Election 16: Donald Trumps wins Presidency. God Help us all!

[s0crates]

I also don't believe he will separate Democrats from the table like Obama and both the House and Senate did with Republicans when first elected (I think that was a huge mistake). All we heard was basically we don't care what they think because we won. Had Obama truly reached across the table and worked with the republicans (as Bill Clinton did) I could envision this country in a far better place than it is today.

The government is at a standstill and will be unless a Republican is elected

You're saying that Obama wouldn't work with the GOP? This is a strange claim, a far cry from my understanding of the situation. It seems to me that the GOP wouldn't work with him, not the other way around.

Most of what I read suggests that Obama tried to be a compromiser, and that mistake prevented him from advancing his agenda. Over the past 7-8 years, the GOP has earned a reputation for being obstructionists, the party of "no," shutting down the government, etc. Do you disagree?

Frankly your post seems like nonsense to me. Where do you get this stuff?

[chipwhich]

Bye Bye Bernie, we barely got to know ya....it's her turn.

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ralph-nader/hillarys-corporate-democr_b_9116450.html

 

Before announcing for President in the Democratic Primaries, Bernie Sanders told the people he would not run as an Independent and be like Nader -- invoking the politically-bigoted words "being a spoiler." Well, the spoiled corporate Democrats in Congress and their consultants are mounting a "stop Bernie campaign." They believe he'll "spoil" their election prospects.

 

Sorry Bernie, because anybody who challenges the positions of the corporatist, militaristic, Wall Street-funded Democrats, led by Hillary Clinton, in the House and Senate -- is by their twisted definition, a "spoiler." It doesn't matter how many of Bernie's positions are representative of what a majority of the American people want for their country.

 

What comes around goes around. Despite running a clean campaign, funded by small donors averaging $27, with no scandals in his past and with consistency throughout his decades of standing up for the working and unemployed people of this country, Sanders is about to be Hillaried. Her Capitol Hill cronies have dispatched Congressional teams to Iowa.

 

The shunning of Bernie Sanders is underway. Did you see him standing alone during the crowded State of the Union gathering?

 

More at link....

[s0crates]

I like the link chip, but I'm not counting Bernie out yet. We knew going in that he would be swimming against the current. Yes the MSM, big money, and DNC are all fighting against him, but this is no surprise. He represents the people, and so he is a threat to the establishment.

But Bernie does have a couple arrows in his own quiver: he tells the truth, and he speaks for the people.

[Renegade7]

I'm more of a Washington Post person, but I agree there have been several influential conservatives if not out right hoping for Trump's demise openly writing piece after piece pushing for it. From an outside looking in, I have a hard time believing that the news is simply covering his campaign because that's their job.

The man is always on television, like people are waiting for the next crazy thing he's going to say, and giving the attention he desires and exposure he needs to reach people that don't normally follow politics (which feels like where a lot of his base is coming from). Nobody wants him to President and feel he's incredible decisive proposing some of his policies even if he doesn't get elected, yet he's still getting interviews on Meet the Press?

They call him a monster, yet they keep feeding him.

[Kilmer17]

You're saying that Obama wouldn't work with the GOP? This is a strange claim, a far cry from my understanding of the situation. It seems to me that the GOP wouldn't work with him, not the other way around.

Most of what I read suggests that Obama tried to be a compromiser, and that mistake prevented him from advancing his agenda. Over the past 7-8 years, the GOP has earned a reputation for being obstructionists, the party of "no," shutting down the government, etc. Do you disagree?

Frankly your post seems like nonsense to me. Where do you get this stuff?

When the next GOP POTUS introduces legislation to repeal Obamacare, outlaw gay marriage and overturn Roe, should the Dems in congress try to compromise? Or should they oppose it?

Obama didn't try to work with the GOP. He tried to get them to agree to things they absolutely oppose and disagree with. That's not compromise.

[s0crates]

When the next GOP POTUS introduces legislation to repeal Obamacare, outlaw gay marriage and overturn Roe, should the Dems in congress try to compromise? Or should they oppose it?

