but are republicans who voted bush or ideologically identified with Reagan satisfied with what Trump turned the party into? Idiocracy should be a warning rather a prophecy. If that's where we're headed, lets rip off the covers and go full caste system like Brave New World. Frankly, that sounds better than the increasingly blurred social heirarchies Trump and his ilk want. Jake Auchincloss went on the Ezra Klein podcast. His ideas aren't fully articulated yet, but he has the credentials and mindset to bring a direction people would want. He's also younger than I am, so there's that. I don't think blue collar people are looking for populist crazies who want to destroy government or corporations. That our refrain for Trumpers, right? A solid group are looking to be heard and seen and if the majoritarian elite won't give them credible effort, they look elsewhere to raise their chances from 0% to 5-10%
There is a lot of Reagan revisionism that has lionized him when in reality he was proto-Trump. A vibes president who didn't understand basic policy who weaponized fear of socialism to dismantle the administrative state and hand it over to corporations. He was a useful idiot.
I have a lot of problems with Reagan too, but he also worked with Democrats in Congress. Anyhow, it's more to speak of the sharp shift in branding where the party is taken over from within like New Democrats with Clinton. Maybe vibes is more important than we all give credit to? Even moreso now with how influential Tiktok and Meta can sway a close election.
Yes, Reagan's rhetoric was less divisive and he and Democrats largely had similar interests in Cold War era politics like using fascist militias to suppress labor movements in foreign countries. But Reagan and Trump had similar levels of intellectual curiosity in policy understanding.
Reagan was charming, learned how to tell a joke and was very comfortable talking to large groups of people - and that can get you a long way. He spent a decade working for a corporation giving speeches around the country and learning what tone people would listen to and like, and what did and did not get the attention of the audience. Communists/socialists and poor inner-city minorities worked well - so did simplifying complicated issues, even if it oversimplified them. The divorce from his first wife and dwindling finances in Hollywood made him very fiscally conservative and supporting of big business.
Vibes are very important - those with them get the benefit of the doubt from the public until things get really bad.
Him and Trump are very similar in that before their foray into right wing politics they were socially hanging out with liberals, lgbtq people etc. Both weaponized culture wars also. Remember the "moral majority"?
Republicans like Trump, Desantis, and Cruz have been maximizing shock in order to do less with the appearance of working bigly hard for their constituents. It's been pretty effective in the new attention economy where now medium sized problems can't be encapsulated in John Oliver hour, let alone a thread of tweets.
Yes - RR definitely weaponized culture and prejudices to get votes. History has downplayed it but he was the one that started the narrative of the black welfare queen and played up the dangers of black men in the inner city. He also was incredibly slow to address AIDS and gave zero guidance on the topic, and now young people do not realize how scary AIDS was in the 1980's. Not everything that Reagan supported turned out to be terrible, he did have some policies that were a success - but RR was a master at causing division in the USA and benefitting from it.
We've spent the past 20 years or so opening up the Chinese market to American cattle/sheep/goat. There were great inroads recently, especially with beef, and it just all went away in the span of a couple of months. It's ok though, Trump will throw out a couple of billion dollars of "subsidies" (most all of which will go to the 4 or 5 massive Agri-Corporations) and pretend he's a Man Of The People
Reagan was a life-long Democrat, and he was the president of a labor union, The Screen Actors Guild at age 51, he switched to the Republican party., as POTUS in the 1980s, he signed an Executive Order granting amnesty to undocumented residents.
