What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

[Berkut]

Because people like to take their wishes for reality.

Flake has basically lived up to his name by simultaneously wanting to appear a decent guy for history books, and an employable Republican for the current times.

Yes, that seems like his whole shtick.

A more charitable interpretation would be that he agrees with Trump on many policy issues, but has contempt for Trump as a person and isn't afraid to speak up on issues on which he disagrees with Trump.

He just voted to confirm someone he knows perjured himself. To the Supreme Court.

There is no charitable interpretation.

[Zanza]

The hyper partisanship of Congress and the nomination of an unfit candidate to the Supreme Court will further erode Americans trust in their institutions. A bad day for the long term health of your government. 

[The Minsky Moment]

Flake is a movement conservative, he is a contemporary of Kavanaugh, who is also a movement conservative. Tribes protect their own.

[garbon]

The hyper partisanship of Congress and the nomination of an unfit candidate to the Supreme Court will further erode Americans trust in their institutions. A bad day for the long term health of your government. 

Agreed.

[garbon]

Because people like to take their wishes for reality.

Flake has basically lived up to his name by simultaneously wanting to appear a decent guy for history books, and an employable Republican for the current times.

Yes, that seems like his whole shtick.

A more charitable interpretation would be that he agrees with Trump on many policy issues, but has contempt for Trump as a person and isn't afraid to speak up on issues on which he disagrees with Trump.

He just voted to confirm someone he knows perjured himself. To the Supreme Court.

There is no charitable interpretation.

I'd say Oex's stance was the charitable one.

[Syt]

[11B4V]

 

[Berkut]

Its not really funny.

Two plus decades of Fox propaganda has convinced less than a third of the country that the majority are basically communists intent on destroying America, who must be opposed at any cost, and by any means necessary.

A couple decades of concerted and coordinated grass roots efforts to gerrymander the fuck out of representation in key areas means that that minority is not going to be almost impossible to get out of power, regardless of what most Americans actually want.

The Dems are incompetent, and the modern Republicans are malevolent. This does not bode well.

[DGuller]

Gaslighting isn't funny, it's devastating and effective.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Yeah, I mean realistically the Democrats need to get a more coherent voice and they need to start being better at campaigning. I don't want to suggest that things are just as simple as opening a history book and pointing to successful Democrats of the past, but if you actually read the way FDR campaigned it was pretty effective. He linked being a Republican with being un American, he liked to refer to them and the moneyed elite as fat capons and other humorous early 20th century insults. Arguably decorum has always been low in politics, but in the past politicians tended to act more like adults and act in a bipartisan manner once in office, the big difference these days to me isn't tone but actual actions and the erosion of norms and the blatant attempts to alter norms and even the laws to specifically advantage one political party.

In a sense Trump's style of campaigning actually echoes older, over the top rhetoric seen in a bygone age. That rhetoric was actually pretty effective back then, and when one party is doing it and the other just kind bumbles around mumbling various aghast reactions it's not surprising which side has dominated the national narrative for a generation.

The dems are never going to be able to set the national narrative if their strongest voice is the one that just gets upset about racism and sexism and calls people bigots. I just don't think that's a message for mass mobilization the way economic populism would be. I'm not actually a fan of economic populism, but the GOP is running so far into the authoritarian rails that if the Dems don't develop techniques for winning elections we could see some really bad stuff in America, like the permanent enshrinement of minoritarian rule.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I'll point out gerrymandering is overrated though--there's been significant studies showing that at the congressional level it hasn't explained any of the recent Republican majorities. I think the last big review found it accounted for like an 8 seat advantage for the Republicans. It's a lot worse when it comes to control of state houses, which affects a lot of things beyond national politics. That being said three of the worst gerrymandered states are Ohio, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, and there's at least two of those three you're seeing that change. Ohio has established a bipartisan districting process for the next round of both state legislative and U.S. congress districting, it was implemented via referendum. Pennsylvania's Supreme Court, interpreting its own state constitution, struck down a particularly partisan gerrymander. If you actually look at the congressional impact, Ohio and Pennsylvania alone were two of the worst states. After them North Carolina and Texas are probably the two worse offenders, Texas is probably the one least likely to get fixed anytime soon.

[The Minsky Moment]

Dems should absolutely be bashing Trump as un-American every time they speak. Play the patriot card against him.  He's an easy target.  Take a page from the GOP and repeat the same talking points en masse over and over

[Admiral Yi]

Dems should absolutely be bashing Trump as un-American every time they speak. Play the patriot card against him.  He's an easy target.  Take a page from the GOP and repeat the same talking points en masse over and over

Who do you expect that to work with?  Nancy Pelosi stands up and says Trump is unpatriotic for not respecting civil liberties and Trump supporters will run to their computer to generate more memes for Syt's sisters to post on Facebook.

[The Minsky Moment]

No he's un-American for sucking up to North Korea and Russia, for repeatedly compromising national security, for cutting corrupt deals to protect his personal business interests, for praising the Nazi flag wavers who murder innocents in the street, for ripping  infants from their mothers and sticking them in fetid cages, for openly admiring dictatorial systems that dispense with elections for office, for showing contempt for the constitution, for conspiring with the cronies to fix the tax code to give him own business a massive tax cuts while ordinary small businesses get none, for paying for those giveaways for imposing a catastrophic burden of debt on American families, for waging war on working Americans, imposing the most fanatical anti-labor Supreme Court justices in a century . . .

etc. - it writes itself

[dps]

Because people like to take their wishes for reality.

Flake has basically lived up to his name by simultaneously wanting to appear a decent guy for history books, and an employable Republican for the current times.

Yes, that seems like his whole shtick.

A more charitable interpretation would be that he agrees with Trump on many policy issues, but has contempt for Trump as a person and isn't afraid to speak up on issues on which he disagrees with Trump.

He just voted to confirm someone he knows perjured himself. To the Supreme Court.

There is no charitable interpretation.

I was talking about his overall behavior  since Trump became President, not the confirmation fight specifically. 

The whole confirmation process has become a disgusting mess.