1 - Timotheos
- Electoral Prophet
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Trump, the Debates, and the Election
So stuff has gotten pretty crazy in the last few weeks, and with the Trump Tapes and the Paul Ryan defection, people are starting to call it for Trump. I'm not so convinced, even with Clinton up 6-7 points on average in the polls right now, but I was wondering what everyone here thinks.
Also, what did people think of the so-called debates (mind you, TV Presidental "debates" have been misnamed since their inception; they're joint press conferences at best)? I actually gave the first one to Trump, because they basically tied in turns of "zingers" and Trump showed some people that he wasn't pure crazy; Clinton may have won on "points" but this is meaningless since there is no defined point system, and that implies that this was a real debate, which it never was anyways.
The second debate on the other hand was a clear Trump victory, and supremely entertaining (if someone neglected to watch it, they should go ahead and pop some popcorn for this and only this reason); the biggest rise I got out of the whole thing was looking at the damage control CNN had to run to depict it as a Clinton win.
Mind you I don't know if this will save Trump in the polls or in the election, but it was fun for what it was worth.
- AKG
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Re: Trump, the Debates, and the Election
Wait a minute, are people here considering voting for Trump?
- iwpoe
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Re: Trump, the Debates, and the Election
I won't be voting. I think he's preferable to Clinton and everything her brand has chosen to lead with. I'll pick a right leaning populist to a pseudo-left corporatist bureaucrat any day. I don't need a man to be my drinking buddy or to be a good husband to be president. I consider politics inherantly in tension with ethics, and incapable of being done ethically without vast luck, sacrifice of freedom, or national ruin. When I try to marry politics and ethics I usually end up with monarchy or quietism.
Keep in mind that I do not in any respect believe in the Republican party's brand of the last 36 years. The party of Reagan is a dead end, but I respect their personal honesty and real attempt to connect with the situation of the voter since 2008. I thought this genuine in Obama also, but I'm now mixed in my assessment, and I do not in any respect believe the Clintons are itnerested in anyone but the Clintons and the people they owe the most to. The democratic party has sold its soul to demographic-data driven half-baked identity politics mixed with the very same oligarchic practices that they claim to dislike in their rivals, and the level of media colusion on their part this cycle is distateful, patronizing, and hypocritical in the extreme. I've not trust for the party left after this cycle. It had faded with their absolute failure to execute anything other than a botched agenda with a majority control of the legislature and executive, and it's gone now.
Trump's right. She talks the same good talk, but they aren't going to do anything to fix the economic situation especially with respect to solutions for giving people access to work they want to do, and they know it. Obamacare is mainly not useful day-to-day for the vast majority of people, and is felt as a fiscal burden. If that's the hook they want to hang their hat on, why should I support them? It's the same story as New Labor, with less hypocritical branding.
I agree with Tim on the second debate, though I wish he had not given such a run-around answer on the tapes. If you're going to bring all of Clinton's alleged victims to the debate, that isn't a time to be less than brash in your own advocacy.
Last edited by iwpoe (10/14/2016 8:28 pm)
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It is precisely “values” that are the powerless and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values.
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- seigneur
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Re: Trump, the Debates, and the Election
iwpoe wrote:
I think he's preferable to Clinton and everything her brand has chosen to lead with. I'll pick a right leaning populist to a pseudo-left corporatist bureaucrat any day.
It's a grave mistake to think Trump is a populist or a political anything. Trump clearly has no politics. Whatsoever. All his ideas come from the business world where it counts to pay the right people and avoid personal costs.
- iwpoe
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Re: Trump, the Debates, and the Election
As opposed to the political world, where it counts to pay no one and take all responsiblity?
The man has little left to gain. I believe he can be a populist in the way that Julius Caesar could be such- his gain is glory and pristige. He didn't need to be president to make money.
Fighting to the death "the noonday demon" of Acedia.
My Books
It is precisely “values” that are the powerless and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values.
~Martin Heidegger
- Timotheos
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Re: Trump, the Debates, and the Election
I think he's preferable to Clinton and everything her brand has chosen to lead with. I'll pick a right leaning populist to a pseudo-left corporatist bureaucrat any day.
