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.

Interesting article on Trump's main appeal - jobs and an end to the free trade deals that have destroyed jobs.

"The 89% Pay Cut That Brought Trump-Mania to America's Heartland
Understanding the Republican candidate's anti-free trade, working-class appeal
...
Robert E. Scott of the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank critical of free-trade deals, estimates these deficits with Mexico alone have cost 850,000 Americans their jobs. This, in turn, has a “chilling effect,” Scott said. “It actually causes wage losses for everybody who doesn’t have a college degree.” After accounting for inflation, hourly pay at U.S. factories has been stagnant since the early 1970s.

Trump—and to a lesser extent, Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders—has found so much success in expressing the working-man's anger that just about no candidate, not even Hillary Clinton, whose husband signed the Nafta deal, is now willing to fully embrace free trade. Trump’s proposed solution has been to impose restrictions on imports, a strategy that almost two-thirds of Americans backed in a Bloomberg Politics national poll last week.
...
Woods played it coy when asked which candidate he backed. He wouldn’t outright say, but he went on to speak glowingly about just one of them—the one who’s not a career politician and who says he’ll crack down on illegal immigrants and bring jobs back to America."

www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-03-28/the-89-pay-cut-that-brought-trump-mania-to-america-s-heartland

Let's hope so, but it wlll be a high bar for Channel 4 to meet and I am not sure they are up to it.

Yes, it's hard to find anyone as unbalanced or unfair. Even in C4.

From an unlikely source, Hillary comes up as "fundamentally honest and trustworthy."

And the one with the "best truth-telling record of any of the 2016 presidential candidates".

Trump manages 3% True statements and 61% false or pants on fire.
Clinton has 24 % true (total 51% true or mostly true) and 13% false (1% pants on fire).
The complete reverse of each other.
To be fair, Sanders is pretty close and, among Republicans, Kasich is not bad either.
But for the other Republicans, it is bad: Cruz and Rubio, although not as depressing as Trump's record.

Who'd have thought?

Yes that Politifact assessment is pretty damning - of the republican front runners .

I don't really understand why Hillary gets such a hard time. Sure, she's not very liberal - but she's a damn sight more liberal than any of the Republican candidates (Kasich is not nearly as moderate as his reputation suggests). And she doesn't seem fundamentally less honest than other politicans, and a lot more honest than some. Interestingly, on politifact's measure of honesty, she does slightly better than Bernie (though the difference probably isn't significant).

I just unfollowed one of the Sanders groups on FB for gloating about the "Bernie or bust" movement (who are promoting not voting at all if Sanders isn't the candidate). That's just utter stupidity.

I've said why I dislike her so much - too rightwing, warmongering, too sleazy. Wall Street's planned Woman in the White House.
Invents important events that didn't happen.
Maybe those others who reject her feel the same.

They may feel if they always vote for a rightwing Democrat then that's what they'll always be given.
i.e. they are sending a message to the DNC for future elections; they want to take back the party from the wealthy / corporate donors.
They don't want to vote for the lesser of 2 evils.

Also, some believe a Trump Presidency wouldn't be able to actually achieve anything, just wreck the chances of the Republican Party for the next few elections (after which demographics would permanently keep them out of office)

It is laughable to say that Hillary is right wing. I realize that the center of politics in the UK is more to the left than it is in the US, but you really have to view her positions in relation to the US. The Democratic Party doesn't really have a right wing, just as the Republican Party no longer has a left wing.

Imo, the US centre would be very rightwing conservative in UK and Western European politics. It is only the "liberal language" that disguises this chasm between our attitudes.

What Hillary & Bill (she always supports him) have actually done in the past would be considered very rightwing here: rolling back welfare, demonising & enabling incarceration of minority males, abolishing constraints on bankers.
The British politician IDS is absolutely hated for attempting welfare reforms not as bad as theirs.

My US friends & colleagues also consider her rightwing, just not as extreme as the current GOP, which has been taken over by the lunatic fringe. (OK, maybe my US social circle is left)
To many in the Democratic base - as distinct from US voters as a whole, or the DNC - she just seems like a less batshit Republican, one who supports womens' rights, but just the lesser of 2 evils.

