US election 2020

[stui magpie]

^

Trump had no centrist appeal?

He appealed to every person who'd felt fvcked over by politicians, all the lower, middle income earners who were sick of seeing the same corrupt self serving shit regardless of which party was in charge and they voted for change, to shake the system up.

Consider it duly shaken, it may be now time to return to normal programming,

[David]

[stui magpie]

Implying that most Republican supporters don't have decency.

Right.

FFS, the Republicans are no worse than the Democrats or Greens. They are just Political Parties and have elements that appeal to some people and not to others.

[David]

I'm talking about their perception, not mine necessarily. The myth of the moderate Republican who can be wooed to the Democratic Party is a long-held one and kind of central to the discussion happening here.

[stui magpie]

Yeah, fair enough. I just dislike the flagging of it.

Saying a Republican with Decency could be convinced to vote Democrat is like saying an intelligent Democrat could be convinced to vote Republican. It's the kind of vocalising people who treat Political Parties like sporting teams use to praise their own team at the expense of the other.

They're all politicians.

Having said that, the idea of a lifelong voter of one party voting for another isn't strange. Plenty of people vote out of habit until one day they realise the other side has better policies for them. eg, Howard's Battlers stole a whole lot of Labor voters.

[stui magpie]

Just read this article on WA Today. An opinion piece duly labelled as such. I reckon it's really good so am reproducing it here complete.

"History does not repeat itself, but it sometimes rhymes" is a saying attributed to Mark Twain. He probably didn't pen it, but the writer would appreciate its wit and how much global affairs bellows the truth of something he did say: "Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it."

The heart's desire of most sane people is that somewhere in the world there is someone who actually knows what s/he is doing and has their best interests at heart. This is a tad optimistic.

In Australia part of the hope is close to the mark; most politicians do want to improve their community and attempt to do it guided by their own political lights. Their aspirations and cures might prove they have no idea what they are doing but their intentions are mostly good.

Politicians are maligned worldwide but ours, largely, are a fair reflection of the community: they can be honourable, courageous and inspired as well as deplorable, cowardly and dumb. Sometimes all at the same time. Like us. And, like us, they can be corrupted by power and the other forces that drive moral compasses off course.

Things are less encouraging elsewhere. Watching the world's political class respond to the coronavirus and guide the trajectory of major powers proves the planet is run by imbeciles who really mean it and, worse, the truly malevolent.

There is a disturbing historic rhyme about the looming US election. The smart people who were telling us Donald Trump couldn't win last time are convinced that he can't do it this time. Many cite the evidence of the same polls that were so horrendously wrong in 2016.

Trump could win for the same reason he won last time: he tapped into the rage in America's heartland. Trump's supporters are the losers from radical globalisation, an idea championed by idiot savants who really meant it and who spruiked all the benefits while ignoring the costs. The benefits accrued to the rich, the costs were borne by blue-collar workers who were reduced to abject poverty as their jobs were shipped offshore.

With the median real wage for people with a high school education in the US lower than it was in 1979, is it any wonder that an exit poll on election night in 2016 reported half of all union households had voted for Trump?

Insult was added to injury. They were mocked as the residue of a dying America: stupid, rough, racist, working class and white.

The great outsourcing of America was backed by Republicans and Democrats, so both became the enemy. When Trump emerged, devotees saw him as a revolutionary vandal. They did not want him to go to Washington and fix it; they wanted him to burn it down. They wanted to inflict a measure of the pain they felt and the louder the mainstream media complained the more convinced they became that he was their man.

Trump has delivered destruction beyond their wildest hopes but the tragedy for them is that they worship a narcissistic property tycoon who is incapable of building anything.

America is now in crisis as it heads towards the most consequential election in memory. The worst possible outcome is that the result is disputed, a seed Trump has already planted. It is now not impossible to imagine the United States descending into another Civil War in the wake of this poll, as its heavily armed militias hit the streets in support of a man with the instincts of a demagogue.

The decline of America has profound consequences for Australia and the world. The global order it established and underwrote is passing as a malign alternative rises to replace it.

Across the Pacific, President Xi Jinping doesn't get bad press because he doesn't allow it. There every sinew of the country is bent in the service of the party and the party is in thrall to the President for Life.

There, a million people are in detention for the crime of being Muslims. There, a surveillance state stalks every one if its billion and a half citizens, rewarding fealty and punishing transgressions through an insidious system of social credit. There, statecraft includes economic coercion, hostage diplomacy and industrial scale intellectual property theft.

The oppression of this autocracy is now radiating outwards, as Beijing steals the land and sea from its neighbours and punishes its critics.

And here, the imbeciles who really mean it are business leaders, current and former politicians and academics who spout Beijing's lie that any fault in the relationship must be Canberra's fault. Vladimir Lenin is reputed to have coined a term for them: useful idiots. They are the part of history that repeats but does not rhyme.

Chris Uhlmann is political editor for Nine News.

https://www.watoday.com.au/national/don ... 55r6r.html

[pietillidie]

[Tannin]

Chris Uhlmann is political editor for Nine News.

Chris Uhlmann is an unreconstructed right-wing warhorse and climate change denier. What he is doing working in the mainstream media instead of at Brietbart or in the Murdoch bubble where he belongs I don't know.

[Sicks Bux]

I know there's a US election thread, but I wanted to do a poll to see who the preferred candidate is on this forum. Trump, Biden or don't care?

<I've combined your poll into this thread. Pies4shaw for BBMods.>

[Sicks Bux]

Thanks. Didn't know polls could be added to existing threads.

[David]

I voted Biden, for what it’s worth.

[stui magpie]

I voted "Don't Care", because I really don't.

Part of me would like Trump to win just because of his ability to turn normally sane people into frothing idiots when they speak/write about him. It's a constant source of humour when there's not much funny happening.

On the other hand, some stability where nothing actually happens for a while could be good for the US.

[think positive]

I voted "Don't Care", because I really don't.

Part of me would like Trump to win just because of his ability to turn normally sane people into frothing idiots when they speak/write about him. It's a constant source of humour when there's not much funny happening.

On the other hand, some stability where nothing actually happens for a while could be good for the US.

me too,
im more interested in my post on the first page, i have no idea what it means!!

[eddiesmith]

I voted "Don't Care", because I really don't.

Part of me would like Trump to win just because of his ability to turn normally sane people into frothing idiots when they speak/write about him. It's a constant source of humour when there's not much funny happening.

On the other hand, some stability where nothing actually happens for a while could be good for the US.

I voted Trump just solely because whilst I don't give a shit about who the US president is and never have, who the president of US is or the PM of the UK has no effect on my life, but the way so many people outside the US froth over Trump is quite entertaining.

4 more years!!! 4 more years!!! 4 more years!!! 4 more years!!! 4 more years!!!

[David]

So if Stui and TP didn’t vote for Trump and Wokko isn't here, where TF did those four votes come from (Eddiesmith aside)?