It's a grave mistake to think Trump is a populist or a political anything. Trump clearly has no politics. Whatsoever. All his ideas come from the business world where it counts to pay the right people and avoid personal costs.
Well, methinks you're forgetting how most populists engage in politics; they do not put forth their own policy opinions as correct, but make their brands slaves to the interests of their base and whoever they "represent". So populists are pretty much by definition apolitical; they leave that part to the people, and just act as the public face.
So I think you're mixing up being popular with being a populist, and those are not the same thing.
In other words, Trump is a populist in the mold of Andrew Jackson: crude, mud-throwing, impulsive, vindictive, and rewarding of political allies (see Spoils System).
The sort of populist that I think you originally had more in mind is somebody like William Jennings Byran; alas, his brand of populist is much more in the minority.
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Thread Starter- seigneur
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Re: Trump, the Debates, and the Election
I must have left the impression that I was characterising the business world. I was actually characterising the way Trump operates in the business world. He does not translate to politics at all, in any way. United States would do better without any president than with Trump for president.
Julius Caesar, the guy who transformed the Republic into Empire? Not an apt comparison with Trump. With Trump you will have the last president of USA. Some would say, go for it and let it be done. So be it.
- iwpoe
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Re: Trump, the Debates, and the Election
That would be Augustus. Whether Julius would have become true monarch or not is unclear. I chose the analogy rather than say Gaius Gracchus to illustrate the sense in which wealthy men like the populari can be for the people.
Also, frankly speaking, I know no high-level business entity that doesn't make a lot of deals happen on the basis of connections and courting the right people and doing favors for the right people. If business transactions are by choice, rather than system, then it's inevitable that this will be so.
I mean, listen, if you think somebody like Paul Ryan is going to come in in four years and do anything other than what the Republicans have done in the last 40 years, namely nothing at all but high talk and globalism, I applaud your optimism. But the party keeps losing even when it wins. They have lost on every social moral and religious front and they have failed to deliver on Promises of a strong economy that works for the whole country. They haven't even delivered on Promises of national and International Security. The post Reagan Legacy is to trade Global communism for Global terrorism? At least communism built stable regimes. If Trump can throw that under the bus and make it start over, then I count that as a mark in his favor.
Last edited by iwpoe (10/15/2016 7:15 pm)
Fighting to the death "the noonday demon" of Acedia.
My Books
It is precisely “values” that are the powerless and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values.
~Martin Heidegger
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Re: Trump, the Debates, and the Election
Wait a minute, are people here considering voting for Trump?
I'm not an American, and I'm not sure I could bring myself to vote for him if I was, but I think he is probably just marginally better than Hillary, simply because of the Supreme Court and the fact he won't cement the left-liberal, identity politics legacy of Obama. But he really is a buffoon, demagogue, and charlatan beyond the normal measures of politics, and seems actually going to lose an election almost any other Republican candidate would probably have won. I don't understand how one can be enthusiastic about him.
Clinton is nearly as bad a candidate. She is quite the demagogue too, making ample use of cynical identity politics appeals. She lies beyond what is normal for a politician. And the thing with her private server would normally be disqualifying - the FBI director, despite a seemingly knobbled investigation, essentially indicted her then walked it back.
This election must surely represent the nadir of the American political system.
- seigneur
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Re: Trump, the Debates, and the Election
That would be Augustus. Whether Julius would have become true monarch or not is unclear. I chose the analogy rather than say Gaius Gracchus to illustrate the sense in which wealthy men like the populari can be for the people.
Julius Caesar would not be the best example of a wealthy man going populist. He was not that wealthy. He would be the best example of treating public funds generously as if his own. Which, admittedly, could be what Trump would do.
But Trump has no detectable ambition for power like Julius Caesar had. He behaves like a guy who already has everything and at the same time nothing to lose.
I suspect this: He is a businessman working for profit. He would do anything, if he is paid appopriately. Right now he is getting paid to play the total idiot in a social experiment to test if the American public would buy such idiocy as a viable alternative in the presidential race. Yes, they buy it all the way. Successful experiment and a point made.
This is the rational way to explain Trump's phenomenon. But an equally feasible explanation is that the world has ceased to be rational a while ago.