is it really possible that Donald trump could be president?????

[Bishopsbuddy]

I have zero understanding of American politics and wondered could some one give me an idiots explanation pls. Could trump really win???

Liberal magazine, Salon, on Trump's win in last night's debate even though the Republican National Committee seemed to have an audience full of people who booed everytime Trump spoke and cheered the "stiff" Jeb Bush. And on Fox afterwards, they had liberal guests saying it was not a good night for Trump. As Trump tweeted

"Even though every poll, Time, Drudge etc., has me winning the debate by a lot, @FoxNews only puts negative people on. Biased - a total joke!"

The public understand the Establshment's game

"Trump and Drudge for the win, again: Matt Drudge’s army is bigger than the RNC’s

Yes, Trump got booed by GOP loyalists at the debate. But the reaction that matters, again, was afterwards on Drudge

Well, that was brutal. Wasn’t it? The Republican presidential debate in South Carolina on Saturday night was a real knife fight, and it was cheered on by a vocal audience that made us feel like it was held in the Colosseum. It was unbelievable, like a work of fiction, but it wasn’t. The story of last night’s debate can be told as a Tale of Two Audiences.

If you were gauging by the audience reactions — or the pundits after on cable news — you would think that the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, Donald Trump, had a really rough night. Every time he opened his mouth he was met with loud boos. When the others spoke, especially Jeb Bush, they were cheered loudly. The analysts after, once again, wondered if Trump had gone too far. Trump, meanwhile, in his “Spin Room” interviews after the debate touted the early numbers on Drudge calling him the winner. Do we really still need to debate which analysis matters more?"

www.salon.com/2016/02/14/trump_and_drudge_for_the_win_again_matt_drudges_army_is_bigger_than_the_rncs/

I don't know why anyone bothers discussing Trump's policies, like the ridiculous Mexican wall that he knows perfectly well will never get built. Trump is an opportunist with a carefully crafted persona (though it occasionally slips, like when he debates Bush who he obviously detests). In reality he is noticeably flexible on many issues even things like abortion in which most American people adopt very fixed, life-long positions. It can be entertaining to read Trump statements, which often directly contradict each other, and wonder which ones he will find expedient to drop if he gets the nomination and has to actually craft, and cost, some sort of election manifesto.

I don't think there is even the smallest chance that he wil be elected (give the American people some credit ffs!).

That doesn't work as an explanation for your Blair/Brown obsession, claig. You don't use "Tony Blair" as an exclamation.

'You don't use "Tony Blair" as an exclamation'

No because Gordon Brown is much funnier (in the evidently incompetent sense than Tony Blair). I use Tony Blair as a universally accepted example of incompetence, pomposity and phoniness which is to some extent funny when you compare it to someone comptetent like Donald J Trump.

Mistigri, you are right, trump is flexible and malleable. He is a pragmatist, not wedded to dogma or donors that tell him what to think or say.

And you are right that it is difficult to debate his policies which is what Marco Rubio said when he was asked when he would start attacking Trump. He said it is difficult because Trump has no policies - it's "build a wall" and if asked who is going to pay, it is "Mexico" and if asked how, it s "trust me, they'll pay". Trump is pure genius, he doesn't play the game.

Basically, Tony Blair has become a worldwide widely accepted term of abuse in the sense of being a pantomime villain, common to all cultures and peoples on the planet, who evokes boos and hisses at the mere mention of his name or mannerisms. He can be thrown into any sentence as a counterpoint to what is good and worthwhile.

Here is the pantomime villain opining on the days when a compliant media and people fawned at his feet and the feet of his team of spin doctors. The Establishment have no one left to help them apart from pantomiime villains. the people are in a "voter revolt" as the Fox News documenatry said about Trump and Sanders, and which is true of Corbyn too.

"Someone said to me the other day re Corbyn mania: “You just don’t get it.” I confess they’re right. I don’t get it, but I’m trying hard
...
The Corbyn thing is part of a trend. So Donald Trump leads the field of Republican candidates with thousands at his meetings
...
So when people like me come forward and say elect Jeremy Corbyn as leader and it will be an electoral disaster, his enthusiastic new supporters roll their eyes.
...
Anyone listening? Nope. In fact, the opposite. It actually makes them more likely to support him.
...
The explanation for this parallel reality is something to do with people feeling empowered by their ability through it, to “fight back” against “the system”
...
It’s a revolution but within a hermetically sealed bubble – not the Westminster one they despise, but one just as remote from actual reality. Those in this bubble feel good about what they’re doing. They’re making all those “in authority” feel their anger and their power. There is a sense of real change because of course the impact on politics is indeed real.
...
But it is part of something much bigger in politics.

