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is it really possible that Donald trump could be president????? [Part 2]

999 replies

claig · 02/03/2016 09:27

From now on the race becomes winner take all. If Trump wins Florida on March 15, it is probably all over.

'The Republican Party now has 14 days to stop Trump'

www.vox.com/2016/3/2/11144812/super-tuesday-results-donald-trump-wins

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BigChocFrenzy · 12/03/2016 20:27

Wouldn't Trump's comments repel more than 50% of the general electorate ? - as distinct from Republican primary voters. Maybe an American could comment here, in case I'm being naive.

He doesn't seem in any legal danger: the Washington Post consulted a practicising attorney and law professor, who says so far Trump is safe from any criminal liability wrt what he said about hecklers.
Also, with the free speech laws in the US, he could win any civil action too, especially as Republicans on the jury would probably dislike the plaintiff on sight.

claig · 12/03/2016 20:29

'You seriously think it's OK for Trump to joke about violence?'

I think he should dial it back as BigChocFrenzy and Ben Carson said, but joking is not doing. He said he would like to punch a violent protestor in the face. I don't think he was serious and that he meant it. It is best that he stops saying it but he isn't acting on it.

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claig · 12/03/2016 20:41

'Wouldn't Trump's comments repel more than 50% of the general electorate ? - as distinct from Republican primary voters.'

I am not American, but while waiting for any Americans to comment, I doubt it because Trump is the only Republican who has cross-party appeal and is attracting blue collar Democrats (often called Reagan Democrats) and independents which is why Trump does better in open primaries than in closed primaries (which are for registered Republicans only) where Cruz is doing well.

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Lweji · 12/03/2016 20:47

The problem is how do people distinguish between serious or joking.
Is he being serious or joking when he says he'll sort out the economy?
Is he being serious or joking when he says he'd punch someone on the face?

If someone asks Trump a question he doesn't like, does he need to get that person out of the room, or should he answer the question as best as he can?
Is getting people who disagree with him out of the room what the US wants from the President? How will he deal with those advising him if they don't agree with him? Will he simply surround himself with yes people?

claig · 12/03/2016 20:54

'The problem is how do people distinguish between serious or joking. '

I agree, Lweij No one knows which is why the world's elite are terrified of what might happen.

"The dominant reaction to the effective collapse of the Republican Party establishment in the face of Trump appeared to be jaw-dropping astonishment, mixed with dread at what may lie ahead."

'Will he simply surround himself with yes people?'

In general, I think yes because he intends to make huge changes and he will want people who agree with him about those changes. But as we have seen, he is not an expert on policy so he will take advice from all sorts of people, but once he has made his mind up, he will look for people who will get it done.

He says "politicians are all talk, no action". Those days are over, we are going to see huge changes that change the entire world and it will happen very, very fast. Just on Isis, for example, he says he will "knock them out in two days" and someone in the crowd shouted out "faster".

A Trump presidency will be like nothing we have ever seen. things will be fixed very quickly.

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BigChocFrenzy · 12/03/2016 20:55

NY Times has an fascinating history & analysis of why Trump decided to run for President:

It may be partly down to hurt pride, after Obama totally humiliated him in a speech at the 2011 Annual White House Correspondents dinner.
Undestandable after Trump supporting the "Birthers" but Obama's revenge may have been very unwise - Trump's incredible ego would have made that fester.
Esy to overlook how dangerous a billionaire narc can be when he throws his toys around.

Trump said before New Hampshire: “A lot of people have laughed at me over the years. Now, they’re not laughing so much.”

Lweji · 12/03/2016 20:56

I agree, Lweij No one knows which is why the world's elite are terrified of what might happen.

FFS!

And nothing on the electorate and the effect on the people at the rallies?
On how are voters supposed to know what to believe?

claig · 12/03/2016 21:00

"It may be partly down to hurt pride"

BigChocFrenzy, that is very unlikely because what Obama said was very funny and Trump loves being the centre of attention and being important so he lapped that up. He can have a laugh at himself which is why he always goes on the liberal comedian TV shows to be interviewed and mocked live like with Jimmy Kimmel and the others and he also had a laugh at himself on Saturday Night Live.

He is an egomaniac with an exceedingly thick skin, as Want2BeSuperMum said "the hide of a rhino", so he doesn't mind people laughing at him, he takes it as a compliment because he loves the attention.

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claig · 12/03/2016 21:03

'And nothing on the electorate and the effect on the people at the rallies?
On how are voters supposed to know what to believe?'

