Dems Need To Learn From the UK Election to UNITE under one message: GET HIM OUT!

[Innula Zenovka]

How is the most unpopular and divisive president on his way to a second term?

Donald Trump has been campaigning since his inauguration with a lethal blend of rollicking rallies and rigorous data-gathering

www.theguardian.com

For millions of people outside America, the notion of Trump’s re-election might seem hard to believe. How could one of the most unpopular and divisive presidents in the country’s history, impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors and reeling from one self-inflicted crisis to another, possibly win the White House again?

Yet many here in the US have a gut feeling that is precisely what will happen.

“The world looks at us and says, ‘How can the United States re-elect this guy?’” said Wendy Schiller, a political science professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. “But when you’re the average voter and you’ve been through six to eight years of recession and then you’ve finally got a good economy, that’s a difficult barrier for Democrats to break through.”

 

[Ishina]

Trump will win because the Dems will pick the wrong candidate instead of Bernie Sanders.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Trump will win because the Dems will pick the wrong candidate instead of Bernie Sanders.

In the event that Bernie Sanders is the Democratic candidate and, nevertheless, Trump somehow manages to win, would you conclude that Sanders must have been the wrong candidate, too, or that there was some other reason for Trump's victory (voter suppression, gerrymandering, Electoral College, Russian bots spreading targeted lies on Facebook, lies on Fox News, whatever)?

And if you are willing to concede the possibility that Trump might beat Sanders because of one of these factors, would you also entertain the possibility that similar underhand means might also contribute to his victory over another Democrat who isn't Bernie Sanders?

And if you are willing to entertain that possibility, and a Democrat other than Sanders is defeated by Trump, how confident are you that you'll be able to tell the difference between an election that Sanders would have won despite gerrymandering, the Electoral College, Facebook and one that not even Sanders could have won in face of such factors?

 

[Ishina]

In the event that Bernie Sanders is the Democratic candidate and, nevertheless, Trump somehow manages to win, I will abandon all my material belongings and run naked through the streets screaming "I WAS WRONG, INNULA!" on my one way journey to the nearest convent.

 

[Free]

Oh, something to look forward to...

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

 

[Anya Ristow]

How is the most unpopular and divisive president on his way to a second term?

Donald Trump has been campaigning since his inauguration with a lethal blend of rollicking rallies and rigorous data-gathering

www.theguardian.com

Trump is enjoying steady growth, stock market records and the lowest unemployment for half a century. Some 56% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the economy

56% of Americans are idiots.

We need to stop measuring the economy according to how the stock market is doing, how high corporate profits are, and how many people are trapped in jobs without benefits.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Nah it doesn't work that way. Republicans in large part seem to be comfortable (if not eager) with fascism but that doesn't mean everything Republicans touch turns into fascism, like some kind of Nazi Midas. Obamacare, as originally passed, was created via a bipartisan process and while it wasn't the single-payer system we need and deserve, it was a step in the right direction compared to what existed before it and also was 0% fascist.

The GOP is slowly destroying it now because they are in power and there is no bipartisan process to stop them, and that is the important part. Bernie Sanders may be a lot of people's perfect Socialist Superstar, but unless Dems absolutely sweep Congress then he's not going to be able to do most of the big important things he promises; none of the Dems candidates will. The president cannot impose Medicare-for-All; Congress has to do that. He can't blanket forgive all student loan debt; only Congress can do that. If the Dem's don't completely sweep Congress in November that means there's two things that can happen: 1) absolutely no progress of any kind at all, or 2) settling for imperfect steps-in-the-right-direction that are the result of compromise "with the fascists", like Obamacare, that will at least improve the current situation for people UNTIL such time as the DNC can get a current-Trump/GOP-level of control of the executive and legislature, and then of course they can do whatever they want.

The "I want it ALL right now or I f***ing quit" philosophy is childish and short-sighted.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Republicans in large part seem to be comfortable (if not eager) with fascism but that doesn't mean everything Republicans touch turns into fascism, like some kind of Nazi Midas

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Yeah, you deserve some better faith response.

Obamacare, as originally passed, was created via a bipartisan process and while it wasn't the single-payer system we need and deserve, it was a step in the right direction compared to what existed before it and also was 0% fascist.

That was ten years ago and a lot of shit happens on the fascism time scale. Since then you've had a senate who wouldn't do their job to save up as many judicial appointments as possible, then rammed through any ideologue they could find up to and including Kavanaugh. These motherfuckers today are a whole new league of bold, and they're sitting there with a football promising they won't yank it away. Again.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Yeah but like I said - that all happened because the GOP won complete control of Congress. That meant they didn't have to compromise anymore. If they did, none of those things would have happened.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Admittedly I'm operating under a set of assumptions with this New Right.

