I wouldn't spend too much time worrying about the number of people voting for him. US politics is very polarised and about 80-85% of voters always vote team red or team blue because they villify the other side. The key bits to look at are the states he needs to carry to win again. Those key states are Wisconsin (my state, and I'll be damn sure to vote against him now that I can vote), Pennsylvania, Michigan and Florida. Trump basically needs all of them to win, and he very only narrowly squeaked them all last time. Pennsylvania in particular is a very tough ask; Republicans are not doing very well in the area at all at the moment. If you look at the recent midterms, they offer an indication as to how the wind is blowing. The House is the best indicator because the Senate seats are not all up for grabs at the same time; this means sometimes all of the races can be in areas that are basically dead certs. The House had a significant swing towards the Democrats. Additionally, local state elections (such as my own state's) saw a movement towards Democratic candidates; we kicked out our Republican governor, for example, along with many others like the attorney general. The other indicator is how many safe Republican seats were almost lost in the midterms. Seats that should never have been in any risk were, in many cases, exceptionally close calls. That's not a good sign for Trump at all. His base might be excited, but you don't win with your base; they only give you a chance to win. You win by attracting the independents. Thus far the signs are that he's driving them away. Most Presidents lose votes in their second campaigns and wafer-thin margins of victory in four states plus the fact he's alienating everyone who isn't a hard right winger should give his campaign serious pause for thought. That said, it's up to the Democrats to capitalise. At the moment they seem more interested in taking lumps out of each other and focusing almost exclusively on identity politics over discussing policies that impact everyone.
Let’s face it, in the 2020 election, he won’t be talking policies etc. He will spend 25% of the campaign making bogus claims about how good a president he is with some wildly inaccurate approval ratings thrown in. Another 25% spewing about ‘fake news’ and the final 50% trashing whoever the Dems pick as his opponent. I just hope the Dems get the right candidate and don’t play dirty and have loads of in-fighting whilst selecting that opponent...that will play right into his hands. If we though Trump was bad when he was trying to achieve the presidency, one wonders how bad he will be trying to cling on to it. One suspects he won’t go quietly, and will still be a stain even if he loses. But if he does, a criminal investigation should be ordered by his successor immediately.
Many people simply view politics as a team sport and don't believe the negative press they hear about their candidate. You vote for your team and you back them to the hilt. It's not silly so much as natural human behavior. There are plenty of people in the UK who always vote for one party or the other. The difference is that our system has credible spoiler parties keeping the others in check. The US doesn't...hence it becomes a question of accept the hard right wing candidate, warts and all, or the centre-right candidate, warts and all. Plenty of voters didn't like Trump, but voted for him regardless because the'd rather he be in power supporting gun rights, pro-life legislation, conservative Supreme Court appointments, etc. than see a Democrat in power who they believe will erode those agendas. Trump is, unfortunately, a symptom of a broken two-party system where both sides have become afraid of the other to the point of being willing to vote for an absolute lunatic over the "devil" on the other side.
Based on existing rumours and information already out there, I'm fairly certain he'll be hit with indictments the moment he's out of office. We know he's been named as an anonymous co-conspirator on one criminal case already.
I nearly crashed my bike listening to this on the radio - it's even better when you see James O'Brien's face... https://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/james-obrien/trump-caller-hilariously-falls-apart-questions/
Oh good lord, what a car crash. "Alexandria Occasional-Cortex" had me in stitches. What an absolute melt.
Bloke doesn't even know what socialism is and is labeling the four women socialists (which literally none of them are; they've espoused exactly zero socialist policies).
Trumps a joke but his policy on asylum seekers not being able to select their country of asylum is actually genius if you think long and hard about it
How Cuban American Communities Are Reacting To Trump's Comments Cuban Americans are among President Trump's most reliable supporters and helped him win Florida. A sampling of Cuban American voters in Miami finds most untroubled by his recent racist comments. https://www.npr.org/2019/07/17/7428...ium=RSS&utm_campaign=national&t=1563396837255
Trump crowd go full Nuremberg with chants of ‘send her back’ directed at Muslim congresswoman. https://news.sky.com/story/send-her-back-trump-fires-up-crowd-with-attacks-on-the-squad-11765380
And we have this piece of dirt a state visit a few weeks ago. Johnson will be crawling to him. Well done UK.
