If Trump beats Warren, the US will fully deserve whatever post apocalyptic hell it becomes.
I’m really tired of conservative columnists asking the liberal base to rescue them from their disaster by being more conservative. If we wanted conservatism we would have been conservatives and read National Review instead of squirming every time we read a rigid doctrinaire description of culture and society by people who only look backwards. Most people have never heard of Will Baumol’s economic discovery or the analysis of the world that leads us into war once more. Instead we just get rich conservatives playing trickster to the people who gave up their lives at high school and bought a dream of family and children only to find they didn’t have the money or the skills to keep it going. The system is broken. Liberals know it but are delicate about saying it. Conservatives don’t know it at all. I like Elizabeth Warren, very classy and smart as whip. Not a bad manager either.
If debates won presidential elections, there would be no Republican presidents.
Hillary Clinton defeated Trump in their debates. Didn’t matter.
John Kerry defeated George W. Bush in their debates. Didn’t matter.
On the other hand, Mitt Romney arguably tied/ had a draw with Barack Obama in their debates. Also didn’t matter.
Democrats are utterly obsessed with debates, even though they are almost completely irrelevant.
Does anyone not yet understand that Trump is dangerously unhinged?
I’m with George Conway: Trump’s delusional, likely demented, possibly insane. Unscripted, he’s a jabbering idiot http://bit.ly/2Gdlbrl
A sociopathic scoundrel, Trump dissembles habitually, effortlessly and shamelessly; clearly, he has no understanding of yesterday, nor any concept of tomorrow—he lives only in his grossly narcissistic view of the moment; a brainless dummy, his awareness of anything is limited to the input of only the last (Russian?) ventriloquist to blow in his ear.
Trump has said his father was born in Germany; he was born in New York; his (also) draft-dodging grandfather was born in Germany. Apparently, Trump is unable to differentiate between the two. If that’s not a sign of dementia, what is? http://bit.ly/2VhkaGq
Trump’s a crass charlatan; a congenital liar—nary a word that comes out of his mouth can be believed; for him “truth” is a variable for whatever suits him at the moment—after he’s received his daily “programming” from the knuckle draggers on his (once) favorite TV channel, “Faux Noise.” Trump’s grasp of reality is even more delusional than that of Alice’s following her fall down the rabbit hole. http://bit.ly/2Ne2QyV (12:22).
Trump has always believed that he could get away with anything—see the “Katie Johnson” interview on Epstein/Trump (Feb 2016) http://bit.ly/2xTGQmS
Hopefully, Trump will eventually be indicted for various crimes (charity, bank, tax, insurance frauds, massive money laundering, etc.) and much of his and his ill-gotten assets will be forfeited, and his most-deserved post-presidential vacation will be a lengthy convalescence at a Club Fed or NY State facility.
When the dust finally settles and his ovine rubes’ cheering ceases, Trump will blame them for ruining his life. Likewise, Hitler’s final judgement was that Germany had failed him.
The whole steaming pile of Trump: http://bit.ly/2TWdwJ5
The United Kingdom has a viable third party called the Liberal Democrats. They currently have 19 seats in the House of Commons. If Mr. Johnson and Mr. Corbyn are indeed so unpopular, this would seem to be the time for them to break through. The Liberal Democrats are not seen as being extremists, but somewhere in between the Conservatives and Labor. If they can achieve gain control of the UK Government, as a third party did in France, then perhaps it will be a harbinger for the rise of a moderate third party in the USA.
What’s happening in Britain is worth considering because Anglo-American politics have operated in eerie synchronicity for the past half century. In the 1970s, both countries had weak liberal leaders (Jimmy Carter, James Callaghan). In the 1980s, both had strong conservative leaders (Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher). In the 1990s, both had centrist conservatives (George H.W. Bush, John Major) followed by Third Way liberals (Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown). Then, in the 2000s and 2010s, both had failed conservative leaders (George W. Bush, David Cameron and Theresa May).
Now both are governed by unscrupulous populists. Though Prime Minister Boris Johnson is more articulate and erudite, he and Trump are cut from the same demagogic cloth. Johnson became a conservative journalist, and now the Conservative Party leader, by spreading pernicious myths about the European Union; Trump has uttered a record-breaking 13,435 falsehoods since taking office. Both men are ensnared in sex scandals: Johnson is accused of groping women and providing city contracts to a woman he was having a relationship with while mayor of London, Trump of sexually assaulting women and paying off his mistresses in violation of campaign finance laws.
Both men stumbled onto their signature issues out of sheer expediency: Trump was for immigration before he was against it, and Johnson could have either supported or opposed Brexit — whatever was more advantageous. Both made promises they couldn’t possibly keep — Trump to build a border wall and make Mexico pay for it, Johnson to leave the European Union without any serious financial or political cost.
Both men are inept at governing. Johnson lost his first seven votes in Parliament and his majority in the House of Commons, and Britain’s Supreme Court ruled that he had illegally suspended Parliament. He might finally achieve a Brexit deal but only by making concessions, such as allowing Northern Ireland to remain de facto in the European customs area, that he would have opposed from anyone else. Trump, for his part, hasn’t reduced illegal immigration (863,016 undocumented immigrants were apprehended at the southwest border in fiscal year 2019 compared with 408,870 in fiscal year 2016), and he has made a shambles of his foreign policy from Syria to North Korea.
Not surprisingly, both men are unpopular: Johnson’s YouGov approval rating is 33 percent, while Trump’s Gallup poll approval is 39 percent. And yet Johnson is heavily favored to win a general election that is expected soon, because he has the good fortune to face an opposition leader even more reviled than him: Jeremy Corbyn’s approval rating is a rock-bottom 23 percent.
The issue isn’t just that Corbyn is personally unlikable, although he is. It’s that his views are so extreme. Under his leadership, the Labour Party has pledged to nationalize energy, water and rail companies; to create a state-owned drug company ; and to abolish private schools. Corbyn is critical of NATO and the E.U., but he has a soft spot for anti-Semites in his own party, for anti-Western dictators such as Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez, and for terrorist groups such as Hamas and the Irish Republican Army. Even many voters who can’t stand Johnson prefer him to Corbyn.
Might something similar happen in America? As was evident in all the criticism she received in Tuesday night’s debate, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has overtaken Joe Biden as the Democratic Party front-runner. She is far more likable and far less radical than Corbyn, but in the more conservative context of U.S. politics, she is easily caricatured as a far-left extremist — an open-borders socialist, as Trump supporters would put it.
Warren supports decriminalizing illegal immigration and providing illegal immigrants free health care; a Medicare-for-all plan that would abolish private health insurance; a Green New Deal that would force a radical revamp of the economy; a plethora of new government programs that would necessitate a big tax hike; and an isolationist foreign policy. (At Tuesday’s debate, she said, “I don’t think we should have troops in the Middle East.” Her campaign “clarified” that she wasn’t referring to “non-combat bases.” But all military bases are designed to support combat operations.)
Polls show Warren defeating Trump but by a smaller margin than Biden — and that’s before Trump has started to work her over. Democrats should be concerned that Warren has struggled with two critical constituencies — white, working-class voters and African American voters — that they need to win. Even many liberal executives are wary of Warren because of her anti-business rhetoric. Like Corbyn, she relies on support from progressive activists who are out of touch with ordinary voters.
The only way Johnson or Trump can win is by alarming voters about what the opposition party would do. Labour has played into Johnson’s hands by keeping Corbyn as its leader. I fear that if they nominate Warren, Democrats could be playing into Trump’s hands, too.