They are adults and it is a democracy, they have to work out for themselves what is real and what is exaggeration. There are no clear answers because Trump always changes his mind and his positions which is why he supported and funded the Democrats and the Republicans. That is why Cruz and Rubio say that Trump is not a "real conservative", he has no fixed ideology or positions, he is a flexible pragmatist.

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Lweji · 12/03/2016 21:07

But these are adults who are choosing to be violent, because they heard a message of violence and identify with it. They are being led by example on physically getting people out of rallies.

Does Trump bear no responsibility over the incidents at his rallies? (bear in mind he is not the only one with opposing people at rallies)

Lweji · 12/03/2016 21:09

He actually has a very thin skin, as demonstrated previously.

The Roast was cringeworthy just to see how uncomfortable he actually was during it.

claig · 12/03/2016 21:11

In case anyone hasn't seen it, this is Obama taking the mickey out of Trump. It is very funny and Obama is an excellent natural speaker and comic gag deliverer. Trump loves this type of stuff because he loves the attention.

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claig · 12/03/2016 21:16

'Does Trump bear no responsibility over the incidents at his rallies?'

The police mainly remove protestors and Trump bears no responsibility for the 78 year old man who punched a protestor in the face as he was being escorted out because there is no excuse for violence and the 78 year old man is entirely responsible.

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Lweji · 12/03/2016 21:25

So, that he said he'd like to punch someone on the stand is irrelevant?

Lweji · 12/03/2016 21:27

And why are you then asking for Bernie or anyone else to condemn the protesters?
They are all grown up. They do what they like.
Surely whatever the candidate they like says is irrelevant, then.

claig · 12/03/2016 21:28

'So, that he said he'd like to punch someone on the stand is irrelevant?'

I have said he was joking, he didn't mean it. He speaks off the cuff at rallies without a teleprompter and sometimes gets swept up in the exuberance of the rally and he said that when a man who was throwing punches was escorted out by the police.

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claig · 12/03/2016 21:31

'And why are you then asking for Bernie or anyone else to condemn the protesters?'

Because it is affecting the enjoyment of tens of thousands of law abiding Trump fans who wish to hear Trump speak in a democratic process in the run up to primaries to choose the next President of the United States. This is the most important election of our lifetimes and tens of thousands of hard working Americans want to hear what he has to say and they bring children along with them and people dress up in Trump outfits and want to enjoy themselves in a free country.

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Lweji · 12/03/2016 21:32

And I have said that his followers take him seriously. As they are supposed to when he says he'll improve the economy and so on (which in fact is just another joke, but I digress).
Do you really believe that those followers are discerning enough to distinguish what is supposed to be a joke and not?
Or are people simply supposed to cherry pick what is for real and what isn't?
Can he be certain that people won't pick the wrong bits to be serious about? Can he be certain that they won't go with the violence he has been inciting?

It's been a very dangerous game he's been playing, and now we are all seeing the consequences. Not surprising at all.

Lweji · 12/03/2016 21:32

Anyway, done with talking to a moving goal post for the night...

claig · 12/03/2016 21:34

'Surely whatever the candidate they like says is irrelevant, then.'

MoveOn.org has endorsed Bernie. I like Bernie but I doubt he will say anything to MoveOn because the entire system wants to stop Trump and stopping his rallies is a small part of that. But I think he should tell MoveOn to knock if off and let the American people listen to Trump.

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Mistigri · 12/03/2016 21:51

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/12/donald-trump-supporters-st-louis-rally-protest-violence

First person account by a journalist who attended as an ordinary punter.

BigChocFrenzy · 12/03/2016 22:00

Weakness of Hillary vs Bernie (or vs Trump)
She may lose blue-collar votes in several states because of her support for Free Trade Agreements and related polices that cost 3.7 million US jobs, mostly in manufacturing.

The Economic Policy Institute estimated in a paper that FTAs with low-wage countries reduced the wages of the average American worker by $2,000 per year.

For years, she was also on the board of the despicable Walmart, which hammers their workers pay & conditions. She never once protected their vulnerable workers or opposed their anti-union policies.
Instead, she worked for interests of the Walmart owners, the Walton family, who own more wealth than 42% of US families combined.
Outrageous that she claims she'd help ordinary people. She has always helped the obscenely wealthy.