Because it is a vast wave of feeling against the unfairness of globalisation, against elites, against the humdrum navigation of decision-making in an imperfect world, it persuades itself that it has a monopoly on authenticity. They’re “telling it like it is”, when, of course, they’re telling it like it isn’t.

So the question is: what to do? Do we go full frontal and take it on or do we try to build a bridge between the two realities?

I don’t know. But the answer will preoccupy the Labour party for years to come, provided that the space to examine it is permitted."

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/29/tony-blair-labour-leadership-jeremy-corbyn

He is almost begging for the permission to be heard and of course the Establishment Guardian will always willingly offer him that space. But he is now irrelevant, the people have seen through him. The old is being swept away and in America there is now a popular, populist revolution where the spinners and Establishment cronies are disliked, where Sanders is more popular than Clinton and where trump mocks and insults Jeb Bush. It is the people's revolution. It is Trump 2016!

Ah! Talking to yourself again

claig do you honestly think that it's a good idea that politicians to tell voters what they want to hear, regardless of what they intend to do/ are able to achieve once in office (or if, in Trump's case)? Because that doesn't sound much like democracy to me.

Regardless, I fear that you are set to be terribly disappointed come November (if not earlier). Have you chosen your next great white hope? Marine Le Pen perhaps? There's a french presidential election next year, which she won't win of course but that won't stop you telling us that she is heading for a landslide.

'claig do you honestly think that it's a good idea that politicians to tell voters what they want to hear'

No, I think it is important for politicians to tell the truth and not be politically correct to conceal the truth. Then the people can make up their minds if they prefer Trump or an Establishment pantomime Tony Blair.

Trump tells the truth whether it is palatable or not and politically correct or not. He has amazing courage and has gone against George W Bush whom conservatives are supposed to venerate in the same way we are supposed to venerate Cameron, when in reality we don't even think these people are conservative because they are politically correct. It just so happens that what Trump says, when he tells the truth, coincides what most people think which is why he has the biggest crowds of any other politician attending his rallies and why he leads the Republican polls by 20 points more than the next candidate, so-called anti-establishment Cruz.

Watch his interview on the debate where he says he tells the truth and that "if Bush and the rest of them had just gone to the beach, we would all have been better off". He is a refreshing politician because he is unlike the frightened Oxbridge tutored spin driven political class who are too frightened to tell the truth in case their polls drop.

What I have slowly realised is that our system is rigged, where 4 million voters for UKIP only got 1 seat in the Westminster bubble and where the Tories can not declare their full expenses in by-elections where they beat UKIP and nothing much happens. The system is rigged, it is set up for Oxbridge. Nothing will change because the metropolitan elite are having a laugh. But, Trump will change everything because once he wins, it will set off a domino effect that will remove incompetent politically correct elites across the planet. Trump 2016 is the only game in town which is why the whole world is rooting for Trump.

Then the people can make up their minds if they prefer Trump or an Establishment pantomime Tony Blair.

Well, this people is quite glad that she doesn't have to contemplate the utterly boorish Trump. The utterly self absorbed Blair was bad enough!

What I have slowly realised is that our system is rigged, where 4 million voters for UKIP only got 1 seat in the Westminster bubble

Alternatively, you disagree with the current voting system and would prefer another. One that would have other, equally abhorrent(?) possibilities.

From my perspective the nature of the UKIP vote, widespread, thin on the ground, ensured that it did not get many seats as only 1 geographical area had enough idiots voters who wanted it. The system works as it is supposed to. Alternatives have been presented and refused... that you don't like it is your opinion. Many others seem to disagree!

'Alternatives have been presented and refused'

OurBlanche, don't you understand why Tony Blair was rolled out? Here are his words.

"But it is part of something much bigger in politics.

Because it is a vast wave of feeling against the unfairness of globalisation, against elites, against the humdrum navigation of decision-making in an imperfect world"

Don't you think they understand why Sanders and Trump are shaking the power structure of America, the most powerful country in the world? Don't you think they know what it might mean for them if Trump wins? It is their worst nightmare. The Financial times had an article

"the nativists must not win"

Everybody knows the game is rigged.

And now Trump has appeared on the world stage and the panic among elites is like nothing ever seen before and this is why:

"Why Donald Trump's vicious attack on George W. Bush was so brutally effective — and brilliant
...
But no matter how much Jeb Bush defended his brother, or Marco Rubio came to the former president's aid, that Bush's legacy abruptly became a question at all, at this very late date, dealt the establishment a potentially crippling blow.

Yes, the establishment — there's that word again, used advisedly but of necessity. For what was supposed to be more established a fact in the Republican Party but that George W. Bush — at a bare, bare minimum — was the right man in office on Sept. 11? Yet here was Donald Trump, naked in a way few have really seen him before, slamming home the message again and again: W messed up. He hurt the party. And he hurt the country.
....
they were illustrative of the sweeping but specific theme of Trump's night and his campaign, revealed with typical deadpan cockiness in his closing remarks.

