is it really possible that Donald trump could be president????? [Part 3]

[Lweji]

Continuing the thread, and in reply to the two last posts of thread 2

Today 08:15 OhYouBadBadKitten

I don't think it is about Trump taking risks, its more that he is a narcisstic sociopath. He feels untouchable in what he says and has no regard for the consequences.

Today 06:53 fourmummy

To be fair, voters know that all political rhetoric mostly comes to nothing (rhetoric = argumentation and persuasion, elevated to an art from in Ancient Greece). Why do you imagine Labour want to introduce votes for 16 year olds? They know that people don't become "more conservative" as they get older-they become wiser to the political process and its lies rhetoric. So what's different with Trump? Why hasn't his unbelievably unlikeable public and private persona sunk him?

Answer=risk

He is not a ready-rolled, ready-prepped and ready-to-go politician (think Blair's son parachuted into a constituency; MIliband brothers, Clintons). These are not risking much because they were cast in the role when they were made. We know that this is the case with, certainly, Clinton (numerous interviews with aides attest to this; ditto for the others). Voters are doing a risk assessment of his risks and have decided that he is worth something. It's not as simple as suggesting that if someone votes for him then they must be racist or sexist, as I've seen journos assert. Voters are effectively doing a risk assessment and deciding that given the enormous costs both to him (energy, health, time away from family, reputation, financial, career, historical implications, ) and to his voters (risk of being viewed as sexist, racist, intolerant, asshole), the benefits must outweigh these costs. Very unwise to dismiss ordinary voters as simplistically sexist and racists, as many, many journalists have (shortsightedly) done. Even non-experts are very good at performing cost/benefit analyses

As I said I don't see anything of what he says as taking a risk. Because he is saying what many people want to hear.
As for personal cost, he is clearly someone who enjoys the power, the limelight, the adoration. All that is missing for him is the ultimate power, particularly as he sees other true billionaires taking central stage.
But he doesn't have the heart to be Gates.
So, he's going for the highest office, and on the back of American voters most primal fears.

But...
He's not averse to risk. He's built his empire on it. He's had four bankruptcies. Anyone should be worried about the way he manages risk.

'And which article?
You're so fond of links and extensive quotes that it makes me think it doesn't exist.'

It is from an alternative media site, not the mainstream media, which is why I have not linked to it, plus I didn't understand it all, as it is "advanced" economics, but the gist of it is that Trump has got it sorted.

Please, claig, link us in so we can judge for ourselves.

No, it is speculation and can't be verified so there is no point, but rest assured Trump has everything covered, he knows what he will do.

Yes, inflation erodes the real value of debt, but too high inflation is bad for an economy and for most ordinary people
I don't even mean Zimbabwe: I remember the dreadful double-digit UK inflation throughout the 1970s until early 1980s - it was 20-25% for some time.
Prices of food, clothes, everything spiralled out of control and it was difficult to afford even basics.
We kept minimum savings, because next year they would be worth so much less.

I hope inflation is not Trump's magic strategy, because it would spread to the rest of the world.
However, I'm not sure Congress would let him print too much money

When I was 5, I wondered why the government didn't just build more machines to print money, so the country would be rich
< wonders if Trump has progressed beyond a 5Yo level >

Apart from reeling to bankruptcy v just printing more money as an economic strategy and accidentally (possibly?) nominating a white supremacist delegate?

And what do you mean : "No, it is speculation and can't be verified so there is no point" ?

Surely it's just another opinion piece?

We are truly living in historic times. Don't believe the media and the BBC and that lot, what Trump represents is revolutionary which is why they fear him. Trump will end political correctness, end the climate change con, slash the US debt, end the wars etc etc and it will be done very quickly. Elites are in turmoil.

Here is an article from Simon Heffer, a real conservative

'Ignore the sneering elites - Donald Trump can win'

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/07/ignore-the-sneering-elites---donald-trump-can-win/

and the following article is brilliant and gets very close to understanding what is happening and is worth reading

"Our awful elites gutted America. Now they dare ring alarms about Trump, Sanders — and cast themselves as saviors

Both parties ignored workers, spewed hate, enriched themselves, hollowed out democracy. Now the problem's populism?
...
is scaring us about the mortal threat that is Trump.

