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Correct. A lot of people wanted an "outsider" and to "drain the swamp". In other words they don't feel represented by their elected officials, or treated fairly
by bloopernova 7y ago
Correct. A lot of people wanted an "outsider" and to "drain the swamp". In other words they don't feel represented by their elected officials, or treated fairly by the government, and they want things to change.
Despite this desire being co-opted and twisted by Trump's campaign and Fox News, the underlying feelings are valid for a lot of people across the USA.
The Democratic party should have realized this back during Obama's "Hope" campaign. A message of change, of saying "what's happening right now isn't right and we need to fix that", that message really resonates with a lot of people.
Of course, as Obama found out when he became president, "the swamp" has its own interests at heart. All that good energy and hope broke like a wave against that huge political cliff, and had far less impact than everyone needed.
If you ask a lot of people to articulate this sort of feeling, they'll have difficulty. Hence the easier to understand populist rhetoric coming from Trump. He steered that behemoth of public opinion towards xenophobia and other negative feelings. It's easier to blame the other than to look deeply at your own life.
The Democratic party has to understand this or Trump will easily win his second term. Back when Trump got the Republican nomination, I had a deeply unsettling gut feeling about the election. Trump was entertaining, Clinton was not. In the same way, Obama was entertaining, McCain was not. Bush was entertaining, Kerry was not. Gore was not. I unfortunately don't really see any entertaining people on the Democratic side.
As for the automation question, I think Trump, or his Republican successor, could pivot very easily to saying that robots are going to take Good Old-Fashioned American Jobs(tm) and a lot of people will follow that message.
- godelski 7y ago> As for the automation question, I think Trump, or his Republican successor, could pivot very easily to saying that robots are going to take Good Old-Fashioned American Jobs(tm) and a lot of people will follow that message. I think this is interesting, because there's a Democratic candidate, Andrew Yang, gaining popularity because of this (relatively, considering he's coming out of nowhere). Though taking it with a different attitude. But I think this kinda goes to show that the message resonates across party lines (like with what you said about Obama and Trump).
- humanrebar 7y ago> All that good energy and hope broke like a wave against that huge political cliff, and had far less impact than everyone needed. He seemed happy enough with the party-line vote in the Senate on the first major bill of his presidency: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Recovery_and_Reinvestment_Act_of_2009 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Recovery_and_Reinvest... And he wasn't too concerned about bipartisanship when it came to passing the ACA only a year later, arguably the biggest bill of the decade. There were several forms of procedural hardball happening in the process of passing that. It was certainly passed narrowly and along party lines. And, partly because of the lack of bipartisan agreement, not all of it survived court challenges. If it's true that Obama was genuinely optimistic and down on cynicism during his 2008 campaign, he must have wised up quickly. Otherwise, maybe people read some things into the "Hope" message that weren't actually there. He came from the Chicago school of politics, though, so I'm skeptical that the narrative of broken good energy really fits. And I think this sort of thing feeds into the Trump narrative of a "swamp" that needs draining. Obama certainly didn't come up with Washington partisanship, but the hard landing after all the Hope posters probably increased cynicism on the whole and gave Trump a chance. Remember, he didn't exactly win his election by a landslide.
- pas 7y agoThe ACA is already a result of a lot and even more compromise. It's even modeled after a Republican plan implemented in a red state. (In Mass. when governed by Mitt Romney, who at first vetoed it then took credit for it.)
- humanrebar 7y agoAnd yet it received basically no bipartisan support in Congress. The Romney stuff is a talking point, not a reasonable way to pursue bipartisan progress on healthcare (which is still a mess).
- pas 7y agoIt received just enough to pass, don't forget that. And also don't forget that nowadays it receives just enough support to stay on the books. Also. Talking point or not, it pretty much showcases that policymaking today is not a deliberate good faith iterative process what it should be. It's just a front in the culture wars.
- Theodores 7y agoReagan was entertaining - he was an actor. Dukakis was not. I like your theory on the entertainment value of Presidential hopefuls.
- bloopernova 7y agoOnce Trump is no longer president, I wonder whether the Republicans will rally around Pence. He's most definitely not entertaining.