Will some affected workers bear grudges ?
Some unions have already endorsed Bernie.
Also
A trade union leader says: “If you have a right-wing populist, you can beat a corporate Democrat”

If Trump concentrated on opposing policies like TTP, helping ordinary Americans, he might win more votes and it would certainly be safer to de-escalate the battle with protesters and hecklers.
Safer for the country and for him personally too.

claig · 12/03/2016 22:10

'If Trump concentrated on opposing policies like TTP, helping ordinary Americans, he might win more votes and it would certainly be safer to de-escalate the battle with protesters and hecklers. '

That is the main plank of Trump's appeal. It is all about jobs despite what the Guardian reports. Hillary is now pretending that she is against some of these trade deals under pressure from Bernie who, like Trump, is against them.

Concentrating on TPP won't stop the MoveOn protestors who are against Trump because they are funded by billionaires who are scared to death that Trump will end these free trade deals which is why they fund the protests against him. All the stuff about racism that the Guardian reports is a smokescreen because Trump is not racist at his rallies, what the Establishment really fear is his oppsition to globalisation and free trade deals like TPP and NAFTA.

'Writing in the Financial Times of London, Martin Wolf summed up the mood of a good share of Europe’s business and economic elite, arguing that it would be a “global disaster” if Trump made it all the way to the Oval Office.'

These European elites are quite happy to support and do business with Saudi Arabia in spite of human rights abuses, but they fear Trump because he will end the financial merry-go-round and the free trade deals that have destroyed Ameican jobs.

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claig · 12/03/2016 22:22

"Millions of ordinary Americans support Donald Trump. Here's why

Let us now address the greatest American mystery at the moment: what motivates the supporters of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump?

I call it a “mystery” because the working-class white people who make up the bulk of Trump’s fan base show up in amazing numbers for the candidate, filling stadiums and airport hangars, but their views, by and large, do not appear in our prestige newspapers. On their opinion pages, these publications take care to represent demographic categories of nearly every kind, but “blue-collar” is one they persistently overlook. The views of working-class people are so foreign to that universe that when New York Times columnist Nick Kristof wanted to “engage” a Trump supporter last week, he made one up, along with this imaginary person’s responses to his questions.

When members of the professional class wish to understand the working-class Other, they traditionally consult experts on the subject. And when these authorities are asked to explain the Trump movement, they always seem to zero in on one main accusation: bigotry. Only racism, they tell us, is capable of powering a movement like Trump’s, which is blowing through the inherited structure of the Republican party like a tornado through a cluster of McMansions.
...
Stories marveling at the stupidity of Trump voters are published nearly every day. Articles that accuse Trump’s followers of being bigots have appeared by the hundreds, if not the thousands. Conservatives have written them; liberals have written them; impartial professionals have written them. The headline of a recent Huffington Post column announced, bluntly, that “Trump Won Super Tuesday Because America is Racist.” A New York Times reporter proved that Trump’s followers were bigots by coordinating a map of Trump support with a map of racist Google searches.
...
Or so we’re told. Last week, I decided to watch several hours of Trump speeches for myself. I saw the man ramble and boast and threaten and even seem to gloat when protesters were ejected from the arenas in which he spoke. I was disgusted by these things, as I have been disgusted by Trump for 20 years. But I also noticed something surprising. In each of the speeches I watched, Trump spent a good part of his time talking about an entirely legitimate issue, one that could even be called leftwing.

Yes, Donald Trump talked about trade. In fact, to judge by how much time he spent talking about it, trade may be his single biggest concern – not white supremacy. Not even his plan to build a wall along the Mexican border, the issue that first won him political fame."

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/07/donald-trump-why-americans-support

It is all about trade and jobs and that is what frightens Wall Street, the Establishment and the European economic elites and all the rest of the world's political class. They claim that Trump and his supporters are racists, they use leftwing movements backed by former terrorists like Bill Ayers based on Saul Alinsky "rules for radicals" techniques to marginalise the employment concerns of the working class and middle class which is dying due to their trade policies and they get their Oxbridge media journalists to call these people racist in the hope that it can stop Trump bringing jobs back to America.

But they haven't fooled the American people and the more they call Trump racist and hurl KKK insults at Trump supporters as they did in Chicago last night, the more the American people back Trump because they know that it is the Establishment that is frightened of Trump and it is they who are coordinating the protests and attacks against him.

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claig · 12/03/2016 22:29

The Stump for Trump sisters said at the live North Carolina Trump rally 3 days ago

"a vote for Trump is victory over the Etablishment"

and the thousands of Trump fans cheered to the rafters. They know that it is the Establishment that is against Trump and against them and their wish to bring jobs back to America and end the free trade policies that have exported their jobs and prosperity.

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