1. IGMFY (I Got Mine; Fuck You).
2. Cleek's Law (Today's 'conservatism' is the opposite of what liberals want today, updated daily).
3. It's Always Projection.
4. The Object of Power Is Power.

I'm also worried about what's going on today:
-Aforementioned judicial stacking
-Gerrymandering, and SCOTUS even fucking upholding Pennsylvania's heap of bullshit for the time being.

I'm under the belief that these clowns are making their big play, right now for one party rule for as long as they can manage it until the guillotines come out.

 

[danielravennest]

Yeah but like I said - that all happened because the GOP won complete control of Congress. That meant they didn't have to compromise anymore. If they did, none of those things would have happened.

That's why the goal of the Democratic Party in Georgia is to flip at least one of the Senate seats, as part of flipping the Senate as a whole. Due to one of our senators retiring, both seats are up for election this fall. If we can concentrate our efforts on the weaker candidate, we have a chance to win one of them.

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

How is the most unpopular and divisive president on his way to a second term?

Donald Trump has been campaigning since his inauguration with a lethal blend of rollicking rallies and rigorous data-gathering

www.theguardian.com

“But when you’re the average voter and you’ve been through six to eight years of recession and then you’ve finally got a good economy, that’s a difficult barrier for Democrats to break through.”

That's the crux of it right there. The average voter doesn't realize that the health of the economy lags inputs like policy by a few years, and thus don't realize that our current good economy was due to Obama's efforts. I've had frequent discussions with some people who insist Trump grew the economy without acknowledging Obama's efforts.

Unfortunately, if we do manage to get rid of Trump this November, it will be around the time the economy will start reacting to Trump's ham-fisted policies, and the new president will get blamed for the crash, and Trump will remain the hero.

 

[Eunoli]

What is happening this week in the senate will not only give tacit approval to Trump's attempts to use foreign government resources to win the election, it will announce to them that its open season, Trump is cheating - and if you want to do business with the US, you better get on board. There is very little chance that we won't see rampant fraud and interference next year - to make 2016 look pale in comparison.

There's very little chance any candidate can win against Trump in these conditions - and if they do? I think there's very little chance Trump will vacate the office either - and possibly little chance that those senators that lose their seats will vacate either. I really hope I'm wrong.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

On the subject of fascism, I had several times seen extracts from what's become quite a famous essay by the author Umberto Eco on Ur-Fascism, but I've recently taken out a trial subscription to the New York Review of Books, who first published the essay in 1995, and yesterday I thought to read the whole thing.

Here it is, via Evernote because of the NYRB paywall

Ur-Fascism | by Umberto Eco | The New York Review of Books

The New York Review of Books In 1942, at the age of ten, I received the First Provincial Award of Ludi Juveniles (a voluntary, compulsory competition for young Italian Fascists—that is, for every youn...

www.evernote.com

 

[Kara Spengler]

I *want* the Dem candidates to fight among themselves. It will test their political instincts and the systems they have created to protect and project themselves. Let there be no stupid surprises or statements coming from the Dem candidate in the general election. Like a bored chimp, Trump knows how to fling shit - and which shit his voters will happily swallow in support of whatever fairytales they tell themselves. IMO, the Dem must win or the US will continue its slide toward ruin, so I want whoever emerges to have been extensively stress tested,

Yeah, WHOEVER is the D nominee donnie will give them a nickname, make up some stupid 'scandal' from their past (it does not even have to be plausible), and declare them a traitor /whatever. I want the Ds to dig in their closets to find the real stuff and take care of that now because ppl will eat up his random stuff anyway.

 

[Kara Spengler]

I disagree about this. I think that if Bernie and Hilary hadn't gone at each other so hard, the Bernie contingent might have come out to vote for her in the key states - and in a place like Michigan that might've pushed her over the edge.

People forget but 2016 was NOTHING like the dirty tricks she pulled in 2012. Now she is trying to introduce them in the 2020 race. The D party should kick her out.

 

[Kara Spengler]

So, one of the offices for the company my spouse works for tried the open office plan thing. Guess what? They got rid of the idea...

Please say that is an option. When my company moved we went to a mostly open floor plan. Only the people who got to keep their offices like it. What are you supposed to do when you get a call, book a conference room while your phone rings?