Trump is playing this pretty well. It's disgusting and unbecoming of his office and pretty un-American. And yet it's not harming his ratings. I don't think the Democrats can win by taking him on on this agenda and need to avoid being sucked into it. Trump knows he'll lose handsomely if the Dems successfully stake out the middle ground and so he needs to portray them as hard left socialists. The more times he can get their household names on the record supporting their fringe, the more he can lie about the reasons why. Whether he goes next year or in 2024, his legacy is going to be a toxic mess that his successors will be cleaning up for half a century.
I think that’s what Hilary thought. Appear moderate, stateswoman like etc. Not quite enough. It allows Trump to land multiple blows unchallenged. They need to destroy his character and make it synonymous with rapist and racist.
I don't think that's what Hillary did though. She called his supporters 'deplorables' and went after Trump's character, suitability and past exploits on loads of fronts. Ultimately she lost because she was so disliked on her own side and amongst independents. However, Trump cleverly used the deplorables link to imply every criticism of him was a criticism of his base, thereby energising them too. He'd happily do the same again and in fact currently is. He's saying the criticism of his comments is an attack on them and their values and they're buying it.
Yes, which is why they need to target those criticisms carefully. Make them appeal to the floaters who won’t want racist/rapist associations. But he’s not Obi Wan Kenobe. He can be hit without making him grow stronger.
Yeah, but they need to do that through the media (mainstream and social) and not have their candidates going head to head with him. If you have a democrat throwing dirt, it won't stick. Everyone knows all the bad stuff about Trump, but they ignore it, because he's created a vision of old times America, with blue collar jobs and hitting big on the international stage. People won't care if he's raped a teenager or something, but they'll care if his opponent has a vague, unsubstantiated claim about touching a knee in a taxi or something. The bar is set very low for his behaviour. I think they need to focus on destroying the myth of his successful presidency. Hasn't built a wall, hasn't made any real changes to the economy, rode the success of the platform laid down by Obama etc. People support Trump despite knowing he's a terrible man, because they believe it's worth it if it makes America prosperous and strong. If you can take that away from him, he's just a ****.
She also abandoned the progressive section of the Democratic party in favour of appealing to moderate Republicans - Chuck Schumer said for every blue collar voter they lose, they'll gain 3 from the suburbs. She chose Democratic Sentator Tim Kaine as her running mate who's to the right of her and was a slap in the face to the progressives/independents. Add to this that she didn't bother to campaign in Michigan, Wisconsin & Pennsylvania because she thought she had them in the bag - ultimately those Rust Belt states decided the election and went to Trump. The war between Clinton and Sanders supporters was quite intense with Clinton supporters claiming Sanders supporters cost her the election - however the stats don't back that up. More Sanders supporters held their nose and voted for Clinton than Clinton supporters voted for Obama in 2008. Clinton was a horrible candidate and only withdrew and endorsed Obama in 2008 in return for a top job in his administration and the nomination in 2016. Sanders was the fly in the ointment coming from 60 points behind in the polls and being cheated out of the nomination as all the superdelegates declared for Clinton before the Democratic primary had begun. All the polls had Sanders beating Trump comfortably, but the queen had already been annointed.
Spot on. He's trying desperately to blame the Democrats in the House for his failure to achieve anything legislatively. But most sensible people will know the Republicans were in complete charge for 2 years (and did nearly nothing of any note except a tax law which massively inflated the deficit) and now Mitch McConnell is proudly boasting of holding everything up in the Senate. That's the winning message. Wasting time and energy calling a spade a spade to a load of people who've long since decided they don't care is pointless.