No, the danger is the elites, who have made such a joke of the democratic process, who have so perverted and rotted it from within, that the entire edifice is crumbling (to the consternation of the elites). Both parties are in terminal decline after forty years of ignoring the travails of the average worker
...
Elites on both sides insisted on not addressing the root causes of economic dissatisfaction, hence the long-foreseen rise of Trump. Paul Krugman, a Hillary acolyte, is nothing more than a neoliberal, whose prescriptions always stay strictly within orthodox parameters. Yet he was construed as some sort of a liberal lion during the Bush and Obama years. Not for him any of Bernie’s “radical” measures to ensure economic justice and fairness. Oh no, we have to stay within the orthodoxies of the economics profession. Now he’s all offended about Trump!

The worst offenders of all are the American left’s cultural warriors, who daily wage some new battle over some imagined cultural offense, which has nothing to do with the lives of normal people but only the highly tuned sensibilities of those in the academic, publishing, and media ecospheres.
...
The game, for the elites, is over. This is true no matter what happens with the Sanders campaign. The Republican party as we have known it since the Reagan consensus (dating back to 1976) is over. The Democratic party doesn’t know it yet, but Bill Clinton’s neoliberalism (and what followed in his wake with complicity with Bush junior, and the continuation of Bush junior’s imperialist policies with Barack Obama) is also over, or well on its way to being over. The elites are in a cataclysmic state of panic, they don’t know whether to look right or left, they have no idea what to do with Trump, they don’t know what to do with the Bernie diehards, they have no idea how to put Humpty Dumpty together again.
...
Oh, and Hillary, good luck fighting Trump with your poll-tested reactions. Your calculated “offenses” against his offensiveness against women or minorities or Muslims are going to be as successful as the sixteen Republicans who’ve already tried it. You won’t be able to take on Trump because you do not speak the truth, you speak only elite mumbo-jumbo. Trump doesn’t speak the truth either, but he’s responding to something in the air that has an element of truth, and you don’t even go that far, you speak to a state of affairs—a meritocratic, democratic, pluralist America—that doesn’t even exist."

www.salon.com/2016/05/06/our_awful_elites_gutted_america_now_they_dare_ring_alarms_about_trump_sanders_and_cast_themselves_as_saviors/

Political correctness, the control mechanism trick of the left, won't save them. It is no use Hillary calling Trump beastly because it is precisely hisbeastliness that is his strongest appeal, his difference to the elites.

'Surely it's just another opinion piece?'

Absolutely and we will find out if that opinion turns out to be true when Trump wins.

' Paul Krugman, a Hillary acolyte, is nothing more than a neoliberal, whose prescriptions always stay strictly within orthodox parameters'

Unlike all of them, all of the people interviewed on the BBC etc, Trump is unorthodox which is why he will solve the economic problems very quickly unorthodoxly.

Claig, you don't link, it doesn't exist.

rest assured Trump has everything covered, he knows what he will do.

Clearly not, unless it's one of your jokes passing off as a serious statement.
In fact, it's bordering on insulting that you'd think any of us would just take your word for it instead of basing our judgement on what crap Trump actually says.

'Claig, you don't link, it doesn't exist.'

OK, it doesn't exist.

FFS

Heffer is the nastiest kind of conservative who wants to return to the bad old days.
The "culture wars" that make him so angry are rights for women, ethnic minorities, gay people.
I hope & think most Americans support those rights.

Conservatives have successfully used the culture wars to con low-information voters into supporting policies that transferred their assets, the wealth of the country to a tiny number of oligarchs.

There is a small chance that Trump may ascend to the Presidency.
It depends if sufficient Americans are sufficiently angry and also sufficiently ignorant about how the economy works, also how the oligarchs grabbed nearly all the wealth of their country.
Improving prospects for ordinary Americans requires reversing that wealth grab.
Conservatives want to protect the wealthy.

The US is financially the most unequal country in the Western world:
. The top 0.1% own 90% of the wealth
. The Walton family alone have more wealth than the bottom 40% of the entire country.