Obama didn't try to work with the GOP. He tried to get them to agree to things they absolutely oppose and disagree with. That's not compromise.

Your point that the GOP could never accept Obama's agenda is well taken, although it just reinforces my point. I was responding to the claim that Obama "separated republicans from the table," which is plainly false. The GOP was invited to the table, but they refused to sit down.

As far as the next GOP president's agenda, I don't think he can "outlaw" Supreme Court decisions (e.g. Roe v Wade, Obergefell v Hodges). My understanding is that the Supreme Court would have to review the decisions, or the Constitution would have to be amended, but the GOP keeps tilting against those windmills anyway.

Saying a GOP president would move to outlaw gay marriage or abortion is a bit like saying he would reinstate Jim Crow.

Maybe you meant to say "appointing justices" rather than "introducing legislation" . . .

[Kilmer17]

Ah. Yes. Fair point. They certainly could have acquiesced.

[s0crates]

Ah. Yes. Fair point. They certainly could have acquiesced.

I'll add that your examples are odd, because they have more to do with SCOTUS than POTUS, see my above edit.

And the GOP didn't only resist controversial things like gay marriage, it resisted basic things like budgets.

[Larry]

When the next GOP POTUS introduces legislation to repeal Obamacare, outlaw gay marriage and overturn Roe, should the Dems in congress try to compromise? Or should they oppose it?

Obama didn't try to work with the GOP. He tried to get them to agree to things they absolutely oppose and disagree with. That's not compromise.

Problem with the narrative you're trying to shovel, is that "things they absolutely oppose" was "anything Obama tried to do".

Obama takes office, and Republcans suddenly start filibustering bills WHICH THEY SPONSORED.

Boehner publicly announces the Republican demands, to keep the government functioning. Obama agrees to the demands within hours, with a proposal that provides the demanded amount of deficit reduction, accomplished 90% through spending cuts, and 10% through tax cuts. Boehner agrees. And then a hook comes in from off stage, and yanks him off stage. The Republicans inform him that he will be removed from the Speakership if he agrees to anything which Obama agrees to. Boehner steps back onto the stage and announces his new demands.

[SkinsHokieFan]

If anything, the President was incredibly weak when he first started negotiations with Congressional Republicans in '09.

 

The guy just won in a massive landslide. He had strong majorities in both chambers of Congress.

 

Rather then really going for the gusto in his first offers, he was already meeting R's halfway. Which was stupid on his part and which gave us a terrible stimulus bill, god awful Dodd-Frank, and half ass corporate giveaway ACA.

 

I wish I was buying a car from the President, I'd always get things under dealer invoice 

[Kilmer17]

The funny thing is the narrative that the GOP never compromised. The reason so many GOP voters are mad is because they compromised TOO much. Your example Larry is a good one. The compromise happened. The GOP happened to be better negotiators that time.

The GOP hates Paul Ryan right now because of the last colpromise

[s0crates]

Long read, but fascinating . . .

http://www.salon.com/2016/01/30/this_is_an_oligarchy_not_a_democracy_donald_trump_bernie_sanders_and_the_real_reason_why_change_never_seems_to_come/

This is an oligarchy, not a democracy: Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, and the real reason why change never seems to come

“At the parliament of animals, the rabbits demanded equal rights, and the lions replied, ‘But where are your claws?’”

We often hear it reported that in some benighted countries the people believe that “Democracy is a nice idea, but it’s not for us. We need a strong guiding hand.” So convinced of this are these people that, given the opportunity, they will in fact vote for this strong hand and all that comes with it, making democracy an oxymoron.

. . .

Not only are we divided by those things that divide most regions of the world—tribe, sect, class/caste, race, sex—we are also divided by something that feels unique to us, almost genetic. It is our founding psychopathology, first animated by the mutual dislike of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. Historians refer to it as our first national crisis, the conflict between Republican and Federalist, and it more than once led Jefferson to contemplate secession for Virginia and likeminded states.