"Politicians are all talk, no action."
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But Trump is not just running against Bushism. He's running against what it's a symptom of — the certain kind of insider sophistry that he says defines the political class. That's why he was onstage at all last night. That's why he's in first place now.
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The typical critique of politics today is that the ruling class has been corrupted by privilege. There's too much money in politics; there's too much of a cult of access; the tropes go on and on. Trump's not saying that. Instead, he's saying, the ruling class has been corrupted by foolishness. The problem isn't that "the politicians" have vanished behind the velvet rope. It's that they've vanished up their own rear ends. Obsessed with themselves, they have forgotten who they are. They have lost their way — and ours.

Hard as it is to stomach or say, that is a kind of wisdom so deep, so populist, and so potent that many conservatives can't help but flutter toward it. Then again, neither can many moderate or liberal Republicans, which is why Trump performs well across all groups.
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To be sure, in some ways Trump is a dreadful messenger for this dreadful message. Then again, watching him up work up there like a Soviet wrestler, it's clear this man is not riding a fad or indulging a fantasy. An immense physical and mental strain is involved in hitting his fellow candidates — hungry, disciplined men — on issue after issue. He is delivering an intense message that no one else has proven capable of delivering with the requisite intensity: a shocking insight, when you pause to think about it, but for the fact that in this election year, nothing can shock anymore."

theweek.com/articles/606035/why-donald-trumps-vicious-attack-george-w-bush-brutally-effective--brilliant

It's Trump 2016!

The system is rigged. But we already knew that, we knew it was Oxbridge. But the problem is it is rigged and run by losers, incompetents, politically correct fools who are wrecking the future. We know things are rigged and it wouldn't matter if competent people were in charge, but they aren't.

That is why Trump has appeared and why he tops the polls. He tells the truth and the people love it.

It's Trumo 2016!

claig - i keep seeing you write how "brave", "fearless", " courageous" Trump is but I never see any evidence to justify that. You wouldn't say sneering at Bush, whom Trump despises, was a sign of bravery, would you?

To be brave, you have to be worried about the comeback, and Trump does not appear to care what other people think or say about him. he is completely interested in everyone else's opinion. I am sure there is a name for that condition...!

correction: he is completely uninterested in everyone else's opinion.

Oh! Did I respond incorrectly, claig? Ooops

'You wouldn't say sneering at Bush, whom Trump despises, was a sign of bravery, would you?'

Of course it is because it challenges the entire Republican Establishment and elite and donor and special interest class that backs them up by a candidate, trump, who wants to lead them and topple them and stick the middle finger up to them. It means they have to fight back, they have to hit Trump hard, they have to stack debate audiences with stooges who boo Trump while the people cheer him on. They have to roll out Jeb Bush's mother, they have to try to ban Trump in Parliaments across the world, they have to try and bring him down or he will singlehandedly bring them down and the people are right behind him.

Listen to Trump speak. Can't you see his courage when compared to our Oxbridge political class whose speeches are written for them by teenage wonks and who daren't give a straight answer in case the media doesn't like it and the BBC and Guardian object.

'watching him up work up there like a Soviet wrestler, it's clear this man is not riding a fad or indulging a fantasy. An immense physical and mental strain is involved in hitting his fellow candidates — hungry, disciplined men — on issue after issue. He is delivering an intense message that no one else has proven capable of delivering with the requisite intensity'

It takes immense courage to take them on and that is why Trump gets immense crowds at his rallies who would never vote for anyone else, who would never accept second best. they recognise and understand what Trump is doing and why and who he is doing it for.

'To be brave, you have to be worried about the comeback, and Trump does not appear to care what other people think or say about him'

He does care because he cares about America and therefore he has to win the election, but he will not compromise his principles, he will tell the truth about George W Bush whether that harms his bid to become the Republican nominee or not. Every pundit has consistently said Trump has gone too far, now he has blown it. During the live debate on Saturday night, al the Establishment media types came out of the woodwork and started tweeting "now Trump has blown it", "what is he doing attacking Bush?" "is he a real conservative?" "this is a car crash" etc etc , all of them Frank Luntz, Tim Stanley of the Daily Teegraph and scores and scores more, but while the media pontificators said Trump was crashing, the people were cheering him on and marvelling at the cagefight debate in the Colosseum where Trump was telling the truth and hitting the puppets back.

It was incredible, pundits said they had never seen anything like it, they said it was brutal, but what it really was was Trump 2016!

Can you imagine what will happen when Trump wins? Can you imagine what he will say to the world then? People will be going to jail for what they have done to America and the world. They know it and that is why they must stop him.

