Trump cheats at golf - the ONE and ONLY politics thread

There's always another election coming up, you know.

 

He won and winners get to do whatever they want. That is the whole point of being a winner.

Pretending Trump is going to become a centrist pragmatist is the bargaining stage

 

They don't need to get the most votes to win so why would they care?

 

Full disclosure: About this time last year, I half expected, on this day, to be watching Ted Cruz become president.

I'm still happy we didn't get him. Sad overall. But happy that, at the very least, the devil we know is in office, and not some wicked, smarmy fuck who puts America in the hurt locker and calls it a triumph while he smiles. Like Cruz. Or Ryan.

Trump's who we deserve. It right where we are as a nation. He's a liar, he's an asshole, he's a bloviator, but we want that. We've settled on them all being devils, so we'll take the one who tells us he is one. Seems more honest that way.

Do I think it'll be bad? Yeah, probably. But - and I'm not trying to be lame here - I'm tough. I'm not a pollyanna, I'm not some liberal who buys into every weepy trigger warning that comes down the block, I've learned to fight a little bit for my own peace and corner of the earth, and, it comes to beating back some BS at a local level, I'll be there. That's what loving America is - at least to me. It's not some song, or a flag, or a weepy notion of how the world works. It's toughness and pragmatism and showing up, like grownups.

The truth is this: A lot of Democrats stayed home yesterday, either because they thought Trump was for sure going to lose or because they wanted to make some moral statement about Clinton - probably because they were sure Trump was going to lose. In key states, Trump voters - maybe for the first time in many years - dragged their ass there, enthusiastically, and gave their guy a shot.

Life so often boils down to showing up.

The Democrats were apparently too busy, or too high-minded, to care. Or those appalled young millennial Christians couldn't see the difference between a candidate who could plunge us into some serious shit overseas, and one that probably wouldn't.

And, in that sense, it was a microcosm loss. The Democrats have long fucked up the implementation of ideas. Healthcare rollout? Fucked that up. No Child Left Behind - a partisan thing - fucked that up. Passing any kind of meaningful gun laws. Fucked that up. Syria. Fucked that up.

Democrats want pats on the back for being better people who then return to their tablets and fitbits and Netflix and let somebody figure out how to do shit, because the "how" takes more risk - of compromise, of being uncool, of having to kick people in the ass to get things done - than Democrats tend to be willing to embrace.

Democrats have largely punted on local races - all over America. They don't give a fuck. They don't want to control a city council or a school board or a statehouse. They let the GOP have those - and then complain on social media about getting fucked (and they do) when states like Kansas starve their own governments and Wisconsin guts its excellent flagship university. They talk about being "woke" to black Americans while wait times for social services skyrocket in some states because of years of shitty neglect.

They have fidelity to words. How things are framed. Perspectives. Worldviews. They just want to be heard and to hear.

But they don't do shit.

And it's created this bubble of good thinking and little doing. A bubble of "free tuition for everyone!" and "go stop a tyrant from being president, meh, I dunno, isn't he supposed to lose?"

They're taking it hard today. They should. They need to. Clinton was, for the many faults, a genuine doer, an old guard type, a busybody, an irritant, a know-it-all, a wonk. She was done in by her words. Her own party didn't like the words enough.

If the Democratic Party hadn't spent years - years! - getting its ass kicked locally - underlining its total disinterest in local politics - you could write it off as Clinton's weakness. But it's not. Not really. It's the party's voters weakness.

They love the idea of green grass. But they're not tending to the yard.

 

Yeah nearly. JFK very nearly did also.

 

I can't compete with your top flight piece, Alma. Best I've read all day on any site. Thank you.

Think of the transformation from 2004 to 2016. A decent bloc of the Trump voters probably voted for John Kerry, especially those in unions or manufacturing.

While Obama racked up huge margins with the iPhone/selfie crowd in 2008/2012, those other votes felt more and more distant from the Democrats.

Now in 2016, with Clinton - who is the Nixon to Obama's Eisenhower - the iPhone/selfie voters stayed home (look at Madison and Milwaukee -- Clinton's margins far lower than 2012) and the 2004 manufacturing blog had long left the Democrats.

The Dems can fix this, like the Republicans did in 2009. They just need to be honest about what they want to be.

 

There's a lot of fair comment in that post, Alma, and a lot of insight. In my impeccably liberal Democratic town, I often marvel that races for selectman and school committee, bodies that have a much more direct influence on how much tax I pay each year than the federal government, get turnout rates of about 15 percent in a big year.

 

Kind of stunned to hear there are still paper ballots. But guess if it was all electronic it would be easier for Putin to influence the election.

 

The non-voters feel if they don't like who either of the nominees are, they're just not going to vote.

 

I don't think he'll ever be pragmatic. But if he comes off as a vindictive prick, it won't help him. You can't just say "we have the votes so fuck you." The apathetic voters who let you win get up and say "fuck you right back." Reagan, more popular than Trump will ever be, took a couple of significant midterm election beatings himself.

 

He has been a vindictive prick every step of the way and it just helped him win

 

That was spectacular in its eloquence and accuracy.