Perhaps we inherited our psychopathology from ancient Rome and its division of senatorial oligarchs from republican populares (led by the brothers Gracchus and Julius Caesar), but there is a uniquely American cast to our everlasting dilemma. This dilemma currently expresses itself as urban liberalism versus the evangelism, guns, and hatred for all things federal that presently enlivens those gathered inside the Tea Party’s sanctimonious Tiny Tent. If there is a word for a country permanently divided against itself, we should use it, because the truth is that for the last 150 years we have lived in a Cold War continuation of the Civil War.

What hath Jefferson wrought?

In spite of this, we hear from all parts of the political spectrum the passionate appeal to “we.” This appeal is especially loud when it comes from social conservatives, although it is perplexing to consider who it is outside of their own tawdry numbers that they can be thinking of. We “real Americans,” one assumes, the usual ad hoc moral majority. Even Cliven Bundy and his 15 or 20 patriot soldiers claim that they level rifles at federal agents in the name of “the American people.”

But we also hear this rallying of “we” coming from democratic socialism, whether Bernie Sanders or the pages of “In These Times” (disclosure: I have written for “In These Times”). Socialists say, “Inequality, climate change, and racism can be corrected if ‘we’ have the will. It’s ‘up to us!’” The bumper-sticker-ready slogan “US means all of us” is the high-water mark for political naiveté.

. . .

Still, you can’t fault the sense of urgency that rouses Bernie Sanders and his admirers. They see all too clearly that the Progressive dream of ever-larger egalitarianism is dead. The United States has returned to its oligarchic roots, and with a vengeance. Sure, gays can get married and pot is more or less legal; isn’t that progress? But the oligarchs don’t care about that stuff. Smoke pot and **** yourself silly, they say. In the meantime, well over 50 percent of the population lives on an annual income of $30,000 or less. Making matters a lot worse, this sobering statistic does not include those who went on Social Security early because they couldn’t find work after the recession, those even younger workers who committed disability fraud after their unemployment benefits stopped, those in prison, or those vague and pitiable souls called the “permanently discouraged.” Meanwhile, wealth concentrates at the top, ever denser, as if the sad mass of the rest of the country were being used to make a diamond.

The oligarchs are hated by both left and right, as is right and proper, but democracy’s fateful ironies make it unlikely that there will be any positive consequences for this hatred. As for the oligarchs, they don’t have to live through democracy’s ironies because they don’t live in a democracy. They live in a plutocracy. When they say “we,” they know just who they are talking about. Their “we” is what they call the “rightful owners.” As the saying goes, “Money always returns to its rightful owners.” (And boy hasn’t it steadily flowed back for 35 years now.) When newly elected leaders betray the people who elected them, the oligarchs say, “Welcome! You’ll fit right in!” As for irony number three, the oligarchy is not much concerned about blood because along with everything else it owns, it owns force. As in every nasty, tin-pot dictatorship, the goons are ready to apply a beat-down when necessary. As always, the goons will apply this beat-down to their own communities, their own people. The oligarchs outsource all of the bleeding to their victims.

That irony is jaw dropping: the traitorous “new boss” has no need to repent to those who placed him in power because he has a police apparatus at his beck and call ready and willing to confront his erstwhile supporters. The occasional scene of mothers facing off with their own sons dressed in riot gear—as in the Kiev protests in 2014—testifies to this irony. (During the Chechen wars in the late ’90s, there was actually an organization working against the war called the Russian Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers.) We’re more familiar with this phenomenon from images of black police officers on the front line of demonstrations in black communities, most recently in Baltimore, New York and Chicago.

I say these things because they seem to me to be obvious. And yet they are rarely said. We live in a society that makes no sense, but that we are not allowed to criticize. That makes delusion a requirement of citizenship: first a brainwashing, then freedom of speech.

Where does all of this leave us? It leaves us with the laughable democracy of the oligarchs, the best democracy money can buy.

[Renegade7]

If anything, the President was incredibly weak when he first started negotiations with Congressional Republicans in '09.

