People vote their fears. It’s not always a fact but for a lot of people it is definitely true. There was a recent discussion about John Kennedy creating a missile crisis with Russia that just didn’t exist but that got him elected. There is always talk about people voting for George Bush over John Kerry because voters thought that Bush was stronger and would protect them. Well, we all saw how well that worked out.
Now Trump talks strength but like most of his verbiage it is pure unadulterated bullshit. He can rage and vent all he wants but he has such a limited knowledge of what is actually going on in the world outside Trump Towers that he would be the greatest of liabilities if he is ever elected president.
Some may think it reasonable that what this country really needs to protect it is a fat blowhard, with a short fuse and his finger on the button. But many of them also want to bring back prohibition. Make you feel secure does it? Make you want to stop thinking with the little head and pull the big head out of the mothballs?
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Donald Trump wants us to emulate the barbarians that we are facing in ISIS. That obviously makes sense to Trump. That’s because he hasn’t any more moral structure than those barbarians themselves. You don’t triumph over evil by being more evil than the bad guys you are fighting. As soon as we start acting like the ISIS we become ISIS. What has always made America greater than those we opposed is that we have a sense of humanity that has often been absent from our opponents and is, in fact, the reason we were fighting them.
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Trump and his new toady, Mike Pence have had a field day attacking immigrants and refugees along with Obama and Hillary on foreign policy. Both have made their points by continually pushing the big lie that refugees are spreading terrorism. The reality: refugees are fleeing terrorism and radical elements all over the world. Of all the so-called terrorist attacks, including Belgium, Nice, Paris, San Bernardino, Orlando, etc., none of the attackers have been refugees. Not one! More to the point, most of them have been native-born citizens of the country in which the event occurred. The only one that wasn’t a long term resident or citizen was the wife of the San Bernardino killer who came here two years ago on a fiancé’s visa, a little something that neither of the big mouthed GOP candidates have even thought of. You can’t fix stupid.
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Six agonizing years of GOP House control and far too many of a GOP Senate have inured us to that Party’s inability to function on anything but a destructive level.
The sloppy convention, the fumbled VP announcement, the way Trump, wanders from the script with no one to call him to task, illustrates the entire party’s inability to function on anything like the level necessary to run this country. Even the fact that they stood by as he swept all their chosen candidates off the various stages allowing him to run the table, shows that it is the party itself, not just Trump that is a loser.
Then, of course there’s the fact that Trump is constitutionally unable to face a crowd and hear its cheers without taking it as an opportunity to blow his own horn and bathe in the waves of ignorant adulation. The story is quite clear, a Trump victory will be disastrous for the country but even a down ballot win for the GOP will cause all progress to stagnate. The only thing that will allow this country to flourish will be a clean sweep of the presidency and the Senate by the Democrats.
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Trump has boosted the concept of all the recent attacks both home and abroad in order to double down on being a law and order candidate. His problem is that he doesn’t have a clue that the first basis for law and order is to protect the rights of the people, not to punish them for perceived violations. This is a core problem for Trump because it demands, on his part, the ability to tell the difference.
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Rob Portman ® Ohio has endorsed Trump. We thought this would make it very easy for a Democrat to take the Ohio Senate seat this year but then we saw Ted Strickland, the Democratic candidate and all the air went out of the balloon. This guy is barely able to breath by himself. This column would love t see a Democratic Senator in Ohio but Strickland isn’t the kind of guy to make anyone stand up and cheer.
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People keep waiting for Trump to change into a real, serious candidate. His backers keep talking about him getting on message. What they all want, what they all need, is for Trump to change into a grown up, a man who understands that he isn’t the only one in the room. Good luck! We are talking here, about an egomaniacal sociopath. There is about as much chance for Trump to change as there is for a pig to grow wings. He says it himself whenever it comes up in interviews; he is who he is and he is always ready to tell you what a great thing that is. He will tell you over and over.
This is a man who in his own mind is never wrong. Why should he change? The fact is, he survived a seventeen challenger primary and he did it with a vengeance, so he sees himself as invincible. Why would anyone change that?
But despite this, we keep hearing Republicans talk about Trump adjusting from what he is now, about him getting control of himself. This is the guy the Republicans want us to believe can run the country, this guy with no self-control. This is the guy they want to stand up in a serious confrontation with another country and with his finger on the button and not create a nuclear Armageddon. Good luck!
So no. Trump won’t change. And if you think he will you are too dumb for the discussion. If you hope he will you are looking at the wrong candidate. If you voted for him expecting that he would; well, you can’t fix stupid.
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Donald Trump claims, correctly, that 70% of voters think the country is going in the wrong direction but everything depends on how that question is framed. It does not necessarily mean that 70% of the people think the country is the mortal disaster area that Trump claims it is. Nor does it mean that 70% of the people think we have a terrible economy or a weak military the way Trump claims we do. Nor does it mean that any of that 70% think that Trump has the answer, although some of them obviously and mistakenly think he does
What it means is; there is always a certain level of discontent in all areas of the country regarding certain particular aspects of American life that specific voters would like to see changed. People like to complain. No one ever celebrates something good that happens, especially when it’s expected. They only bitch when it doesn’t. That’s just human nature.