This really is one of the key points. She ignored the Midwest firewall states and spent time campaigning in TEXAS, of all places. Sure, Texas is slowly turning blue, but there was no hope of winning it in 2016. The things that cost her the election were fairly simple when it came down to it: 1. Decades of mud-slinging and misinformation from the Republicans made her the most hated long term politician in America. The Republicans saw her run coming for ages and preemptively tarnished her. 2. The re-opening of email inquiry, although ultimately amounting to nothing of note, made her look guilty in the critical weeks right before the election. People will generally give a pass the first time something hits the news, but the second time it has a lasting impact. By the time Comey cleared her, it was too late. 3. The Benghazi hearings were a travesty and the dictionary definition of "witch hunt", but after EIGHT hearings, despite finding nothing, she was successfully damaged in the eyes of public opinion. 4. She's completely non-personable and comes across as uncaring and aloof in public. Trump pretended to give a **** about people who feel (accurately) that they have been ignored for successive election cycles. They plumped for him because they were desperate for relief. Clinton just labeled them as "deplorables". That's a straight up vote loser. Those industries that Trump promised to save for these desperate people, by the way? Going backwards, with no small thanks to his trade war. There are a host of other reasons, but fix any of the above (particularly the lack of Midwest campaigning, point 1, or point 2) and she'd have won. The Democratic party's major problem right now is it's focused on identity politics. While that appeals to minorities and the very progressive end of the party, it doesn't attract the election winning independent vote block who are more concerned about policy. I posted this joke a while back, but I'm going to repeat it because while it's amusing, it also sums the whole situation up in a nutshell: Republicans: 12 people should have all the money. Everyone else can die. Democrats: 6 of those 12 should be women and minorities. There's nothing wrong with addressing inequality (indeed, it's the right thing to do), but if you focus on that and that only for all of your appeals to the electorate you're not going to attract the votes you need to win. It's hard for the blue collar voter in Wisconsin or Michigan to feel bad about the black guy in Mississippi when they can't get a job themselves due to the decline in manufacturing.
Trump has now disowned the ‘send her back’ chants from his rally yesterday. Not because he thinks it’s a step too far or the optics aren’t good. But simply because he knows he can now play both tunes publicly and has on the record material to back him up.
Here’s how one US commentator saw it. https://twitter.com/politvidchannel/status/1152622591154114561?s=21
Mueller testifying to Congress at the moment. He has already explicitly stated the only reason Trump is not already indicted is down to the DOJ policy on not indicting sitting Presidents, in response to questioning by Ted Lieu. Furthermore, Buck (Republican) got Mueller to explicitly state he has enough evidence to indict Trump once he leaves office. The Special Counsel has just confirmed under oath that he believes Trump committed a crime, and that he has enough evidence to indict.
Unfortunately with McConnel controlling the Senate, the Republicans won't indict and I'm not convinced Pelosi will either.
The Dems need to impeach regardless. If the Senate runs partisan defense then you can't do anything about that, but the fact of the matter is there is a clear message there from Mueller today: "Trump did the crime and I have the evidence to prove it." THAT is the message the Dems need to be pounding on the drums about. If the Republicans want to dismiss sworn testimony then make sure the voting public know that, and remind them in every single debate with Trump up to election day that he's an unindicted criminal that his own party refuses to punish. It's a powerful, simple message that's pretty much impossible to refute at this point. Mueller was explicit. There's no room for interpretation. Obvious it won't change the mind of any Trumpkins, but those aren't the people you're courting. You're after the independents and you're after the Republicans who aren't comfortable with Trump.
And so the latest cause celebre for Trump comes to the fore: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-49090643 Straws.
Paper straws are crap to use, no one is claiming otherwise. The point Trump and his braindead coterie seem to be missing is that plastic straws (and single use plastics in general) are worse in every way except how well they work to suck up your drink. The problem with them isn't that they're "f**k the environment", it's that they have the attitude of "LOLZ, this doesn't cause a problem". They deny objective realities to suit their own convenience. Also, note Devin Nunes making an embarrassment of himself again. "Socialism in California"....what exactly does favouring biodegradable straws have to do with socialism? He's an absolute melt.
Loving the fact that Trump spoke in front of a fake Presidential Seal at an event for young Republicans: - The traditional bald eagle was replaced with a double-headed one, inspired by the Russian coat of arms, and the arrows and olive branch in its talons were swapped for golf clubs and a wad of cash. The motto “E Pluribus Unum,” Latin for “Out of Many, One,” was replaced with “45 Es un Títere,” Spanish for “45 Is a Puppet.” And the shield across the eagle’s chest was changed to include several instances of the hammer and sickle. Very few global news stories associated with Politics make me smile these days, so thank you to Mr. Leazott, who designed the Seal, and thank you to which ever member of Trump's staff - now an ex member - who, ahem, "accidentally" put the wrong Seal up.
I'd like to say this is eye-opening. But it's not... https://twitter.com/yashar/status/1155128232322187265?s=20