The guy just won in a massive landslide. He had strong majorities in both chambers of Congress.

Rather then really going for the gusto in his first offers, he was already meeting R's halfway. Which was stupid on his part and which gave us a terrible stimulus bill, god awful Dodd-Frank, and half ass corporate giveaway ACA.

I wish I was buying a car from the President, I'd always get things under dealer invoice

I still feel he got some good things done and going to miss him. I do feel he came in saying he was going to try and work with them, and by the time he realized it wasn't going to go how he hoped, it was too late.

[chipwhich]

Long read, but fascinating . . .

 

 

What is fascinating is Bernie and the top Republican candidates were all mentioned in the article, but Miss Hillary couldn't even garnish a thought.  Things that make you go hmmmmmm.  I wonder why they wrote that. 

[nonniey]

Do we not all agree that Fox News has sway over the GOP supporters? That they get many of their talking points from them? Or has that changed recently? Maybe I'm behind and they've changed and those websites are much more influential?

 

I ask because of the idea that the media could have stopped Trump, but chose not to... Fox News has gone after Trump from the start. The recent pulling out of the debate did not come out of now here. They've been going at each other from the start. At one point early on Trump was gong to boycott all Fox News programs and appearances.

 

Don't get me wrong, I generally agree our news media has completely dropped any role in truly working to keep us informed. But I think the biggest conservative media pieces have been trying to kill the Trump Campaign. I don't listen to Hannity's radio program, but I know he has one that's popular and I know he's been against Trump from the start (I believe he's pro Cruz?)

 

OReilly seems to be the only host that gave Trump any sort of 'fair' treatment from the start (fair from Trump's point of view) and he's doing it for all of the candidates. Maybe Gutfeld too, but I doubt it was any serious support; he tends to embrace the absurd.

No actually Hannity seems to be pro Trump. It's Limbaugh and Beck that are Pro Cruz.

[88Comrade2000]

No actually Hannity seems to be pro Trump. It's Limbaugh and Beck that are Pro Cruz

Hannity has had a man crush on trump since day one.

[Zguy28]

I believe Trump is smart enough to surround himself with people who are extremely smart on Foreign policy, the economy, taxes, etc.

We said this about Bush in 2000 when I campaigned for him. I still love him as a person, but he made some dumb decisions because he surrounded himself with terrible advisors like Cheney and Rumsfeld.

[Rskins06]

You're saying that Obama wouldn't work with the GOP? This is a strange claim, a far cry from my understanding of the situation. It seems to me that the GOP wouldn't work with him, not the other way around.

Most of what I read suggests that Obama tried to be a compromiser, and that mistake prevented him from advancing his agenda. Over the past 7-8 years, the GOP has earned a reputation for being obstructionists, the party of "no," shutting down the government, etc. Do you disagree?

Frankly your post seems like nonsense to me. Where do you get this stuff?

I do disagree. When he was first elected, the Democrats had majority in both houses. They refused to compromise (Dems) on anything they pushed through. They force fed The ACA down our throats (remember, we have to pass the bill in order to see what is in it or you can keep your Dr or savings, etc) which is a disaster for most Americans who are now paying more for their insurance, thank God they did not have a super majority, they would have pushed even more bad policies down to us. He has done such a great job in office, since being elected, the Democrats have lost the majority in BOTH the house and the senate, he has lost 19 governorships to Republicans. You don't lose the Senate, the House and Governorships because you are doing a great job.

Now, that being said, the Republicans have done to Obama EXACTLY what the Democrats did to Bush when they controlled both house and senate during Bush's last 4 years.......refused to work with either president. Congress IS broken and really needs to be dismantled and replaced with new leadership (I support term limits) who will do what the people voted them in to do, not continue to play partisan political games.

I don't call Bernie anti establishment either, he is not new to Washington DC and politics in general. Which is why I stated Trump was truly anti establishment, unless you can show me other political offices he has held.

[Rskins06]

We said this about Bush in 2000 when I campaigned for him. I still love him as a person, but he made some dumb decisions because he surrounded himself with terrible advisors like Cheney and Rumsfeld.

