Trump cheats at golf - the ONE and ONLY politics thread

When picking between two groups, pick the ones that vote reliably.

The left that felt too uninspired to show up is about to find out they sealed their own irrelevancy

 

The best way for rates to go down is if you have more healthy people in the pool. I think the ACA helped more blue collar people than it hurt.

 

Because the ethos of the post-Contract With America relationship with government is that any government spending that does not benefit me or my family constitutes waste. So, I suspect they wanted a little more elbow room at the trough compared to the real-or-perceived notion that, during the Obama years, they were no longer at the front of the line.

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For what it's worth, I think a significant portion of the "hysteria" is that Donald Trump is not your garden-variety Republican. He was sold by many commentators (hell, a ton of newspaper editorial pages) as something between an unrepentant bigot and an existential threat to the American experiment. I don't think the election of Mitt Romney in his place would inspire a comparable level of kvetching.

And as for gay rights and minorities and national unity, I don't think there's a lot of evidence to believe that the GOP (or any party these days) is going to rein itself in when given the keys to government. I mean, since Gingrich and extending through Scott Walker and yes, Barack Obama, the concept of "elections have consequences," and more specifically, I won, so I don't have to play nice with (or even include) the minority party, isn't just going to go away to make some kids and brown people happy. In fact, given President-elect Trump's temperment, it's even less infinitesimally likely. I can see Trump backing down on some of the social stuff if his approval rating tanks (and by that, I mean like less than 25%), but even then, I don't see that stopping the will of Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell et al, from scrapping their Brownback/Ayn Rand/Grover Norquist drown-government-in-the-bathtub agenda.

That said, the die is cast. Time to ride it out.

 

The conclusion that they are threatened psychologically by a multi-racial society is inescapable. I mean, Trump could deport every undocumented immigrant in the US and nothing will happen to Scranton, Pa. except it'll get poorer. Trump voters' children will still be looking to get the hell out if they can.
The two states that switched the most from Obama to Trump were two he never carried -- North Dakota and West Virginia. Each have negligible minority populations. And each was most receptive to Trump's message. It's about social psychology, not economics.

 

That was the theory.

It's getting more impossible by the day to argue that's really what happened.

 

As Obamacare proved, people say they want change (unpopularity of health care system was very high before it as well) but when confronted by it, they resist. Trump's not on the ballot in 2018, but Republican Senators and Congresspeople are. Republicans had total control of government in 2005, and Social Security privatization never even made it to the floor.

 

He would have inspired more than you think, though, because of who he would have beaten.

 

It's like all our moms told us. Pick up your toys or I'll throw them away.

 

Good point. I would follow up with a belief that I don't think the level of civic anger at the results of the election would be dramatically different had Clinton won, but because of the nature of Democrats' support, they just happen to be closer together.

 

Note that Trump tweeted the exact opposite sentiment this morning. I know he's President-elect and they can't take the phone away, but maybe his trusted aides could get him to go to bed earlier.

 

Interesting.