What’s really interesting about those desires for change is that they often need solutions that are in direct contrast with the solutions of changes wanted by other groups and the solution for one group will make the problem for another group worse. That, of course, is the reason you can never solve everyone’s problems. It’s called life.
Some of us don’t want Obamacare. Others want more of it, including universal healthcare. Some of us want more jobs for blue-collar workers, others want more freedom to move their factories overseas. Some of us want higher taxes while others, favor lower or no taxes and even as some want to increase our military others want to cut it to the bone. Someone isn’t going to be happy no matter what our government gives us. And the ones who lose those battles are always going to be part of that 70% group. Does that mean they want to tear down the country and build a new one. No! What they want is their particular problem solved to their particular satisfaction.
Some of those people think that Trump is the answer to their particular problem. Why they think that is anything but clear. What is abundantly clee is that in the past, they have, mainly through bad voting choices, created most of their problems for themselves. They never seem to see this, so they are always on the precipice of doing it again.
What is generally conceded to be the largest block of Trump voters are white, blue collar workers who have lost their jobs to a combination of Bush’s crashed economy, automation and the movement of manufacturing to low pay countries overseas. Why they think Trump can, or will solve these problems is anything but clear. He rants about stopping the movement of jobs overseas but when we look at his own businesses we find that all his manufacturing, clothes, furniture, whatever; is done in low cost labor markets, not in the USA. As far as the jobs lost in Bush’s crash goes, they are gone and nothing is going to bring them back. Automation is the wave of the future and because Trump is not informed enough to see that, he isn’t going to stop it. Which means that under Trump we would never be able to compete in a global marketplace. None of this is new information; it has all been repeated early and often by everyone who knows anything about the economy. Trump has already rejected the $15 minimum wage, which should give labor some inkling on how he feels about the problems of labor. So the question remains, are the voters who think he is going to solve their job problems, too stupid to understand the evidence that has already been presented, or are they so desperate for a champion that they are willing to suspend their faculties of disbelief and reality in order to vote for a man who has all but proven that he will not deliver what they want?
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The big noise from the race this week is that many on both sides want the Republican Party to dump Trump. The question that immediately comes to mind is how? Trump won the primary fair and square, knocking out 17 pathetic bumblers, none of whom would have made a good president anyhow. So the next question is who runs the country, the voters or the parties? We all know the answer to that one but we all also know that has to change if we are to maintain any kind of democracy.
The problem is, the Republican primary voters, disgusted by years of incompetent and crooked, self-serving governance by the GOP in the halls of congress, revolted. They voted in a guy who is barely a Republican and is, in fact, an unstable sociopathic liar who is barely lucid. That’s when the GOP establishment woke up and realized that with Trump at the head of the ticket it would cost them the Senate and could, in a long shot, cost them the House. Of course this attitude shows you exactly how much the GOP establishment cares about the country; absolutely nothing!
Naturally the Democrats love Trump. They are coming into the election with a powerful but highly flawed candidate and they adore the fact that Trump is so ego driven and unstable that he is unable to recognize the fact that he cannot keep attacking Gold Star mothers when there are practical policy points to be dealt with. Of course, there is also the idea that he may not know enough about the policy points to deal with them and is just making noise to cover that weakness.
I just watched a speech that Trump gave in Maine where he states that hundreds of thousand of Somali refugees are flooding into this country. This is a flat out lie and even someone as uninformed as Trump has to know it, but he cares nothing for the truth unless it supports his case. Then he jumps to the Boston bombers calling them refugees, which they were not. They were immigrants but then it’s far too much to expect Trump to know the difference. He blends them into the Muslim hordes that he claims are overwhelming our country. They may be overwhelming him but the pathetic trickle that we actually let in couldn’t overwhelm a kindergarten playgroup.
The fact that Trump is a raving, frothing at the mouth, mad dog seems to have no effect on certain Republicans. They are so engulfed by their party’s goals that they have completely abrogated their responsibility to their country. They don’t care if Trump is bat-shit crazy and will start a nuclear war; as long as they can keep gays from marrying, women from getting abortions and armed crazies from getting their AK47’s taken away. These clowns are as bad for this country as Trump could ever be because they are willing to back a man they know will be a disaster for the country just to get their small desires fulfilled. These are not patriots these are traitors.
You make an excellent point here. I am amazed that the so-called news commentators keep scratching their heads over the 70% national dissatisfaction rate among voters when it comes to the country’s current political direction. They wonder how it is that Obama’s popularity rating can be at an all-time high at the same time. As a voter with decidedly progressive leanings, I, too, steadfastly stand among the 70% dissatisfied, but not because of any so-called Obama-induced economic, military, social, or moral catastrophe. My disgust comes from the fact that we have an obstructionist, right-wing congress more attuned to the wishes of the NRA, the Kochs, and other powerful special interests than to the needs and desires of the populace that elected it; that local Republican governors and representatives are doing everything in their power to legitimize homophobia, scale back the rights of women, restrict voting rights, deny people their ability to receive the affordable health care they need and deserve, install Jesus into politics, and keep minorities “in their place” by re-instituting new versions of the Jim Crow laws of the previous century. You are the first one I’ve encountered who has publicly pointed out that the dissatisfaction door swings both ways, to the left as well as the right. Bravo!