To help the 90% and reduce the obscene inequality requires increasing welfare provisions and taxing the wealthy, reducing the power of corporations, increasing workers' rights.
To avoid another international financial crisis requires new banking regulations, like those Bill abolished

The Clintons and the current DNC are heavily financed by corporate interests, just like the GOP.
So it is not surprising she won't do anything to harm her wealthy & corporate sponsors, e.g. Goldmann Sachs who gave her 600k+ for a few speeches.

My own personal opinion, not a political scientist or policy wonk or anything like that, just a voter who tries to stay well-informed: the only thing keeping Hillary Clinton from being a more-sensible-than-most Republican is her support of a woman's right to choice in reproductive healthcare. Republicans WILL NOT HAVE IT in any way shape or form. Otherwise, as BigChocFrenzy said above, yes, a less-batshit Republican.

She's also been really high-handed regarding her speeches to Goldman Sachs, saying she'd release the transcripts of her speeches to them "when everyone else releases theirs". IMO that's not the POINT, Hillary, the point is that Democrats are usually supposed to favour voters' interests above corporate and you already look dicey enough for pocketing the money for those speeches in the first place.

Right-left is always a relative thing though. American politics is not a British politics, and it certainly isn't European politics. Corbyn and Sanders might be some distance to the left of centre in the UK/ US, but many of their policies would be completely unremarkable in a European social democrat government.

To this outsider Hillary's politics look closer to the socially liberal one-nation conservatism that David Cameron espoused once upon a time, but that still puts her on the left of American politics. Maybe that's just a function of the rightward drift of republican politics, but that's the reality of political life in the US. It's no more appropriate to call HRC "right wing" in the American context than it would be to call Corbyn "centre left" in the UK context.

With the exception of women's rights, Hillary's policies look more like those of IDS, not Cameron.
She is a neoliberal wrt economics and a neocon wrt foreign policy, so she's well into GOP territory there.
I agree she would be far preferable to Trump or Cruz, but that's a pretty low bar

As a candidate, Reagan was originally considered far too rightwing to be nominated, let alone elected, but he looks positively reasonable compared to all current GOP candidates.
He could laugh at himself, too:

"I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency – even if I'm in a Cabinet meeting." 

Anybody know of any kind of worldwide political comparator tool that can put politicians/leaders of different countries on one political spectrum? It'd be kind of interesting to compare Sanders/Clinton/Trump/Cruz/IDS/Corbyn/Cameron etc.

Then again, I might need a primer on UK political parties and their leanings; I'm so used to having two major parties and one (the Green party) barely hanging on by the skin of their teeth that the UK seems spoilt for choice to me.

Oop! DH just reminded me about The Political Compass which apparently has a UK politics section too! Now, off to see if they compare....

Last serial post, I swear... but this is vair vair interesting - look at Clinton all snuggled up next to the 'Pubs in the corner:

Okay I lied. I re-took the test and was, at the end, presented with the option to compare my score against the candidates in the UK's 2015 general election. Oh dear, I'm even too off the wall for the Socialists and the Greens...

Nice graph. :)
It also shows Sanders as not very far left.

Yeah, there's only so far left he could go (or admit to going, anyway) and still have a snowball's chance in hell of making it through the primaries.

True.

Oh, look I should vote Green, apparently.

And Clinton is not far from UK Labour. I just wonder if Corbyn's or Blair's Labour.

Probably whoever was closer at the time of the 2015 election. Corbyn kind of did a sudden hard-turn left, didn't he? Or was it right?

Left. Way left.

Not directly related, but it's interesting that the previous government in Portugal (where I've been living the past few years and I'm a national of) was of a "centre-right" party, which is placed somewhere between 2015 Labour and Tory. An old analysis suggests that the current "centre-left" government party is at about the same position as the UK Green. So, perhaps we are somewhat more skewed towards the left than the UK, which is also more to the left than the US.

I scrolled all down through the sidebar to find a government/party even close to where I sit and it was a complete no-hoper. I think Ireland's Socialist party was pretty close but no countries as a whole were even left of the midline. I think I'm doomed forever to 'hopeful idealism'.

The questions about child-rearing were interesting. There have been several articles in the US lately saying that the greatest predictor of one's political leanings is parenting style.

Democrats tend to favour compromise, Republicans to like authoritarianism:**