I can agree with this. I am not a fan of either Cheney or Rumsfeld. I don't have an issue with the Iraq invasion (after seeing in person how the people were treated by Saddam and his 2 sons) but there were HUGE mistakes recommended by both Cheney and Rumsfeld which caused major problems afterwards.

I truly believe Bush is a man of integrity and humility and believed fully what he was doing was right for this country, but like you said, he listened to some terrible advisors.

[chipwhich]

Get em while they're hawt....

 

http://www.mychamplainvalley.com/news/tattoo-studio-giving-away-free-bernie-sanders-tattoos

 

Some Vermonters could be 'feeling the Bern' literally.

 

A Winooski tattoo studio is showing it's permanent support for presidential candidate by doing a Bernie Sanders tattoo for free!

 

People get tattoos for various reasons.

 

Usually it's something personal, but how about political?

 

A New Hampshire tattoo shop owner declared his allegiance to Donald Trump and he's offering free tattoos of the GOP front runner.

 

"We personally insulted by the whole free Donald Trump tattoo and I don't want people to get the wrong idea only Donald Trump has followers that are that passionate," said Tyre Duvernay, Aartistic Inc.

[tshile]

No actually Hannity seems to be pro Trump. It's Limbaugh and Beck that are Pro Cruz.

 

 

Hannity has had a man crush on trump since day one.

 

Fair enough, I don't exactly follow Hannity.

[Burgold]

Just saw the Big Short... makes me more sympathetic to the Sanders' campaign. Mind you, with the legislative branch in the bank's pockets there's not much a Pres could do even if he wanted... except direct the attorney general to prosecute a few more wrong doers. Still, what a mess!

[visionary]

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/01/bernie-sanders-might-have-an-electability-problem-218432

Sanders’ team counters by pointing to Iowa and New Hampshire – two states they say know the Vermont senator best. A WMUR-TV/CNN poll last week showed Sanders running considerably ahead of Clinton when matched up with the Republican candidates.

 

“These are the two states where voters have received the most information about the candidates,” said Devine.

 

Devine insists Sanders would scramble the traditional Electoral College map. The battleground states – states in which the campaign is legitimately contested – remain largely unchanged since George W. Bush eked out a 4-vote victory in 2000.

 

Citing his candidate’s appeal to younger voters, independents and those otherwise disillusioned with politics, Devine said Sanders could put in play a number of states that have been reliably Republican for decades.

 

He mentioned specifically a number of states in the Deep South with high African-American populations but that have still backed Republicans by wide margins.

 

“We’d have to take a real hard look at a state like Georgia, for example,” Devine said. “A state like Louisiana, where Democrats haven’t competed since Bill Clinton won it in 1996, we’re going to have to take a look at that.”

 

(President Barack Obama didn’t campaign in either state, despite wide popularity with black voters – and lost Georgia and Louisiana by 7 and 17 points, respectively.)

He didn’t stop there, mentioning Alabama, which Mitt Romney won by 23 points, and Mississippi, which has the greatest black share of the population of any state (excepting the District of Columbia) but still gave Romney an easy, 11-point victory four years ago.

Really?  Come on.

[visionary]

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/donald-trump-is-shocking-vulgar-and-right-213572

Donald Trump Is Shocking, Vulgar and Right

 

And, my dear fellow Republicans, he's all your fault.

[chipwhich]

And, my dear fellow Democrats, he's all your fault.

 

Fixed that for ya.  That's a great article and basically shows the clown car race we get this year.

 

Obama's "change" didn't quite work out like ya hoped.  The top 1% are still laughing while backing Hillary.  He exists because the DNC failed and have Hillary as the prize.

 

Nobody believes in anything Donald or Hillary say.  Now it's a race between blue and red.  Even the Dem's get it.  Hillary will just be the same ol same ol.  The rich get richer.  The wealth divide will continue.  So now everyone wants to know, who can I vote for to make a change?

 

The answer is probably nobody.