Oh dear.

I think most people want to stop him because he's a borderline-insane egomaniac with dodgy views about people who are not white and/ or don't have a penis, who was gifted a fortune by his father but has nevertheless filed for bankruptcy four times.

Claig wrote; I think it is important for politicians to tell the truth and not be politically correct to conceal the truth.

Trump (nor Farage for that matter) don’t let facts slow them down. Bending the truth or being unhampered by accuracy is a strategy they have both followed for years.

Trump promised to create 6k jobs & £1.02bn investment at his Aberdeenshire golf course. Instead there are a few hundred working on the course, the investment is worth about £30m & the business is running at a loss. Trump will make his money on selling time share.

For a number of years there is evidence more Mexicans migrants are leaving the US than are arriving, so why does Trump say he needs to build his wall? To keep them in ?

When challenged on his inaccurate numbers of whites by blacks murder rates Trump tweeted ”Hey, Bill, Bill, am I gonna check every statistic?”

He claims bad trade negotiators & bad trade deals with the rest of the world are responsible for a downturn in US manufacturing. The truth is US manufacturing output has actually increased & more automation & more productivity have brought about job losses, not bad deals.

etc

Not sure what going off topic about British politicians has to do with Trump but take a look at Farage. He says 70% of our laws our made in the EU. UKIP’s evidence for this is a video clip taken out of context of of European commissioner Viviane Reding talking about ‘70% of laws’ She was actually referring to something quite different — where the European Parliament (consisting of elected representatives for each EU country) has an equal say to the European Council (made up of the governments of all EU countries) on EU laws, not UK laws. The remaining 30% is where EU laws are either decided solely by the Council, or with Parliament giving the Council consent to them being passed.

Another of Farage’s claims is the fast-tracking of Turkey’s admission to the EU. In fact what was actually agreed is the fast-tracking of visa liberalisation. The EU visa liberalisation “roadmap” means certain conditions need to be met eg the issue of machine-readable passports , fingerprinting & the introduction of new laws & measures to combat organised crime, corruption & illegal migration. That is a huge improvement as many Turkey visas are fake.

Talks on Turkey’s admission are to reopen but to accede to the EU Turkey must successfully complete negotiations on 33 of 35 “chapters.” Afterwards, the EU member states must unanimously agree on granting Turkey membership. Given that Turkey applied for membership in 1987 & very few, if any chapters, have been completed it is unlikely Turkey will meet the criteria for joining the EU for a very, very long time if ever.

(Sits and waits for claig's non secateur [sic] response )

When you, claig say "Trump tells the truth", how do you reconcile with your previous claims that he is just being outlandish (and lying) to be elected and then he'll just be a great president, not having done what he proposed to do?

'Trump promised to create 6k jobs & £1.02bn investment at his Aberdeenshire golf course. '

It is true that Trump does exaggerate. That is part of "The Art of the Deal".

'so why does Trump say he needs to build his wall? To keep them in ? '

No. To stop illegal immigration and the drug cartels shipping drugs over the border.

'When challenged on his inaccurate numbers of whites by blacks murder rates Trump tweeted ”Hey, Bill, Bill, am I gonna check every statistic?”'

That wasn't Trump's fault. Trump is known as "The Twitterer in Chief", he wakes up at 6 am and fires off tweets at the puppets who are his opponents. He is legendary for that. In this case, what happened was other people tweet and he tetweeted and didn't check the statistics, so Bill, who is Fox's Bill O'Reilly, gave Trump a hard time on the Fox Network, so Trump said ”Hey, Bill, Bill, am I gonna check every statistic?” Trump fans liked Trump's humility.

'The truth is US manufacturing output has actually increased & more automation & more productivity have brought about job losses, not bad deals.'

No, it is US manufacturers setting up in Mexico and China etc and closing down US plants. He said in the debate about the "air con factory" closing down and moving to Mexico and mentioned the 1500 job losses and people crying etc and he said "not gonna happen anymore". trump fans love the way Trump stands up for the people.

'Not sure what going off topic about British politicians has to do with Trump'

Because it shows how good Trump is when you compare him to the Oxbridge shower that we are lumbered with. Trump fans appreciate the difference.

'take a look at Farage'

No thanks. Farage is not even in the same league as Trump, I have said that many times.

'"Trump tells the truth", how do you reconcile with your previous claims that he is just being outlandish (and lying) to be elected'

Because Trump tells the truth about big important issues such as what is going on in Syria and Iraq and Libya etc, but exaggerates that global warming is a Chinese invention to harm the United States. Trump fans appreciate the truth and couraage of Trump "telling it like it is" together with the humour about global warming which Trump fans like to laugh about.

That is all part of what makes Trump 2016 the greatest show on earth.