And Trump voters are angry at immigrants and Muslims, who didn't do this:

The situation has actually got even worse since the Occupy movement - we need a fresh graphic

'And Trump voters are angry at immigrants and Muslims, who didn't do this'

No, they are angry at the Establishment and its bunch of cronies controlled by Wall Street in the Republican Party and in the Democratic Party. They also don't want the Establishment to make them pay out of taxation for illegal immigrants.

No what Americans are pissed off with is politicians allowing companies to import labour through the H1b visas and undercutting the wages of Americans. The U.S. has some of the highest education costs in the world, therefore Americans working alongside immigrants on the same salary have much lower disposable income. It isn't fair and it isn't right that companies are allowed to do this.

Having said that I don't know if Trump is the right person to turn this around! One thing I do know is that HC sure as hell isn't going to change anything given her list of donors.

I'm as conservative as they come and I would give the Walton family a bill for the welfare paid out to families working for Walmart until they change their policies. The old man must be spinning in his grave to see what they have done to his vision. I remember going into Walmart in the 80s and there were signs up in the store saying how much was made in America and how they were proud to be supporting American communities. It was rare to see something not made in America. Today you don't see much of anything in a Walmart store that is 'Made in America'.

Britain went through the same thing about 40/ 50 years ago. We had "Buy British" campaigns to encourage us to buy British made things.

The problem was that they tended to be more expensive, of poorer design and less well-made than the US and Japanese things we could buy instead, so while everyone saw the benefits and thought everyone else should buy British, we actually chose to spend our own money where there was value for money to be had.

It sounds like the US has hit the same wall, but it will surely realise that the only way to win this battle is to produce things that people want to buy, at a price they want to pay, which means downward pressure on wages and working conditions. Otherwise the Asian countries will just out-compete.

Protectionism sounds great in principle, but its not so wonderfully received when prices start to rise because the low cost/ reasonable quality things have been taken off the shelves.

The left always claim racism/sexism/bigotry/homophobia etc when they are losing arguments

It's perfectly possible to sell goods manufactured in the US or the UK, if they are competitive. I work for a company that does just that - makes complex things using cutting edge technology, employing highly skilled people.

The problem for both the UK and the U.S. is essentially the same: low productivity caused by an undereducated underskilled workforce, employed by asset-stripping managers who focus on making a short term buck ahead of long term value.

Only someone very ignorant wouldn't have noticed Trump's racist remarks and could think it just the left who condemn him:

Mainstream Republicans like former Presidents Bush, George & George W, previous GOP Presidential candidates Romney and McCain .... basically most people who aren't on the batshit rightwing.

A group of high-profile Christian leaders have condemned Donald Trump, calling his campaign message “contrary to our Christian values” and condemning his bombastic rhetoric as “racist, bigoted, and hateful.”

thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/04/29/3774001/faith-leaders-are-pretty-sure-trump-is-racist/

Their statement heavily criticizes his language and policies that "demean immigrants, Muslims, women, people of color, and the disabled."

btw, I didn't criticise either President Bush as racist when they were winning elections, because they weren't.

He may still get in because Clinton is a poor candidate for a USA very angry with the Establishment.
She's still losing primaries to Sanders. Some Democrats who can't stand her may abstain in November, some Republicans who detest Trump may decide they hate Clinton even more.

Trump was talking about some illegal immigrants, not all of them and not all Mexican immigrants. Also Trump's proposed ban on Muslims is because he says they are not vetted and that there wiill be exceptions. I don't agree with him on that but it is not due to race but due to what he perceives as a potential terrorist threat.

Also Trump has not said anything racist about black people and has been endorsed by black politicians and has black supporters.

It was Hillary Clinton who was present at the "colored people time" so-called joke that Mayor de Blasio made in New York

"Obama called out Hillary Clinton over her 'Colored People's Time' joke"

theweek.com/speedreads/621754/obama-called-hillary-clinton-over-colored-peoples-time-joke

and it was Hillary who described some young black criminals as "super predators"

“We have to bring them to heel”: Watch a decade of Hillary Clinton’s shameful hypocrisy on racism"

www.salon.com/2016/03/01/we_have_to_bring_them_to_heel_watch_a_decade_of_hillary_clintons_shameful_hypocrisy_on_racism/

The U.S. has some of the highest education costs in the world
Maybe that could be changed?