What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

[Valmy]

People who are voting for Trump.

[garbon]

People who are voting for Trump.

Okay but then he added another qualifier that they think things will be fine under Dems.

[Habbaku]

Does anyone here think things will be "fine" if the Dems win? I'm only concerned with stanching the bleeding. We can work on things being "fine" after that.

[Valmy]

People who are voting for Trump.

Okay but then he added another qualifier that they think things will be fine under Dems.

There are many people who would be fine if the Dems take power who are complacently willing to vote for Trump as well.

I don't think many of Trump's opponents are under the impression the damage he has done will be rolled back. I mean the pattern for over a century is no matter how much the new President disliked his predecessor he tends to maintain anything they have done to empower the office (the possible exception being Ford).

[Sheilbh]

I also think that's kind of implicit in Biden's candidacy - there will be a return to normalcy.

[garbon]

People who are voting for Trump.

Okay but then he added another qualifier that they think things will be fine under Dems.

There are many people who would be fine if the Dems take power who are complacently willing to vote for Trump as well.

Okay. Then one more round, will these hypothetical individuals care about said article in The Atlantic?

Or really my wider point, it seemed like a weird way to post that article given the posters we have here on Languish.

[garbon]

I also think that's kind of implicit in Biden's candidacy - there will be a return to normalcy.

I like how its being spun as any attempt to take politics back to a saner place is doomed and therefore not a worthy goal / positioned as some pie in the sky thing that as soon as we get a standard Dem everything is fine again.

Well except that I don't like it all.

[Valmy]

I also think that's kind of implicit in Biden's candidacy - there will be a return to normalcy.

Or an attempt to.

Or really my wider point, it seemed like a weird way to post that article given the posters we have here on Languish.

Yeah I agree. I haven't heard anybody on Languish thinking that removing him from office is the only step.

Even if we manage to win in November, we probably would need to hold the Presidency for an extended period of time to really undo everything (and of course the Dems wouldn't undo it, we would change it to suite whatever we want).

[DGuller]

One thing that shocked me here on Languish is lack of support for pragmatism.  Yang? Sanders? You're choosing the country's top executive, you're not making a statement.  If we're that practical here, then it's not looking good for the country.  We need to make politics a little more boring again, it's not a bad thing to leave some things to elites.

[Valmy]

One thing that shocked me here on Languish is lack of support for pragmatism.  Yang? Sanders? You're choosing the country's top executive, you're not making a statement.  If we're that practical here, then it's not looking good for the country.  We need to make politics a little more boring again, it's not a bad thing to leave some things to elites.

Indeed it is not, but I have my doubts that time is now. But I have been saying that since 2016. The people have lost all faith in the elites after the Iraq War and the Financial Crisis. They voted for Obama when they thought he was going to be radical. We will need somebody who at least, like Obama, appears to be radical. Every damn candidate is running is saying things like "the system is broken" "Washington has failed" blah blah up and down the ballot because they know this is what people think, they are not saying "we are doing great, time to stay the course."

Yang was a thoughtful and intelligent candidate with ideas that would change things without going too far. Sanders is principled even if I think he is going too far in many areas. I just don't see people showing up in droves for Biden, but hey if he gets the nomination then I hope I am wrong. The people hate the elites and hate their corruption, Biden is compromised enough that it might be a problem.

[Barrister]

Indeed it is not, but I have my doubts that time is now. But I have been saying that since 2016. The people have lost all faith in the elites after the Iraq War and the Financial Crisis. They voted for Obama when they thought he was going to be radical. We will need somebody who at least, like Obama, appears to be radical. Every damn candidate is running is saying things like "the system is broken" "Washington has failed" blah blah up and down the ballot because they know this is what people think, they are not saying "we are doing great, time to stay the course."

Yang was a thoughtful and intelligent candidate with ideas that would change things without going too far. Sanders is principled even if I think he is going too far in many areas. I just don't see people showing up in droves for Biden, but hey if he gets the nomination then I hope I am wrong. The people hate the elites and hate their corruption, Biden is compromised enough that it might be a problem.

Sanders is just as corrupt as Biden is (which is to say, kinnd-of, but not close to the degree Trump is).

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/03/bernie-sanders-joe-biden-enriched-their-families/607159/

I don't see Sanders as principled.  His promises are no more realistic or thought through than Trump's wall (which Mexico will pay for).  He's just a left-wing crank.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah, I never got the Yang thing.

With pragmatism I don't entirely disagree, but in my view pragmatism has to start with winning and I'm not convinced the "pragmatic" candidates are best placed to win. I think Bloomberg and Biden are the easiest for Trump to attack and drag down. I always think about that large group who disliked Trump and Clinton - and then overwhelmingly voted form Trump. And I think all politics is to an extent about statements and identity, so there is something about choosing the "pragmatic" candidate.

Of the current candidates I think Sanders and Warren have a better chance of beating him because they are less easy to be pegged as corrupt and better placed to draw a clear division between them and Trump - I think that was a key issue for Clinton and I think it's a huge risk for Biden and Bloomberg. From the wider field I think Klobuchar and Harris would have been very strong candidates - sadly America seems to be a bit of a gerentocracy at the minute shuffling power between seventy-somethings.

But on the wider issue I don't know what's pragmatic now.

There's a possibility politics isn't boring anymore because we got bored of it (the Fukuyama risk). But I also think it could be because of structural issues that weren't being properly addressed. I don't have an issue with populism as a style of politics, but I think it emerges as a symptom of failures within the political system. Populism isn't the cause of the decay in my view, it's a warning sign (that went unaddressed for a long time).

Or it could be that we're in a transition period so we don't know what pragmatic looks like anymore - the pragmatic politics of the 90s are profoundly different than the pragmatic politics of the 70s, for example. Part of me wonders if technology, the way we do politics, globalisation - all unleashed in the 90s - have changed things so much that the pragmatic politics we all came up with don't work anymore. I think a lot about that Gramsci quote at the minute: "the crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear."

As I say I'm not sure what it is - but I don't know what is pragmatic right now. I had this row a lot with Corbynites over here when I was trying to encourage people to back Owen Smith in 2016 or any other candidate in 2015. Even though I thought Corbyn would be a disaster for Labour politically and morally, I couldn't really say I thought any of the alternatives, who all came up in the Blair-Brown school of politics, would do better politically or win (any of them would have avoided the anti-semitism crisis).

[Valmy]

Sanders is just as corrupt as Biden is (which is to say, kinnd-of, but not close to the degree Trump is).

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/03/bernie-sanders-joe-biden-enriched-their-families/607159/

I don't see Sanders as principled.  His promises are no more realistic or thought through than Trump's wall (which Mexico will pay for).  He's just a left-wing crank.

Well naturally I wish the anti-establishment candidate who gets people energized was not a left-wing crank but here we are. I have to hope his lifetime of public service at least has given him some pragmatism in running things should he win.

[Valmy]

Yeah, I never got the Yang thing.

If he ever becomes relevent again I would be happy to discuss it further

But I guess here is the short version: It is obvious to me that my countrymen (or at least a critical mass of them) want big changes and hate the current elites. That being the case candidates who are not the current elites and/or want big changes are preferable. Which of those people would be least objectionable and whose vision do you want? That was my line of thinking there.

The very fact that guys like Sanders and Trump get so much traction is indicative it is time to find a new center.

[Barrister]

I have to hope his lifetime of public service at least has given him some pragmatism in running things should he win.

Well apparently he could be pragmatic back when he was mayor of Burlington (in between honeymooning in the USSR and praising the Sandinistas in Nicaragua).  But that was 30 years ago.  Since coming to Congress he's been mostly unconcerned with being pragmatic.